Description
The recording brings together a collection of French, Sinti, American jazz and Italian melodies that I’ve gathered over many years, alongside one of my own compositions that has travelled with me through different bands, places and stages of life. Much of this music has lived on the bandstand for a long time, gradually evolving and settling before eventually finding its way into the studio.
All of the tunes were recorded live to capture the interplay and energy the ensemble has been developing since the project began in 2017, and mixed to highlight them from the listener’s perspective.
This music comes from a long and deeply rooted tradition, and I approach it with great respect for the culture it comes from. At the same time, it’s shaped by my own musical accent as someone from Western Sydney, inspired by the French, Belgian and Dutch masters of this style of guitar playing. Much of this repertoire was learned late at night in campsites in France and the Netherlands, in bars, and along the Canal Saint-Martin in Paris — places where melodies are shared from one musician to another and where, for a while, time seems to stand still. As my friend Jon Delaney once described it, these are moments played “with one foot on the ground and the other stomping the earth.” Each tune carries a memory, a feeling, and a great deal of personal significance, a bit like revisiting familiar places or looking through a collection of postcards.
Many thanks to Sean Carey for his production and engineering, to Peter Malone, Oscar Peterson and Carolyn Packer for their generous musicianship and for helping shape the arrangements into something truly ensemble-driven, to Jeff Young for his input and help with the cover design and to Mark Allerton for his ongoing support.
