Busy, busy, busy...putting out CDs. Hmm? What's that new CDs? Yes, and no.
Just today, I finished putting together
Nagians Only, Vol. 1. This is a semi-new CD. Meaning at the beginning of this year, we put out a
Best of the Bards. From your responses on our homepage survery, the 50 or so people who bought that limited edition CD, seemed to really enjoy it. I asked around and found that you like to hear us performing live...in all it's glory, or lack thereof. So, through peer pressure, we have not laid those original dozen live tracks onto a completely live CD, called
Nagians Only. This is just for you. It features some extremely popular songs like "Patriot Game" and "Rising of the Moon". Plus, we added an interview and track from when we performed in College Station on KEOS radio's "
Celtic Core". So if you'd like to listen to us live in your bedroom, now you can.
Now, some keep asking about our most recent live recordings. They are still coming along. Andrew is now finishing up the mastering of the songs we recorded mostly last spring. Songs that people are begging for like the "Jedi Drinking Song" will be on this CD, and some other fun favorites will be on it for better or worse. I'm putting a tentative release date for November 15th. So mayhaps we'll even bring it out to the Texas Renaissance Festival?
But that's not all. Let's back up and talk again about the
Best of the Bards. It was a popular CD long ago when we had just a couple CDs, but now, we have LOTS and LOTS of CDs. We need one! So by next week, I hope to release
'Best of the Bards' Returns. This will be a CD packed with our most popular songs. There'll be a good hour available for listening. And I think you're going to love it... AND... as a special treat, we will add some rough mixes of some songs from our Winter album "Songs of Ireland"!
That said, let's move on to me. I got started as a songwriter performing all manners of Indie folk rock. You've heard some of my first album
Ichabod's Geography on my personal website. But I discontinued that CD and combined some of the songs into
Mountain Rain, a CD filled with some of my most popular songs on MP3.com. Meanwhile, I've been recording on my 4-track and realized... "Hey, you have enough Celtic material for a CD!" So in steps
Celtic Love & War, an eleven song album with all my Celtic songs I've recorded at home. It is now available and features all my Celtic hits, like "Lanigan's Ball", "Happy Birthday From Ireland" and "Buttercup's Lament", plus many others.
Finally, a brief note of our future plans. But despite the fact we're putting out album after album, I decided nearly three years ago that I would record a solo album for me. I've put together a list of over twenty songs that I plan to record in a professional studio. I'm hoping to get a great new CD featuring a quite a few original songs, plus a few Scottish songs. Reaching back to my Scottish heritage, I'm hoping to capture all those Scots tunes that we as bards have been missing.
In the meantime, if you're in the Austin area, please come on out to the
Austin Celtic Festival this weekend. It's going to be smashing great time. We'll have a booth with The Rogues, so drop by and say, "hi". Slainte'!