Folk Swing with Horns

The last three songs for my recording project are going to be recorded on Saturday.  Now, right at the end of it, with a sound I’m really liking, my friend Toby has an idea.  He’s a great Idea Man–always has been.  His idea is to take this music, which I’ve recorded with a four-piece acoustic group (guitar, dobro, upright bass, and brushes-&-snare) and get it done up with horns.  A horn section.  I hafta admit, it’s an intriguing idea.  Been trying to figure out what kind of music it is.  I’m calling it “folk swing,” because it’s somewhere between old-style jazz, folk, and vocal group music.  The horn section might make it something else.  Hmmmm.  Yes, yes, yes, intriguing.

Running on the Katy Trail–which is not a trail, as in dirt through nature– I wear an iPod.  (When I’m on the nature trails running, I hafta have my ears exposed to the sound of oncoming bikers, but on the paved, straight n’ wide trails, I can listen to my tunes.)  Today the playlist included the ever-present Boswell Sisters (“Heebie Jeebies”), Alex Bird, Ali Farka Toure, and Toots Hibbard’s wonderful reggae version of the Otis Redding classic “I’ve Got Dreams to Remember.” 

Also have a few of the recording project songs on there.  But now, as I listen to them, I’m imagining horns.  The Boswells usually didn’t have much in the way of big band sounds behind them.  Often just a piano.  But they did sound great when a hot band was backing them up…Toby, what have you done?  I will forge ahead with the last three in the same way I did the first eight.  Then, we’ll consider the whole horn thing. 

I need to think about it.  While I’m running the nature trails.

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