Text by Skye Steele ………………..Up From The Bitterroot
The project
Last year I spent the month of January out in the woods of Montana’s Bitterroot Valley, writing songs, practicing, and keeping a daily dream journal. For three weeks I wrote a song every day, Monday-Friday. The best of those songs have become the center-piece for this album, my first full-length release as a song-writer.
I spent February through August workshopping, re-writing, revising, and completing the material. At the end of August I went into the studio with a quartet of some of my favorite musicians and people, and we tracked all the songs live together. Then I brought everything to my basement studio and spent another few months recording vocals, percussion, guitars, and adding other touches to the arrangements. I’m currently doing the final mixes, with mastering to come later this month!
For those of you who have known and supported my work as a violinist, improviser, and composer for the past decade, this record will reveal a new facet, but you will hear in these folk songs the imprint of the idiosyncratic voice I’ve spent these years cultivating. This project also represents a homecoming for me to my first artistic passion, which was the English language. Discovering how to allow the texts of these songs to take center stage has been a great source of joy throughout this process. Even as my fiddle takes on a supporting roll here, I’m happy to be able to say that I’m doing some of the best violin playing of my life on this record. You’ll also hear this ensemble playing together with more of the spontaneity and sense of adventure that I’ve always fostered in my bands.
So, the compositions, texts, and arrangements have been labored over, the recordings are almost ready to go– All the pieces are coming together.
The music has blossomed well beyond my expectations, and I am determined to give it a proper release. But that demands resources that I do not have. So… here we are!
The Kick
The base goal is $5,000.
But the more I raise, the further I’ll be able to take this project. Although the music is done, there are many costs still ahead to bring the music into the world. They include:
Mastering — $500
Artwork & Physical Re-production — $1,500
Publicity — $3000
and then…Read more here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/284276393/up-from-the-bitterroot-time-to-finish
