New Album Release

James McRae, Rick Salt, and Marty Steele, I met these three lads down at the Queens hotel shortly after moving to Nanaimo from Vancouver. My partner and I decided to have a house Party shortly after moving here in January 2015, and invited several friends we had met down at the Queens from the Sunday Blue’s Jam. At this party, amongst other peeps,  I was introduced to James and was quite impressed as he had brought along a fresh loaf of baked bread, instead of a bottle of wine upon introduction. That pretty much sealed the deal between me and him and we’ve  been friends pretty much ever since. Rick Salt was working occasionally as the sound tech for the Sunday’s Blue’s Jam. Rick is the sole proprietor, and Engineer of his own studio Mountain-view Studio. He agreed to work on some material with me that I had begun shortly before moving to Nanaimo. 

I was paired with Marty Steele for a short set at the Blues Jam. I was particularly impressed with him, as I noticed that he turned away a bass player who had offered his services. I learnt that Marty was not only a keyboardist but also a key bass player, and a damn good one. I was  impressed with Larry Miller as he is an extraordinary good saxophonist. Over the years, Marty, James, and Larry had performed in different combo groups.

It was approximately 2 years ago, after doing several  gigs and projects as a New Orleans blues band with them, that the opportunity came to do this Project!    The four of us, agreed to record material I had written and composed. I worked with Marty to focus on the main  arrangements. James, Marty and myself then worked on refining these arrangements. The COVID-19 Pandemic was a blessing in disguise as it gave us the time from March onward, to focus on this project! We were ready with the bed tracks for the first three songs by the end of June and worked on the rest of the album in earnest from July  thru November.