Bruce Mandel: Blog

It has been an adventure. It always is, isn't it? The road was filled with discovery. Getting to spend time with friends both old and new as they all helped take this record to places I could not have forseen. I went back in time and invited a friend of mine from high school to contribute some pickin' on the CD. Mark Rohsler and I played together in high school and cut our teeth together on a wide variety of music back then. Mark contributed some pedal steel to the record. Adam Michael Rothberg has out done himself. He took a song that I have always played on the guitar and adapted it to piano. He played and I sang it, live together in the studio, and he really took this song somewhere else for me. And that's a good thing. A really good thing! Adam also cut a very cool acoustic guitar part. Prior to Adam's contribution, I cut bass parts along with my friend Rick Leab playing the Cajon. The Cajon is basically a wooden box with it's origins in South America and Cuba and then later in Spain. Sonically it covers the wide range of a full drum set minus the cymbals. Bobby Sweet added to the varied sonic textures of the recording cutting some sweet Mandolin, Banjo and Electric Guitar parts as well as singing. JoAnne Redding, Kathy Adams and Kim Wachtel did some singing on the disc as well. Pete Adams too. Contributing on Dobro and Pedal Steel. I also got an under the hood tour of "Martha" the Hammond B-3 Organ care of Joe Torra who cut a killer B-3 part and Greg Steele of Derek Studios in Dalton, MA where we cut the part. The B-3 is a wonderful invention. I never knew the half of it. Working with all of these incredible musicians is one part of the record making process for me that is very exciting and unpredictable. The songs begin to grow from simple acoustic guitar and vocal tracks often times developing in ways that I didn't see coming. This recording captures a diverse mix of sounds. Coming together in ways that hint at the many styles of music that peaked my interest as a kid with an insatiable musical appetite as well as those which continue to feed my musical soul today.