Organolepticians # 93
In early December, in 2000, I released a CD called Lonesome On The Ground, which I’d recorded in March of that year, featuring 11 songs I’d mostly written some 20 years earlier, during a period when my daughters were quite young. They’d literally heard these songs coming into being, and I wanted them to still be able to hear them when I’m no longer around. My own parents died when I was pretty young, and, despite my very conflicted feelings toward them, I know I often wished I could hear their voices again.
Introducing this recording to my friends and colleagues in the wine business produced an unanticipated result; I had a sense that some of them were shocked that they hadn’t known that I played, and sang, and wrote. That’s certainly my own fault, I know; I’m not generally inclined to self-promotion. Truthfully, I’m most comfortable, much of the time, with solitude. It is most often in solitude that creativity gathers itself, and I got lots of practice, at an early age.
Fortunately, a lot of those friends liked that first recording, and it felt okay that the cat was now out of the bag. Which was great, because, in fact, I’d been surprising myself since late in the Spring of 2000 by awakening, frequently, at 3 or 4 in the morning with new lyrics and music pouring out of me, unbidden, and insistent!
I was thrilled with this abrupt development and was quite struck by the difference in voice and tone with which this new material seemed to emerge.
And at last it seemed clear to me: doing this work is something I’m supposed to do! For better or for worse, I am a songwriter, too.
Over the past 17 years I’ve written roughly three dozen songs, and in the Summer of 2015 I met with Laurie Lewis, who was my producer for the first album, and we made a plan to begin recording a second album the following Spring.
But life doesn’t ever unfold in a straight line; it’s taken almost two years, since making that plan, for the project to come to completion. It was an adventure, complete with agony and ecstasy, which, in retrospect, I view as a sign of success.
(Laurie did a fantastic job; I have a renewed and greatly enlarged respect for her artistry in finding the bones in these new songs and getting them aligned so beautifully.)
The album is called Singing To The Ghosts, and, putting modesty aside for the moment, I have to say this is my best work, singing, playing, and writing. I want everyone to hear it: I think it will move you!
There’s a page on the Edmunds St John website on which you can order the CD and sample the songs. There are also links to both iTunes and CDBaby where you can download the albums.
Life is short; don’t miss out!
Singing To The Ghosts $15.00 (plus postage)
Email: info@edmundsstjohn.com
Stay warm, and put some music on!
Steve Edmunds