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Red Dust & Spanish Lace

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Red Dust & Spanish Lace --- 1987

Japan for U.S. pressing Original Master Series Recorded at Hansa-Haus Studios, Bonn, West Germany. "The Colonel And The Ashes" recorded at Hot Nights Studio, London, England. Mixed at Fairland Studios, Bochum, West Germany. Mixed and mastered using the JVC Digital Audio Mastering System. Guitars used on this album by Takamine, Lowden, Viloplana, Manning. Liner Notes: I had always wanted to form an instrumental band since I saw "Pentangle" in the early 70's. The acoustic guitar had always been my first love and when I teamed up with classical/flamenco guitarist Simon James things started to take some shape. Since neither of us had any hang-ups about musical barriers, we found we were writing duets of all kinds of musical styles. An album and a single later Simon drifted away to pursue a classical career and I began working with my present partner, Greg Carmichael. Greg brought fresh inspiration and new ideas and before we knew it we were working our passage to the States, performing on Virgin Airlines as "in-flight entertainment." Our travels took us eventually to Nashville and to a meeting with Tony Brown at MCA who commissioned us to make this album for the Master Series. The material on the album represents a wide variety of styles-rock, jazz, flamenco, folk and almost everything in between. The artistic freedom allowed us by the label meant that I could employ the multivarious talents of John Parsons to produce the record. Incidentally John is a superb guitarist in his own right. ln short I had the chance to do everything I’d ever wanted but as the old maxim goes “never believe what an artist says-only what he does" or as Donald Faqan once said, "l cried when I wrote this song-sue me if I play too long." lf The Oxford English Dictionary definition of alchemy, is "pursuit of the transmutation of the baser metals into gold" and acoustic is "pertaining to sound" then "Acoustic Alchemy" must surely mean "the transformation of musical instruments into something more than the sum of their component parts." lf our basic ingredients began with 2 acoustic guitars then who's to say where it might end. NICK WEBB