Barry Walsh Music - Barry Walsh - News

KOBLENZ VIDEO

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The video you see on my homepage was produced by Eric Temple of Highway 89 Media, out of Salt Lake City, Utah. He's done great work in the past for my friend Tom Russell and also for my wife, Gretchen Peters. The song, Koblenz, is from my new Paradiso album. I'm really happy with the way it came out. It's also up now on YouTube.

I'm writing this from a hotel room in Manhattan, where Gretchen and I have been holed up for a few days doing media events in preparation for the release on January 31 of her "Hello Cruel World" album, which we produced together with Doug Lancio. We are playing a gig tonight in The Village at Joe's Pub, to kick off the "Hello Cruel World Tour". Things are going be very busy for us for the next five months as we travel across North America and Europe to promote what I've called Gretchen's career record. I hope you'll make it out to see us when we get near your town. Come by and say hello after the gig...I'll keep you updated as the tour progresses.

HELLO CRUEL WORLD TOUR 2012

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Gretchen Peters and I are leaving soon for the 2012 Hello Cruel World Tour. We'll be traveling all over North America and also through England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Germany and Holland, between now and June. If we get close to your town, I hope you'll come out and see us. Below is the tour schedule as it now stands. In the meantime, have a Happy New Year!

GRETCHEN PETERS (WITH BARRY WALSH) HELLO CRUEL WORLD TOUR 2012
January 8th-15th
Delbert McClinton's Sandy Beaches Cruise, St. Bart's, St. Kitts & Nevis, The Caribbean

January 22nd
CD Release Show *with special guests Barry Walsh & John Lester
Joe's Pub, New York, NY, USA

January 27th
CD Release Show *with special guests Barry Walsh, Doug Lancio, David Henry & John Gardner
The Rutledge, Nashville, TN, USA

January 28th
Blue Ridge Community Theater, Blue Ridge, GA, USA

February 1st
Tales From The Tavern, Santa Ynez, CA, USA

February 3rd
Acoustic Music San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA

February 4th
Zoey's, Ventura, CA, USA

February 6th
Freight & Salvage, Berkeley, CA, USA

February 7th
Don Quixote's, Felton, CA, USA

February 9th
The Palms Playhouse, Winters, CA, USA

February 11th
Alberta Rose Theater, Portland, OR, USA *with Martyn Joseph

February 12th
Treehouse Cafe, Bainbridge Island, WA, USA

February 16th
Susanna's Kitchen, Wimberley, TX, USA *with Kevin Welch & Jimmy LaFave

February 17th
Jefferson Freedom Cafe, Fort Worth, TX, USA *with special guest John Fullbright

February 18th
Cactus Cafe, Austin, TX, USA *with John Fullbright & Jimmy LaFave

February 20th
Burning Bush Coffee House, Corpus Christi, TX, USA

February 21st
Dosey Doe, The Woodlands, TX, USA

February 23rd-24th
24th International Folk Alliance Conference, Memphis, TN, USA

March 1st
The Sage, Gateshead, UK

March 2nd
The Arc, Stockton on Tees, UK

March 3rd
The Met, Bury, UK

March 4th
The Arches, Glasgow, UK

March 5th
Buxton Opera House, Buxton, UK

March 7th
Robin 2, Bilston, UK

March 8th
Fibbers, York, UK

March 9th
Kelly's, Galway, Ireland

March 10th
Damer Court Hotel, Roscrea, Ireland

March 12th
Village Arts Centre, Kilworth, Ireland

March 13th
Whelan's, Dublin, Ireland

March 14th
Roe Valley Arts & Cultural Centre, Limavady, Northern Ireland, UK

March 15th
Errigle Inn, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK

March 16th
Coliseum, Aberdare, UK

March 18th
The Assembly, Leamington Spa, UK

March 19th
Norwich Arts Centre, Norwich, UK

March 20th
Bush Hall, London, UK

March 21st
The Phoenix, Exeter, UK

March 23rd
Fabrik, Hamburg, Germany

March 24th
Crystal Club, Berlin, Germany

March 25th
Studio 672, Köln , Germany

March 27th
de Schalm, Westwoud, Netherlands

March 28th
Transvaria, Den Haag, Netherlands

March 29th
Paradiso, Amsterdam, Netherlands

March 30th
In The Woods, Lage Vuursche, Netherlands

March 31st
Muziekgebouw, Eindhoven, Netherlands

April 2nd
Komedia, Brighton, UK

April 3rd
The Apex, Bury St. Edmunds, UK

April 4th
The Stables, Milton Keynes, UK

April 5th
The Glee Club, Nottingham, UK

April 12th
Grand Valley Dale Ballroom, Columbus, OH, USA

April 13th
Old Town School Of Folk Music, Chicago, IL, USA

April 21st
Swallow Hill Music, Denver, CO, USA

April 22nd
Steve's Guitars, Carbondale, CO, USA

April 26th
Hugh's Room, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

April 27th
Blacksheep Inn, Wakefield, Quebec, Canada

April 28th
Le Petit Campus, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

May 4th
Eddie's Attic, Decatur, GA, USA

May 5th
Bowman House Concerts, Lawrenceville, GA, USA

May 8th
Seaside REP, Seaside, FL, USA

May 11th
Sandhill Stage at Prairie Creek Lodge, Gainesville, FL, USA

May 12th
Evening Of Story & Song, Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

May 23rd
Music City Roots, Nashville, TN, USA

June 15th
McDavid Studio at Bass Hall, Fort Worth, TX, USA

PARADISO REVIEWS

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Three days after it's release, the first review of Paradiso has come in, and so far, so good. Editors Pick on CD Baby:

http://www.cdbaby.com/Picks/newage

SCARLET LETTER RECORDS PRESS RELEASE

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Musician, producer, and recording artist Barry Walsh is releasing his follow-up to 2008’s critically acclaimed The Crossing on November 29, 2011.

In the four years since his first release, Walsh has been a busy man. In between tours with long-time musical partner and now wife Gretchen Peters, he co-produced recent albums by Peters (Northern Lights, Hello Cruel World) and singer-songwriter Tom Russell (Blood and Candle Smoke, Mesabi). He recorded with Nanci Griffith and Rodney Crowell, and now has written, produced, and engineered his own second album, Paradiso.
Once again using an album title as a metaphor for life changes, Paradiso implies a period of happy stability in the life and career of the artist.

Broadening the palette from his mostly solo piano first effort, Walsh enlisted help from among his wide circle of musical friends. Producer-guitarist Doug Lancio (Patty Griffin, John Hiatt) layers his vibe-filled guitars on the atmospheric “There’s Been an Incident”, which also features Peters’ Renaissance-like choral arrangement. Dobro star Rob Ickes of Blue Highway duets on “Marathon Motor Works”; and turning things upside down, it’s Peters who plays piano while Walsh plays guitar on a track they wrote together, “Seven Weeks”. Walsh’s son Brennan Walsh co-wrote and adds guitar to “Youth and Age”, and David Henry, who has mixed both of Walsh’s solo efforts, adds his cello to “Youth and Age”, as well as the Philip Glass influenced “Koblenz” and “Marathon Motor Works”.

Included in this album is a new recording of a piece that was originally used in two parts on the Gretchen Peters with Tom Russell album One to the Heart, One to the Head, the cinematic “North Platte”.
Continuing a tradition he began on The Crossing, Walsh again covers an obscure Erik Satie piece as the only outside material, the whimsical “Son Binocle” (“His Monocle”). The album closes with an atmospheric re-imaging of this piece.

This is an instrumental recording that sails effortlessly between genres and across the lessons and influences of a forty year career of music making.

www.barrywalshmusic.com

PARADISO SONG BY SONG

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Here's the song by song description of Paradiso, to be released this coming Tuesday, November 22:

Paradiso to me represents an era of resolution, beauty and calm, possibly after a stormy stretch of life. The feelings in me that the music generates call to mind old world art, beauty, drama, and warmth. Some of the music that influenced me before and during the recording of Paradiso include a recent fascination with Tchaikovsky, as well as long-time influences Erik Satie, Beethoven, Bach; and film composers Craig Armstrong and Philip Glass.

Like my previous project, “The Crossing”, my goal was to avoid the mine-field of cliches that solo piano music naturally calls to mind, while creating original pieces of art.

A SONG BY SONG DESCRIPTION:

GRETCHEN’S THEME: Obviously written for my musical partner and wife, singer-songwriter Gretchen Peters. There are shades of (Scottish film composer) Craig Armstrong and Beethoven in this piece.

NORTH PLATTE: This piece was written, recorded and released previously in two parts on the album “One To The Heart, One To The Head”, by Gretchen Peters with Tom Russell. At the time that album was being written, Tom asked me to write an atmospheric piece to open the album. I had just watched the movie “Something about Schmidt”, starring Jack Nicholson, with a great soundtrack that included Erik Satie’s music . A large part of the film was shot on the Northern High Plains in between Minnesota and Denver. The starkness of the landscape was in my mind as I wrote this piece, and North Platte, both the town and the river, captured in two words exactly what I was seeing and hearing.

KOBLENZ: I wrote this piece shortly before Gretchen Peters and I left for a tour of Germany and Holland in March, 2011. I was fine tuning it during the tour, and debuted it one night at our gig in Koblenz, a lovely city on the Rhine in Northern Germany. It was received warmly, and I promised the audience I would name it after their beautiful city. David Henry’s cello adds much to this piece.

YOUTH AND AGE: My son Brennan came over while I was recording this album, and we wrote and recorded this piece over the course of a few days. His guitar parts added a whole new dimension to both the song and the album. Gretchen came up with the title from a William Butler Yeats poem. We all thought it was a great title for this ”˜cross-generational’ musical moment.

PARADISO: Very much influenced by French parlor music of the last century, with a splash of Philip Glass on the intro. Like “Koblenz”, I had written most of this piece in the year before our German/Holland tour of March 2011. I finished it and started playing it during our soundchecks. The live debut came one night at the famous Paradiso venue in Amsterdam, and as happened in Koblenz, I promised the audience that I would name the piece for them. I liked the title so much I decided to use it for the album title.

SEVEN WEEKS: I wanted to record a piece where Gretchen played simple piano lines that I could overdub to. She came up with a nice, atmospheric melody, and I played around with electronic keyboard sounds weaving in and out of her notes. I added the guitar later on as an afterthought. Gretchen came up with this title one day while we were asking ourselves how we were going to get through some rough times. She said we’d just take it “seven weeks at a time”.

SON BINOCLE: As a lifelong Erik Satie fan, I was pleasantly surprised to find this short gem I hadn’t heard before in a collection of his piano works. The harmonic shifts are what attracted me to it. Since I recorded a Satie piece on my first album, I thought it would be cool to continue the tradition.

JULY 20: It was July 20, 2011, and this was the last piece written for this project. I was playing the opening theme on the piano and Gretchen called to me from the other room saying, “that’s beautiful, what is it?” At the time it was just a simple idea that was crying out for further exploration. I still needed one more piece for the album, and I wanted a piece with a strong solo. This one piece alone took me three weeks to wrangle, but I think it was worth the sweat equity I put in to capture it.

MARATHON MOTOR WORKS: This piece was influenced partly by Philip Glass and the way his music propels itself forward. After I recorded the piano part, it reminded me of machinery in constant motion, with pistons moving up and down. There is a 100 year old abandoned auto plant near us in Nashville where they used to make the Marathon automobile back in the 1920”˜s. Gretchen had taken some photos of me there for the album package, so it was fresh in my mind. I thought it needed at least one other lead instrument. Something that could soar freely over the more mechanical sounding piano part. I had been thinking about doing a piano/dobro duet for a long time. I called dobro virtuoso Rob Ickes up and he came over one morning and overdubbed a brilliant dobro part to the piano track. As a musician and a person Rob could not have been more gracious and accommodating.

MAVERICK RADAR: An Asian influenced melody that came to me a year before recording began. The idea kept haunting me, so in the course of a year I kept following where it led me. Once I had the gist of it done, I overdubbed accordion and guitar to fill it out.

THERE’S BEEN AN INCIDENT: I’ve had this title laying around for a few years. Before I created one note of music, I envisioned an ambient, atmospheric kind of thing. The kind of thing soundtracks are made of. I wanted to have a piece where I could use Gretchen’s great background vocals, and also our good friend guitarist Doug Lancio, who is great with ambient, vibey type tracks, so I wrote this piece with the two of them in mind. Doug added his guitar magic to my piano track, and then Gretchen put some otherworldly vocals on. Magic.

SON BINOCLE (reprise): An electronic imaging of the Erik Satie piece I discovered while writing for the album. A different way of ending this album, but I like the space and the tones. It makes me want to slowly breathe in and slowly breathe out, in and out...

PARADISO COVER

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The search for a cover for my new album, “Paradiso” is an interesting story. Here’s how it unfolded:

My idea to use Paradiso originally came about when Gretchen Peters and I were touring Germany and Holland in March, 2011. We played one night at the famous Paradiso venue in Amsterdam for the first time, and I premiered a new, as yet untitled instrumental song at that show. After I got through it, I spontaneously told the audience that since they seemed to like the song, I would name it “Paradiso” in their honor. It seemed like a good song title, and later on I decided it would make a great album title as well. I didn’t think much more about it as the year wore on and I began recording the album. When the album was finished and I had to start thinking about artwork, I began to think about Dante, his classic “Divine Comedy” and part three of that book, “Paradiso”, which I own but have never read all the way through. Now I’ll just have to...
I did a Wikipedia search on “Dante Paradiso”, and a page came up with some great images. Scrolling down the page, I was immediately smitten by an illustration from a medieval manuscript with bright colors that seemed to leap off the page. This could be my cover, I thought. When I showed it to Gretchen, she agreed right away with me. But how to use it? I had just started working on the package with a Nashville graphic designer named Karen Cronin. Between the two of us, we tracked down the image to the British Library on Euston Road in London. Karen sent a query there, explaining our desire to use the image for a CD cover. Licensing fees were quickly arranged, and a digital copy 24 inches wide of this magnificent piece of art was soon crossing the ocean at the speed of light via email to Karen, who took the image and created the cover that you see today.
The image was created in the 15th century by Giovanni di Paolo di Grazia (c. 1403 — 1482). He was an Italian painter, working primarily in Siena, and was a prolific painter and illustrator of manuscripts, including Dante’s texts.
The print is a miniature of Dante and Beatrice before Folco, who inveighs against the corruption of the Florentinians. Satan is seen dropping gold coins into the hands of the Clergy. I love the yin and yang of it. Right and wrong, good and evil, spiritualism vs. materialism. Dante and Beatrice heading to the heavens vis-a-vis the corruption of church leaders and public officials here on earth. This was painted over 500 years ago. Some things never change...

"PARADISO"

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New album "Paradiso", coming November 22, 2011. There is a great back story to this cover image which I'll share in a future post.

"PARADISO"

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

After 7 months of work, my new release, "Paradiso", is now finished! I'm planning on releasing it on Tuesday, November 22nd. It's been four years since the release of my first CD, "The Crossing", and I'm excited about getting this follow-up out in the world. It's mostly solo piano, but there are guest appearances by cellist David Henry, guitarists Doug Lancio and my son Brennan Walsh; and Rob Ickes
of Blue Highway fame on dobro. I hope you'll check back with me on November 22. It will be available on this website, as well as iTunes, CDBaby.com, and Amazon.com.

In other news, the Tom Russell CD that Tom & I co-produced, "Mesabi", is now out and doing great. It was released a few weeks ago and shot immediately to #1 on RootsMusicReport.com. It's currently #15 on the Billboard Folk Chart.

Gretchen Peters new album, "Hello Cruel World", which I also co-produced along with Gretchen and Doug Lancio, is coming out in late January. I think it's her best album yet, with some of her best songs ever. We had a dream team of a tracking band including Will Kimbrough, Viktor Krauss and John Gardner; along with Gretchen, Doug and myself. Rodney Crowell and Kim Richey also make guest appearances. Can't wait for this release...

Gretchen and I will be out touring hard in 2012 as we will both have new albums out. The schedule is getting pretty full already, highlighted by a European Tour starting on March 1 and lasting through April 8. We'll be appearing all over the UK and Ireland, as well as Germany and The Netherlands. I'll post the tour schedule as soon as the dates are firm, so check back in with me.

Until then, enjoy the cool Autumn air!

GRETCHEN PETERS

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

I could not be more proud right now of my wife, Gretchen Peters. I first met her over twenty years ago when I was called to play on a song demo for her. Born just eight miles apart (and a few years) in Westchester County, NY, we felt instantly sympatico about our similar upbringing and interests. She came in the studio one morning not long after our original meeting and had a song called, "Souvenirs", later recorded by Suzy Bogguss. When I heard the first line of that song, "Set out like Kerouac...", I realized this was more than your run-of-the-mill Nashville songwriter at work. We have worked together ever since, on demo sessions, all of her great records, and live tours in the US and Europe. We lived together for many years before getting married in October, 2010. This week, my wife was nominated for induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall Of Fame. This is the highest honor a Nashville-based songwriter can hope for. She is so deserving of this great honor. I'm going to let our friend Tamara Saviano tell you why I think this. Congratulations, Gretchen!

Tamara SAVIANO
June 17, 2011
For Immediate Release

Gretchen Peters nominated for induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame

Esteemed songwriter penned hits for artists including Bryan Adams, Bonnie Raitt, Faith Hill, Trisha Yearwood, George Strait, The Neville Brothers, Shania Twain, Martina McBride, and Randy Travis. Her songs have been included in dozens of motion pictures.

The majority of Peters’ compositions written solo

Respected Nashville songwriter Gretchen Peters has been nominated for induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, the highest honor bestowed by the songwriting community. Candidates are considered for induction when their first significant works achieved commercial success at least 20 years ago and who have positively impacted and been closely associated with the Nashville Music Community and deemed to be outstanding and significant.

Peters’ name is on the 2011 ballot along with 14 of her colleagues. Inductees will be determined by votes cast from Hall of Fame members and professional songwriter members of the Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI), as well as the boards of the Songwriter Hall of Fame and NSAI.

Of the 167 members of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, only 12 are women. Peters has written the vast majority of her hits alone, without a co-writer, which is unusual in modern day freelance songwriting and hasn’t been done consistently since Country Music Hall of Fame songwriter Cindy Walker in the 50s and 60s.

Peters arrived in Nashville in the late ”˜80s, a singing, songwriting product of New York, Boulder, CO, and politically active parents. She landed a publishing deal and that began a season of striking commercial success. Her closely observed story songs hit a sweet spot with some of mainstream country’s finest voices of the ”˜90s; “On A Bus to St. Cloud” with Trisha Yearwood, “You Don’t Even Know Who I Am” with Patty Loveless, “Secret of Life” with Faith Hill, “Chill of an Early Fall” with George Strait, “Let That Pony Run” with Pam Tillis and—most famously—“Independence Day” with Martina McBride. Culturally and critically the impact of “Independence Day”—an arresting song about an abused woman fighting back—still reverberates. It earned Peters a GRAMMY nomination and CMA Song of the Year honors.

And there were more bold steps where those came from. Peters has always shown an uncanny ability to capture the stories of people—especially women—who feel trapped in hope-draining situations. With her 2007 Burnt Toast & Offerings, she mined her own life—the disintegration of her twenty-year marriage and risk-taking on a new love—for just such affecting vignettes, and set a new high watermark for her songwriting.

https://app.e2ma.net/app/view:CampaignPublic/id:718.9462461817/rid:e7b76796a91b734dba5feb2b4fdd1414

For more information check out gretchenpeters.com

TOM RUSSELL - "MESABI"

Wed, 18 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Last year Tom Russell asked me to co-produce his next album with him. I had played on his last three albums in Austin and Tucson and we developed a great working relationship over those last six years. We worked on this new one - called "Mesabi" - for almost a year, in a series of recording sessions that took place all across America. Starting in Tucson, AZ in August of 2010, we worked for a week at Wavelab Studio and got nearly half the songs down. We started work again in Nashville in October 2010, the week after my wedding to Gretchen Peters, who sang some beautiful background vocals on the album. We got most of the rest of the album done at that time. Here's Tom and me with Ann McCrary of the fabulous McCrary Sisters, (who sang background vocals on a song called "Heart Within A Heart"), Gretchen Peters, Regina McCrary, and the extraordinarily versatile Will Kimbrough:

The songs on this album are some of Tom's strongest songs ever, and the group of musicians who ended up on the album is a stellar cast of some of America's finest recording musicians. Beginning last year in Tucson, we were very lucky to get the core of the band Calexico, including Joey Burns on bass and guitars, John Convertino on drums and percussion, and Jacob Valenzuela on trumpet, along with Tom on acoustic guitar and myself on keys. In Nashville the band was Viktor Krauss on bass, Will Kimbrough on electric and acoustic guitars, John Gardner on drums; and again, Tom and myself. After the October 2010 sessions, two songs were tracked in LA with Van Dyke Parks on piano and accordion, Bob Glaub on bass, Don Heffington on drums and Thad Beckman on electric and acoustic guitars. Another song was tracked in San Antonio with Augie Meyers on piano and Joel Guzman on accordion; and finally Tom went back to his home in El Paso, where he tracked one last song with a stunning Flamenco guitar performance by guitarist Jacob Mossman. To cap it all off, Lucinda Williams
agreed to add a duet vocal to an epic and surprising eight minute cover of Bob Dylan's "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall", a song we had tracked in Tucson during those initial sessions back in 2010. We mixed the album in May in Nashville with the amazing David Henry at the controls. The release date is set for September 6, on Shout Factory records. I'm very excited about this album, and I'll put the reviews up on this site as they come in. The album was a joy for me to work on, and I consider myself lucky to have been a part of it. These songs are what Americana is really about. The vast underbelly of this great country. Shady characters, down and out former child movie stars, border chaos in Juarez and El Paso. This is not the Americana of shopping malls, chain restaurants and American Idol. This is the dark night of the American soul. Stay tuned...