Here are just some of the highlights:
Kevin McElroy is a Portland ME-based fiddler, mandolinist, guitarist and vocalist whose music sits firmly in the Irish Tradition. I’ve had a lot of fun playing music with Kevin up at Blue in Portland, and it was delight to work with him on his first vocal-centered CD. Kevin tours with the great Irish fiddler Gerry O’Connor of Irish Rovers fame. Given my own collection of world-class vintage instruments, there are few that show up at the studio that find me covetous, but Kevin’s Sobel mandola……:)
Lee Biddle‘s resonant baritone and confident guitar playing (a nice old Gibson!), combined with his ebullient personality, made for an excellent follow-up collection of new songs.
The Lion Sisters! What can I say-an incredibly promising (and very young) duo from Deerfield NH, whose expert fiddle and guitar skills and sibling harmony vocals have impressed me so much that I’m now hiring them to work with me on live gigs! Watch out for more from these two!
Stomp Rocket‘s Glen Loper (mandolin) and Bethany Waikman (DADGAD guitar) are no strangers to my array of microphones here at MPM Studio. They’re joined now by Boston-based fiddler Dave Langford to form a trio that are in high demand on the national Contra Dance circuit. High energy tunes!
Concord’s Lynda Nelson and I are working on our third project together. It’s almost done- a few last minute songs to add to the tracks we cut in Nashville in the spring, these last few with vocals and acoustic guitar tracked here up north, with overdubs from Nashville’s Byron House on bass, Chris Leuzinger on electric guitar, Wayne Killius on drums. Her songs are catchy, honest, straight-from-the-heart country, the kind of songs we wish were still coming out of Nashville.
Bob Moore came back this year with his skillful guitar, poetic songs and a welcome stream of friends and their instrumental/vocal contributions. We hope to finish this latest project early this year.
Harrison Guptill finished his second project with me, this time a textbook example of how well a MPM Studio/Nashville studio ‘aces’ remote collaboration can work.
I’m losing track of how many projects Meg Hunter and I have done together! We had a lot of fun this year producing a collection of blues songs featuring Meg, her sister Cathy Aguiar, and Portland ME’s Linda Atherton, and my ‘one-man blues band’. We’re looking at a release date this month.
Boston-based fiddler Laurel Martin brought in the legendary Irish fiddle master Matt Cranitch for a wonderful session with stellar student Fern Tamagini-O’Donnell.
Meg Irish finished a project that’s we’ve been working on in increments over the past few years. I love working with Meg-she gave me free rein with my acoustic and electric guitars, mandolin, bass and drum programming to frame the lovely songs on this deeply spiritual collection.
Spider and Maril- what fun it was blasting through 36 songs from the Great American songbook with Marilyn’s beautiful singing and Spider’s skillful harmonica playing!