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(Download a free Video of, The Devil's Elixirs, at billseper.com) Music and Midwest aren't the best of bedfellows. You hear them together in the same sentence about as often as cowboy and astronaut. You don't hit the big time by playing your butt off in Southern Illinois. Probably no one in the history of music ever became a household name here. A music Mecca we ain't. Young folks with any talent at all, have for decades been encouraged to set out for the big city where the stars apparently shine brighter (in spite of all the light pollution). And kids with lesser talent will generally be content to play their role in a weekend cover band, making gas money, and wooing pie-eyed farmer's daughters with their latest collection of somebody else's greatest hits. Kids with lesser talent yet will become tomorrow's DJ's and auctioneers. Yep, we've got all the musical bases covered here. Well... except for that one low malcontent in every brood; the nonconformist, intellectual type who spends most of his time listening to some kind of high-brow junk that nobody else can make sense of. And what's worse, this wise acre actually thinks people should have to travel here to see him! This is a guy who's destined to live a life of solitude with a miserable helping of unhappiness. We thought we had a perfectly sensible plan to get rid of these square pegs. Parents would take these unspeakable hatchlings out to the middle of the nearest lake and toss them in, telling them all the while, "This is how everybody learns to swim." But in spite of all efforts, some will manage to rise to the top and swim to shore, a little wiser to the ways of the world due to the work of their fine parents. So let me just stop and take a moment to say, "Thanks dad! (but did you have to tie the duffle bag so tight?)" So now we've got this Internet thing and nobody has to travel anywhere to see anyone ever again. (Whether or not we ever manage to find intelligent life on it remains to be seen.) So here's what I have to offer: some instrumental jazz-rock fusion (Cynthia, Fenster's Saga) not terribly unlike Jeff Beck, Steve Morse or Eric Johnson; some long art-rock that meanders through several movements (the 9-minute Kilmeny); a short fingerpicked bluegrass extravaganza (The Devil's Elixirs) that sounds as though it were played by a frightened cowboy; a totally improvised freeform jazz duet for Ebow'd guitar and electronic drums (Spying the Dream Decorator); a short mood piece for 6-acoustic guitars (At the Back of the North Wind); some very aggressive non-classifiable solo fingerstyle acoustic guitar pieces (Awakening in the Land of Nod, Peeling the Reality Onion, Secret Agent Man, Are Revels Now Are Ended); one bare bones rock-n-roll tune (Sock Hop in Valhalla); and one folk oriented vocal song (Windless Song) just to show why I'm an instrumentalist, and which, by the way, is played on solo electric guitar with a "drifting" echo just because... well, just because. Got it? Good, cause I really hate explaining the unexplainable more than once. WARNING! THIS AIN'T GIRL MUSIC! Two things I should tell you up front about this record are: (1) I don't care for big productions. I like records to sound live and that's what I tried to achieve with this one. The acoustic guitar songs are played solo, and the electric guitar songs are just one guitar, bass and drums. There's even a 2-minute solo midway through, Kilmeny, where the drums and bass drop out and I go it alone for a bit. This is something I've done live many times and I want the record to reflect a live show. (2) Whenever I've attended a show by an instrumentalist, especially a rock guitar instrumentalist (Jeff Beck, Steve Morse etc), I've noticed that there are almost never more than a half dozen women in the audience. Women just don't seem to get it. I don't know why. I'm afraid to ask them. So be warned, this ain't girl music. But if you're a glutton for punishment and decide to come to a concert anyway, and then are foolhardy enough to wander back stage and ask me to play your favorite Beatles song, I'll probably tell you that I'll do it for a kiss. Then after you've kissed me, don't be angry when you still don't hear that Beatles song I promised you. Men are like that. See, that's called STEALING a kiss. That's what we men do. Otherwise it would just be a trade, and that's no fun. Check out the artist's website: http://billseper.com Track List: 1. The Devil's Elixirs 2. Cynthia (the neophyte's doppleganger) 3. Fenster's Saga (climbing the silver stair) 4. Awakening in the Land of Nod 5. Secret Agent Man 6. Kilmeny (where have you been?) 7. Peeling the Reality Onion 8. Spying the Dream Decorator 9. Sock Hop in Valhalla 10. Our Revels Now Are Ended 11. At the Back of the North Wind 12. Windless Song Suggested CDs:Other Genres:
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