"Wren's Dance" This song is unique in that it is the only track on which I play the mountain dulcimer. The instrument belonged to a friend who lent it to me for the sessions. (Soon afterward, he sold the dulcimer in order to buy a deer rifle.) I had owned a dulcimer many years before and had a basic knowledge of how to play. The flute on this track is one that I purchased from a Choctaw maker from Oklahoma. It has a beautiful, clean tone which, in this song, brought to mind the lovely cascading notes of the call of the canyon wren, which Nikki and I always delighted in during our canyon adventures. The title is a play on "Renaissance."
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"Escalante"
This is probably my favorite song from "Ruin Sky." At the time I was recording this album, I had become enchanted with the canyons of the Escalante River in Utah, and this song was my musical homage to that place. I recorded the rhythm guitar track first and then added a second guitar line as a bass substitute. Next came the flute part which consisted of both backing and lead sections. I found a keyboard sound I liked to add texture and depth, and then decided to try a solo on acoustic guitar. Engineer, Blair Ashby, did an great job of recording my old Yamaha steel-string and we were really pleased with the result. My producer, Doug Goodwin, said it reminded him of the acoustic solos played by Peter White on Al Stewart songs. The water sound was carefully chosen from a public-domain sound effects library. The song brings back strong memories of many glorious canyon days.
Fado
(a found poem) A cry for hope. Tenderness? Sure, but so little. Just because a swallow dies, spring does not end. The soul gets tired. The fingers take orders from the heart. We leave our bodies when we sing. The alchemy of sound and poem, it’s inside us from birth. ** Memory? I cannot remember if there was a candle on the clothed table set for one. I do recall the vinho verde chilling in a teakwood bucket, poured quietly between sets of fado, smoldering, mournful-- tearful singer, wet cheeks lit by dying candlelight. I remember. ** Into the Vapor and Din Listening to Amalia with windows wide open, saudade in winter evening gloom. My new guitarra portuguesa yearns for me to learn, to teach old fingers new licks, and I dream I am wandering calcadas in Lisboa inventing my own heteronyms, concocting poems with vastly different pens. I greet Fernando Pessoa, “Bom dia, Senhor. I saw you sitting outside A Brasileira today but you were not actually there nor anywhere else.” “That is how I prefer it,” he replied without inflection then vanished precisely into the vapor and din. I awaken to Amalia singing life’s last song, to gray-soaked murk and swirling fog. The music pours through my confused heart. My weeping eyes listen to the distant wild ocean wind. (c) Eric Walter 2022
This song is played on a double flute (drone flute) made by Odell Borg.
The waterfalls seen in the video are located in Skamania County, Washington, USA. Dedicated to my beautiful Nikki.
So named by painter Georgia O'Keeffe, the "white place" (La Plaza Blanca) is a geologically unique and stunningly picturesque area near the Rio Chama in northern New Mexico (USA). It was a favored painting location for O'Keeffe and is visible from her house in Abiquiu Pueblo. Nikki and I spent a beautiful morning there during our visit to New Mexico in November of 2019. Nikki had a vigor that had been absent since her diagnosis, and it seemed as if the chemotherapy through which she had been suffering was perhaps working. Little did either of us imagine that she had only ten weeks to live. This was the last hike we took together.
This song was the first track recorded during the "She Who Watches" sessions in December of 2020. It features guitar, Native American flute, mandolin, and accordion.
La Plaza Blanca
You could see it from her house in Abiquiú across the Rio Chama Georgia’s skull-white landscape muse owned now by a mosque that grants us heathens and pilgrims of Other respectful access to this pallid sanctum of tuneful wind raven song ringing beyond chalky hoodoos and along milky ledges pastel creek beds that seem to run more ways than one. Then silence then song again then wind then none. With Georgia’s ghost and the hosts of Muhammed we track a shadowy past slipping through fences of barbwire and bone pondering strange exhibits of black stones on this ashen canvas stretching beyond time. This sun-bleached forever is quite hard to find there are no signs and the address in the local guide is 1234 Fictitious Lane.
I learned this ancient Sanskrit chant from my friend, master sitarist and singer, Pandit Deobrat Mishra of Varanasi, India. Not long after Nikki was diagnosed with cancer, I took a workshop on naad yoga with Debu and learned several beautiful chants. Chanting has since been an important facet of my grief-work and my attempt to heal. I am grateful to Debu and to my yoga teacher, Maddie Adams, for instilling in me a love for this practice.
The Indalo Wind interpretation of this sacred mantra features Native American flute, and shruti, a traditional Indian instrument that produces a drone using a system of bellows (similar to a harmonium, but without the keyboard). It was recorded in December 2020.
"Zuñi Sunrise" is a traditional Native American melody which was first transcribed into western notation and published as sheet music in 1913 by Carlos Troyer. (Charles Troyer, born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1837, was a pianist/composer/teacher who immigrated to America and settled in San Francisco sometime before 1871. He began using the name Carlos in 1885 and became known for his arrangements of Native American melodies. His transcription of "Zuñi Sunrise" was widely reprinted in books for schoolchildren and the scouting movement.) I first heard it as sung by the legendary Navajo singer, Ed Lee Natay, on a recording made by Canyon Records in 1951. This version was playing in the reconstructed great kiva at Aztec National Monument in Aztec, New Mexico, during my first visit there in 1990. I was entranced by the haunting simplicity and beauty of the melody. Soon afterward, I learned it on the Native American flute (by ear from the Natay recording) so I could perform it as part of my theater piece, Desert Time. The song has been part of my repertoire ever since. I have played it at weddings and funerals. I have played it in depths of the Grand Canyon, in the Maze, and on the banks of the San Juan River as a wake-up tune for rafters. I have played it for audiences in Greece, Cambodia, and Laos. I performed it for a class at the Naropa Institute taught by Native flute master, R. Carlos Nakai, who had recorded the melody for his 1983 debut album, Changes. In 2013, I was pleased to finally record my own version for Indalo Wind's debut album. On this recording, I play a six-hole red cedar flute made by legendary Cherokee flute-maker, Hawk Littlejohn, which I purchased from his daughter at a powwow in Durham, North Carolina in 1992. It is my favorite flute and one which has traveled far and wide.
Steve, a gifted songwriter, wrote most of the songs although Chris contributed tracks as well. We played extended jams that were free and energetic, funky and psychedelic. We weren't always brilliant but we were pretty fearless. Steve and I both played acoustic-electric guitars but I used a few effects on my leads. Chris played fretless bass. Rich, a muscular, former-Marine, played with great skill and boundless energy on a kit that seemed as big as Carl Palmer's. (Our load-ins and breakdowns were famously arduous.) Our music was once described as "energetic acoustic groove". The band did not remain together long, perhaps six months, but it was a pretty fun ride while it lasted. During our time together, we played several times at Quixote's in Aurora, which was then the foremost Dead-centered bar on the Front Range. Lots of tie-dye and long hair. Our gigs lasted over four hours and people danced to the end. We also played once at The Buffalo Rose, a legendary biker-friendly venue in Golden. A few days after us, the headliner was Blue Oyster Cult.
The track featured here, "Neighbors", was recorded at The Bluebird, a well-known venue in Denver. We were performing as part of a four band showcase. The song is a funky instrumental composed by Chris Wangelin, whose dynamic bass playing is the centerpiece. I loved playing this one am happy to have this recording. |