you were right about the stars

The bluegrass album that i have been writing and recording over the last year is so, so close to being finished. It will be out in the new year. I have only one song that i am tweaking. The track order has been finalised and the album artwork is being done as i write by Trish at Silo6.

Harrietville National Bluegrass Festival 2011

As many of you know, a big recreational interest of mine is playing and writing Bluegrass music. The Harrietville National Bluegrass Festival 2011 was on in late November. I was playing there with Burnt Creek from NSW on the Friday night – very exciting. At 1.30pm on the friday i received a phone call saying that the American headline act ‘XTrain’ had heard an original track of mine and wanted me to get up and sing it with them. I said yes of course. I met the band and we rehearsed the song twice before their Friday show. I got up and sang Rosewood from my forthcoming album. It was a hoot. The guitarist of X-Train Peter Mcloughlin, won ‘Best Bluegrass Guitarist in America’ in 1988. Ross Nickerson is a banjo maestro, Bob Denoncourt is amazing on double bass and Mark Miracle on mandolin – his name says it all. So being on stage playing my song with these musicians was a tremendous honour and such fun. The crowd was enormously appreciative and i was super stoked. As if this was not enough, X-Train asked me to play with them on the Sunday as well, only this time they wanted to play two of my tracks…..Amazing. The band then asked if they could cover Rosewood on their next album. I said ummmmmm, yes. It was such a great festival. Click below to hear the live track.

Rosewood Xtrain