NEWSFLASH! SOME RECENT REVIEWS OF THE CD "THE CROSSING":
THURSDAY, APRIL 24, 2008
now playing: Barry Walsh
The Crossing
Barry Walsh has been making music professionally for more than thirty years. Most of that has been spent in Nashville recording studios. In recent years he’s been touring in support of singer and songwriter Gretchen Peters, and with Alex Chilton and the Box Tops. His past history includes backing up Roy Orbison and Jimmy Webb, and writing songs that Waylon Jennings and The Amazing Rhythm Aces, among others, have recorded.
Thanks in part to encouragement from Peters, Walsh has now gotten around to recording his first solo album, and it’s something none of those credits noted above would likely prepare you for. Original, mostly just Walsh and his piano, it’s music that draws on both Bach and folk, and remains true to the voice of this artist. Without the first word being said, Walsh speaks clearly and movingly of connection, discovery, love’s questions and love’s certainties, and the varied landscapes of thought and emotion. David Henry adds masterful cello on several tracks, including the opening title cut, and Mark Selby brings in guitar on Nigel’s Blues. The only cover is a twice imagined take on Erik Satie’s Je Te Vieux, a piece which Walsh presents as at once somber and seeing the possibility of joy. It fits in perfectly with the rest of the collection.
POSTED BY KERRY DEXTER:
http://musicroad.blogspot.com/2008/04/now-playing-barry-wals
h-crossing.html
Barry Walsh
The Crossing
(Scarlett Letter Records, 2008)
Terrific sidemen are the unsung heroes of the music world. Barry Walsh is a piano virtuoso whose gifts at the keyboard have added so much to the music of the Box Tops and singer-songwriter Gretchen Peters, as they did in the past for Roy Orbison, Jimmy Webb and Al Green. Mr. Walsh has released a solo album of his own compositions, and it's nothing short of spellbinding. He admits being influenced by Bach, and it shows. This is not a pop album, nor is it New Age. Rather, it has elements of classical, jazz and blues, and it takes you on a mesmerizing journey. Mr. Walsh has circumvented the genre of solo piano recordings by slowing down the pace and letting the individual pieces speak for themselves. And they do, loudly and lyrically.
Michael Granberry- Dallas Morning News:
http://www.guidelive.com/sharedcontent/dws/ent/stories/DN-ch
anger_0120gl.ART.State.Bulldog.3755bf7.html
Artist:Barry Walsh
Album:The Crossing
Website:http://www.barrywalshmusic.com
Barry Walsh has been a professional musician for more than three decades, and in that time he's performed with Roy Orbison, Jimmy Webb and Al Green, and he's written songs that were recorded by Waylon Jennings, Jessi Colter and the Amazing Rhythm Aces. Currently, in addition to touring extensively with singer-songwriter Gretchen Peters (over ten UK tours since 2001), Walsh plays keyboards for the recently revived Memphis rock and soul band The Box Tops, featuring Alex Chilton.
The Crossing was recorded at Walsh's home on a Kimball Viennese Edition grand piano with touches of backing by cellist David Henry and guitarist Mark Selby. Walsh's Labrador Retriever Nigel lay motionless at the feet of Selby as he overdubbed on an as yet untitled song. It was duly named "Nigel's Blues" in his honor.
I have to confess to being one of those people who never really 'got' music without lyrics. However, maybe as a result having been mesmerized so many times watching him play with Gretchen, I was eagerly anticipating the release of this album. On first listen, what was immediately obvious was the emotion that had gone into these beautiful pieces of music. Even before reading about the album, it is apparent that each one came from a personal place, be it experience of affinity.
The latter is true of 'Je Te Veux.' Barry comments of the track, "This is an Erik Satie (the French composer) piece, and the only song I didn't write on the CD. I have been playing Satie's music for 40 years."
That, therefore leads us to the rest of the album, Walsh's own compositions. The Title song, 'The Crossing,' a metaphor for the changes in two lives over a period of time, one of which was his own. Angel of Repose' was the title of one of his favorite books, by Wallace Stegner and 'Years May Go By' was inspired by a line in a Rikki Lee Jones song. The obvious love for England which has grown over his years of playing here is evidenced in the fact that two songs on the album refer to UK cities; the haunting 'Leaving Newcastle' and 'Exeter Cathedral', the melody of which remains with you long after the final piano chord is played.
Barry Walsh truly is one of the most remarkable and intuitive musicians I have ever had the pleasure to watch and he has created his own piece of magic in his first CD release. I am hoping that when he tours here with Gretchen this year we may be given the opportunity to hear even just one of these tracks performed live - maybe 'Leaving Newcastle' in the city which it honours. In the meanwhile this Cd will continue to have heavy rotation on my CD player and I only hope there are more where this came from. Apparently I do 'get' music without lyrics after all.
Helen Mitchell - FATEA UK:
http://www.fatea-records.co.uk/magazine/barrywalsh.html
World traveler and musical explorer Barry Walsh has done many things and made music with some extraordinary figures, but only now has he composed and recorded a solo instrumental album. The 11 original piano works on Walsh's new CD The Crossing are serene, airy and cyclical, but they have a gravity born of their inspiration in specific experiences.
"The title is a metaphor for the changes that have happened in my life in the last three years," says Walsh. "A long-time marriage ended, and a new relationship began with a singer-songwriter I've known for many years."
That would be Nashville artist Gretchen Peters, author of hits such as "Independence Day" and whose critically acclaimed recent CD Burnt Toast & Offerings investigated the birth of the new relationship with the candor and clarity of a poet. On The Crossing, Walsh offers his take on the story in the universal language of spare, elegant instrumental music, a telling that's more abstract but no less emotionally potent.
The title track takes the long view on the journey he and Peters made together and toward each other with a suspenseful pulse in the high register and a breath of release and relief at the end. The delicate second cut "Leaving Newcastle" was named for a special place shared on tours in the UK. During a two-week separation, when Peters was in England and Walsh was home alone composing, he conceived the album's wistful "To See You Again." The CD closes with the Erik Satie influenced "The Steps Of The Parthenon," a reference to the Parthenon replica in Nashville, long a meeting place for local lovers.
Walsh has been a professional musician for more than three decades, and in that time he's performed with Roy Orbison, Jimmy Webb and Al Green, and he's written songs that were recorded by Waylon Jennings, Jessi Colter and the Amazing Rhythm Aces. Currently, in addition to touring extensively with Peters, Walsh plays keyboards for the recently revived Memphis rock and soul band The Box Tops, featuring Alex Chilton.
The decision to step forward with a solo work after so many years of supporting others allows these many influences, as well as Walsh's many travels and life epiphanies to come together in a style he can claim as his own.
The Crossing was recorded at Walsh's home on a Kimball Viennese Edition grand piano with touches of backing by cellist David Henry and guitarist Mark Selby. Walsh's Labrador Retriever Nigel lay motionless at the feet of Selby as he overdubbed on an as yet untitled song. It was duly named "Nigel's Blues" in his honor.
The recording breathes with expansive, roomy warmth, and the music captures the bittersweet reverberations of adults changing course.
For more information on Barry Walsh: barrywalshmusic.com
A BRIEF AUTOBIOGRAPHY:
I was born the fourth of nine children in White Plains, New York to a French Canadian/Irish mother from Lewiston, Maine, and a first generation Irish father from Chattanooga, Tennessee. This combination of different worlds may have contributed to a lifelong fascination with other cultures. I've always felt both a part of, and yet somehow apart from, both North and South. My father relocated this very large family to Nashville when I was 16. I couldn't know this at the time, but this event became one of the most serendipitous things that ever happened to me.
At age 19 an urge to break out of the pack combined with a search for adventure led me to hitch-hike out West, where my oldest brother was then living with friends in Oregon, and where I lived for the next six months. I was reading, living, and breathing Jack Kerouac, who had only died three years earlier, in 1969. Eventually my restlessness again led me to search for something more. I answered a "Pianist Wanted" notice someone had tacked to a bulletin board in a music store in Portland in 1973 and wound up playing piano with a trio in a club in Grants Pass, Oregon for the next eight months, launching a now 34 year music career.
I've had several spiritual awakenings during my lifetime. I was lucky enough to spend some time with novelist Ken Kesey at his farm outside Eugene, Oregon one summer afternoon in 1972 when I was only 19; had an epiphany one night backstage before a gig in Birmingham, England in June of '04 that music and religion could be the same thing; and played organ with Bishop Al Green at his Full Gospel Tabernacle Church in Memphis, Tennessee on Easter Sunday April 26th of '05. Then one night after a gig recently in Santa Cruz, CA, I met and shared an earthquake (a 5.6) with John Cassady, the son of Neal and Carolyn Cassady, a couple of Beat Generation icons I read so much about when I was younger. I'm now sure that these were not unrelated events.
In between this span of time I studied classical piano with Carol Stone and W.O. Smith at Tennessee State University; played gigs with Roy Orbison and Jimmy Webb; wrote songs for Waylon Jennings, Jessi Colter, The Amazing Rhythm Aces and others, and spent 25 years making a living in Nashville recording studios.
I've toured Europe with Gretchen Peters ten times since '01, and I continue to record and tour internationally and domestically with her. I also tour with Alex Chilton and the Box Tops when I am not engaged in studio work. My passion has been and will always be music- the learning and creating of it. I have a lot more curiosity than greed in my soul, and I hope that it remains so.
"The Crossing" is my first solo CD. At least three of the tracks are directly related to my recent tours in the UK. My goal was to create an instrumental piece of work that would hopefully break new ground artistically, drawing on the musical influences gained from a lifetime of playing and performing music. Most of the tracks are solo piano, but there is a cellist (David Henry) on 3 tracks, and an acoustic guitarist (Mark Selby) on 1 track. Also in the mix on 3 tracks are some sampled original piano notes, manipulated by the aforementioned David Henry, who also mixed the project at his True Tone Studio in Nashville. The CD was released in November of 2007 and is available at my website, barrywalshmusic.com, CDBaby.com and iTunes. Hear selected tracks from "The Crossing" now on SKY.fm at: www.sky.fm/solopiano
