Album Notes

The desert southwest as seen through the eyes of a musical interloper. Ghost Town features Jeff Ball (American Indian Flute), Ted Natale (Hang Drum, Drum Kit, Percussion), Randy Ball (Bass Guitar, Percussion), John Natale (Lead/Rhythm Guitar).

From the liner notes of Ghost Town


Sometimes you can drive for hours – and never get any closer

But-

Sometimes the distance paints the mystery of the journey
The mind wanders…hours pass…colors change.

Waves of heat rise off the pavement – the road vanishing ahead.
You’re driving fast, speeding for sure…yet the landscape barely moves.

You’ve seen photographs but were not prepared…not for this.
Who knew you were so small…so insignificant…it’s magnitude mocks your tiny trails.

Dazed and thirsty from the drive – you pull off to get a drink.
Your feet – in a hot numbness – carry you from the car toward a framework.

Against the arid land – it looks less like a building
And more like something that happened accidentally.
Enduring until the surrounding dirt and dust anchored it to the ground.

A dog lay in the doorway – lazy from the heat.
It’s a market and a bar…selling and serving…in the middle of nowhere.

Across a plywood floor, locals perch on stools.
Too hot to look up or too tired to care.
What brought them here…what keeps them here?

Could it be the same phenomenon that brought the store?
Have they been here for generations…family roots deep within the dusty scenery?

Or-

Could it be that distant voices, imprinted by the land, rock them catatonic so they remain?

Like wordless spokesmen for the undecided – something calls to them.
Ancestral influence, worn on the faces of their present day counterparts-
Echoes of the people who used to inhabit this place.

Ghost Town is the music of the roadways, people, and the land between the tourist destinations and vacation spots…the is the west – through the eyes of a musical traveler.



Guest Artists include Robert Mirabal, Shelley Morningsong, and Lowery Begay.