Member Since: 1/22/2006
Band Website: rikemmett.com
Band Members: NEW CD now available!
Strung-Out Troubadours is now available from www.maplemusic.com .
Strung-Out Troubadours is a writing/recording project that arose from the public response to Rik Emmett's instrumental duo performances together with Dave Dunlop during Rik's concert gigs. The material on the album is centred on an acoustic folk roots kind of showcase for serious guitar lovers.
TRACK LISTING:
1. LIGHT OF DAY - pretty much Dave's original form. I rewrote a few lyric lines to try and throw some McCartney-esque sunshine on Dave's Lennon-ish darkness. Collaboration is great when it pushes us out of set ways.
2. CROSS COUNTRY - Dave is off to the races! I just tried to give him some chord changes to race over. [BTW - throughout the CD, Dave is usually the 'lead' player, often on nylon string, and I am the steel string accompanist, occasionally taking a more forceful fingerstyle command of proceedings. I handle all lead vocals, and Dave tracked plenty of backgrounds. But not on this track. This is one of the instrumentals, and Dave is showing off some of his hybrid pickin' chops.]
3. STATE OF GRACE - grew out of the intro head for Dos Arroyos. A simple song that runs deep. "Every moment passing by" is a notion that, as a mortal human, has always given me an ache of regret. Nothing [except art and human imagination] can make time stand still. Yet we have an opportunity to try and do the right thing, be a good person, shape the world as a better place for others by attempting to hold true to certain virtues. Yet another attempt to write a song that will fill up the empty space between and inside hearts & souls with something graceful, something merciful, something tender. This requires a complete act of giving. You give it all, present in the moment, full of the courage of wonder. As my friend Ian Thomas has written, this is The Art Of Living.
4. DOS ARROYOS - a challenge to weave two forms and melody, as two meandering streams of thought. Two guitarists, not so much a conversation as an intertwining dance, the gentle flow along the riverbed that a logical sense of gravity determines.
5. GOOD THING - Dave's tune about how his wife rescues him from his 'bad'ness. Really fun to take a guitar duo thing into Hall & Oates R & B / smooth jazz territory. As 'producer', Dave challenged me to go from whispers and falsetto to a burned-out Tom Petty thing in the bridge. Kinda like Star Trek, it's sometimes fun to go where no Emmett has gone before.
6. QUINTESSENCE - Dave had the starter idea for a riff in 5/4, in drop D. This is a musicianly guitarist thing, and it presents a few technicalities to get your hands, um, dirty.
7. FAITHFUL STRANGER - grew out of Dave's arpeggiating chord fragment. I built the song, with lyric & melody & form, from that. We're often strangers to ourselves, reinventing & coming to terms with our own limited humanity. Within our orbits & cycles, can we manage to keep faith, with hope and love? These abiding graces help us feel less 'strange' to ourselves when "what goes away comes back around".
8. EVEN HANDED - an instrumental, arranged to give melodic comfort within the balanced harmonies of twin guitars. Familiar territory for those who recall some ideas in Beyond Borders, or things like Full Sail or Autumn Turns, on the Handiwork CD.
9. RAINBOW WORLD - the intro chord progression was Dave's original idea, then I wrote a pop song to a melody he was playing on guitar over the changes. This is the story of a man who is truly smitten, waking up in unfamiliar territory, where everything is twinkling and sparkling with possibility - cuz he's fallen in love. The catch - she's got quite a strong, independent spirit. He's not sure if this is what he finds so powerfully attractive, or if it's this that's scaring him - or just the fact that his heart cannot hear a single thing his head might be saying.
10. BONUS TRACK: THREE CLOUDS ACROSS THE MOON (LIVE) - the origin is a tune from the Swing Shift CD, but it has morphed. Oh yeah - the Troubs are nothin' if not shape-shifting mutants.
To place your order, please visit www.maplemusic.com
Record Label: Rockit Sounds Inc.
Type of Label: Indie