Summer 2015 - Immensely proud to announce the upcoming release of Erroll Garner's The Complete Concert By The Sea. It's set to be released by Sony Legacy and Octave Music this September on the 60th anniversary of the legendary concert recorded in Carmel, CA in 1955. While digitizing over 1000 recordings from the Erroll Garner Archive, we uncovered the full concert recording on 1/4" analog tapes labeled, simply, "Remote at Carmel." This 3 CD box set contains the 11 unreleased tracks as well as never-before-heard interviews with Garner, drummer Denzil DaCosta Best and bassist Eddie Calhoun, recorded immediately after the concert. Produced by the Magic Shop's Steve Rosenthal and University of Pittsburgh Director of Jazz Studies Geri Allen, with supervising producer Jocelyn Arem. Restored and remastered by me, with the brilliant Jamie Howarth of Plangent Process. (Those of you interested in the techy side of things can ask me about doing tape transfers with Jamie!) Also out this summer, a stack of new releases from The Bottom Line Archive: In Their Own Words Vols. 1 and 2, featuring way too many good tracks to list here, but do not miss Ric Ocasek's acoustic "Just What I Needed," which lays bare his love of Bob Dylan; Janis Ian, live at the Bottom Line in 1980; and a 3 CD Harry Chapin box set, recorded over six sets / three nights in 1981, during which he celebrated his 2000th performance. All produced by Gregg Bendian, with tape transfers by Michael Mercurio.

Much as I love the archival projects, I am not always living in the past. Check out Cultfever's latest single, Youth, mastered by me with the marvelous Joe Durniak in attendance. And Paul Rosevear's Pearl, recorded and mixed by Kabir Hermon, mastered by me. (So glad I got to see him perform these songs live at the Living Room for his CD release party!)

More big news coming soon... to be continued!

I love driving in Colorado and Wyoming. For one, when you plug directions into the GPS, it's like, "get on I-25, go straight for 83 miles." It's (almost) impossible for me to get lost. Then there's Rocky Mountain radio, which is a breath of fresh mountain air compared to the crap I get in the NYC Metro area. Maybe the playlists get repetitive here too, and they were just new to me. Maybe it's that when you're driving 80 miles an hour down the open road, (that's the speed limit in Wyoming!) a lot of songs sound good that otherwise wouldn't. But, man, I had a good time! Here is an annotated list of some of the songs I stopped on while scanning KBPI ("Rocks the Rockies!"), KOOL 105, 103.5 The Fox and more during my drive to Wyoming yesterday:

Hungry Like the Wolf - Duran Duran

Urgent - Foreigner

(You can never go home again, except apparently you can, because radio hasn't changed much since I left Wyoming in the 1980s).

Would - Alice in Chains

N.I.B. - Ozzy Osbourne and Primus

(Disappointing. I thought I was going to get an Ozzy song, then a Primus song).

Girl Crush - Little Big Town

(I had never heard it before in my life, could sing every line after one verse! Fascinatingly bad!)

Young Lust - Pink Floyd

America - Simon and Garfunkel

(Heck yes! Rocky Mountains, looming blue and snow-capped, to the West; golden fields of wheat and weeds to the East! America!)

I come by my career honestly.