Typical of all the recordings in Travis's back catalog, the songs have clearly evolved since they were first conceived between 1965-1969, but remain undeniably true to their original inspirations. For these current incantations, he and his younger brother, Adam Pike, preserved vestiges of his guitar picking and strumming, although in some cases, played on other instruments. They were all solos back then, and in these recordings for 21st century listeners, Travis held to his solo style, but sang harmonies to "Mesmerizing, Tantalizing, Hazel-eyed Jane," "She's Gonna Be A Woman Someday," and his Rhode Island pirate song "Tommy Tew Run Run," songs which, in live performance, would have elicited audience participation.
He restructured "You and I Together" as a duet and asked Adam to sing it with him, an altogether appropriate move, since Travis could never have updated and recorded his back catalog without his brother's outstanding production, engineering and musical participation. Last year's "Odd Tales and Wonders, Stories in Song" CD release of "A Red-backed, Scaly, Black-bellied, Tusked, Bat-winged Dragon" has been shortened to its original coffeehouse length and remixed for this release, with an "amusement park" accordion part added to the chorus.
But Travis's most dramatically new arrangement is for "Don't You Care At All," which one fan called "one of the finest of all antiwar songs." Travis's finger-picking still underscores the horrors of America's first televised war, but for this first ever recording, he added and sang harmony parts throughout, and featured attack helicopters, machine gun fire, air strikes and exploding napalm in the "instrumental" section, then assembled a "hippie chick" choir of friends to replace the audience participation parts his live performances once evoked.
Samples from "Reconstructed Coffeehouse Blues" are posted at http://oddtalesandwonders.com. CD Presales are now available in the Otherworld Cottage Industries online store, where digital downloads of both the album and singles from the album will go on sale on July 1st.
To request review copies or to schedule interviews, contact travpike@morningstone.com.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
