Thanks to "Tied to the Tracks" host Larry Wines for having me and my band in to the KCSN studio for an interview and live performance last Saturday morning. Wil, Geoff, Mark, and I had a fun time playing some songs from my new CD, "Charlie's Lonely Sunday," plus a cover of the tune "Me, Myself, and I," which Billie Holiday recorded back in 1937. I've put a copy of the interview on the mp3 player on the home page. Please note that the CD onto which Larry was recording the show maxed out about two-thirds of the way through, so you don't get to hear my answer to his question about my influences (I answered something about how I grew up listening to Judy Garland and old Greek music as a kid, and how in later years I became a fan of Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Nina Simone). After that we went to a station ID break and replaced the CD, so you don't miss much. Thanks again to Larry for the opportunity to play on his show--and for recommending the all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet for lunch afterward!

I've set up a gallery on CD Baby of CDs that I like that were recorded by my friends in Los Angeles. I'll keep updating it from time to time as I find them. Check out "Dafni recommends" here.

My new album has been recorded, mixed, and mastered. I've put four of the tracks up on my MySpace page, so please head over there to give them a listen. After finishing the artwork and getting the CDs duplicated, I plan to release this album, titled Charlie's Lonely Sunday, sometime this summer.

I'm really pleased with how this record sounds. Geoff Rakness (upright bass), Josh Bandur (accordion), Mark San Filippo (drums), and I (acoustic guitar and vocals) recorded the basic tracks for 16 songs live in one mammoth session on February 10, 2007, at Charlie McGovern's Big Ol' Studio in North Hollywood. On a separate day, my bandmates Edie Murphy (mandolin and fiddle) and Wil Forbis (banjo) overdubbed their parts, mostly playing together to retain somewhat of a live vibe. Three guest musicians made splendid contributions -- Danny Ott playing electric guitar on "This One Dance" and "Down and Dirty," Joshua Grange playing pedal steel on "Broken Letter," and Sarah Stanley singing backing vocals on a song we co-wrote, "Down and Dirty," as well as on "Never Tell You Why." After listening to the rough mixes, Geoff, Mark, Wil, and I decided to rerecord a couple of songs -- "Complicated" and "Honey, Honey" -- with Wil playing jazzy solos on his resonator guitar. Again, we recorded those tracks live. And that was it -- all the recording done quickly with few overdubs. Because most of the tracks were recorded on one day, Charlie's mixes had quite a consistent sound, which we refined a couple of times to get final versions that we were happy with. Last Monday I had Jonathan Belzley at Lurssen Mastering put the final polish on the tracks. Jonathan mastered my previous album, Drifting in Circles, and it was a joy to work with him again and hear the newly mastered tracks through a great pair of speakers.

In the meantime, Laura Heffington took some photos of me for the album artwork. I've posted a couple of them on my MySpace page, too.

Charlie's Lonely Sunday:
1. Dimes in my pocket
2. Let's pretend
3. Broken letter
4. Complicated
5. Down and dirty (co-written with Sarah Stanley)
6. This one dance
7. Bottom of a well (cover of a Tracy Huffman song)
8. Honey, Honey
9. Lonely Sunday
10. Carried away
11. What you meant to me
12. Never tell you why
13. Angeleno

The three songs that didn't make the album were "Esta Canción (The Spanish Song)," "Freight Train" (cover of the century-old Elizabeth Cotten song), and "Veinte Años" (cover of a Buena Vista Social Club song). We decided to leave them off the record to focus more on my original songs and because my Spanish song has dubious lyrics. We included Tracy's song because he's my friend and because he recorded his original version with Charlie at Big Ol'.

Just got back from Cal State Northridge where my wonderful band (Josh, Edie, Wil, Geoff, and Mark) and I played on KCSN's folk/roots/Americana radio program, "Tied to the Tracks." Many thanks to DJ Larry Wines for asking us to play. We need more true music fans like Larry around. We played eight songs in total, with our set split in half to accommodate a couple of performances from out-of-towners Raina Rose and Hunter Paye (from Portland, Oregon). Larry recorded the show, so as soon as I get a copy I'll try to post a song or two here. After the program ended, we all went for breakfast at King's in Northridge, where Larry told me that in his column in FolkWorks he had listed one of my 2006 shows at the Cinema Bar as among "The 10 Best Shows You Didn't See" in L.A. this year---what an honor (well, not an honor to play a show that few people saw, but---you know what I mean!). You can read a PDF version of the November/December issue of FolkWorks here, but I've taken the liberty to post the pertinent part below:

FolkWorks, Volume 6 Number 6, November-December 2006
TIED TO THE TRACKS by Larry Wines
THOUGHTS ON THE BEST (AND WORST) OF 2006
THE 10 BEST (OKAY, 11) SHOWS YOU DIDN´T SEE
This isn´t meant to play "gotcha," but to alert you that these are must-see artists, next time they perform here. Web sites are provided so you can learn about them.
3) The triple header with Dafni (www.dafni.us), Gwendolyn (www.gwendolyn.net), and Janna Marit (www.jannamarit.com) at the tiny Cinema Bar in Culver City was superb. All three have marvelous acoustic bands with banjos, innovative rootsy percussion and more. Fiddler Edie Murphy (Dime Box Band) sat-in. They delivered delightful originals and a few well-arranged covers, like Elizabeth Cotton´s Freight Train and Tony Gilkyson´s Goodbye Guitar.

That was a special night. I've been a big fan of Gwendolyn's music for many years now, but that was the first time I had seen Janna play (we've shared the stage at the Cinema again since then). There's footage of Janna playing "Devil's Door" that night on her MySpace page. Thanks Larry, for both of these Tied to the Tracks experiences!

In the flash music player on the main page you can listen to the interview I did with Sonnie Brown in the KCBX studio in San Luis Obispo on Saturday April 28, 2006, as part of her Minstrel Song Show. Thanks to Sonnie for granting me my first ever radio interview, and for kindly providing me with a CD of the recording. She let me perform four songs, three of which are previously unreleased and will appear on my new CD (when we eventually get around to recording it, hopefully by the end of the year). I played "One Day" (from Drifting in Circles), "Angeleno" (unreleased), "Dimes in My Pocket" (unreleased), and "Lonely Sunday" (unreleased). Thanks to this interview we had a few people come to our in-store performance at Boo Boo Records and to the Linnaea's show later that night. All-in-all, I think the day was about as well organized as it could be, leaving a couple of hours between events for grabbing a bite to eat and sharing a pitcher or ... how many did we have?