For this project, I combined my two greatest passions. The first one (probably pretty obvious): that’s music. My other passion is the great outdoors. Whether I’m just sitting being still, taking a nap in a hammock, or bouncing my way up to the top of a mountain, I love hanging out in the forest. I love the way it looks. The way it feels. The way it smells. And especially the way it sounds.
I chose the title “Explorations” because it works as a double entendre for the topic of the album, and it also describes that kind of arrangements I like to do. And while some of the songs can definitely be described as explorations, others stay pretty true to the original. And that’s because I've heard that sometimes I explore songs a little bit too much - which I totally get. So yeah ...
THE SONGS
When I’m about to drive into a national park, I always push play on my own curated playlist. And all of the songs on "Explorations" came from that playlist. Some of the songs are obviously about nature, while others may seem like they have absolutely nothing to do with nature. And that’s just one of the many awesome things about music. Songs are open for interpretation. To one person, they mean one thing. But to someone else, they take on a totally different meaning.
You might be wondering, if I’m doing an instrumental record, why do lyrics even matter? Good question, and to be honest, I guess they really don’t. But most, definitely not all, of the songs I chose I think people will know. So even though they don’t physically hear the words, I think they will hear them in their head. I know I do.
THE SOUNDS
Explorations has a similar format to my Downpour record; it's an instrumental collection and is set to a continuous soundscape. And while each of the songs can be played individually, the record was recorded and edited to be listened to from front to back, as the songs and the sound effects work together to tell a sequence of events.
If you’ve ever spent time in the woods, you know nature plays a musical soundtrack all of its own. And those are the sounds that you’ll recognize on Explorations. Birds. Wind. Rustling of leaves. Rustling of a backpack. Foot steps. Bugs. Lots of bugs. Mosquitoes. Cans of bug spray. Streams. Rivers. Lakes. Ducks. Catching fish. Rocks. Campfires. Coyotes. Crickets. Frogs. And of course, the one thing we all do in the woods when we step off the trail and go behind a tree … so don’t even pretend that it doesn’t happen.
Some of the sounds I recorded on my own at several national parks (Olympic, Crater Lake, Grand Teton, Yellowstone), Wisconsin’s Apostle Islands, Oregon’s Mt. Hood and Columbia River Gorge, and Kentucky’s Red River Gorge, Jefferson Memorial Forest, and Bernheim Forest.