Album Notes

The Bitter Spills- "Baby" Grant Johnson and Rich Mattson met in the late 1980's, when they were playing original rock and roll in & around Minneapolis. They each played in several bands since then, the main ones being for Grant: Beyond Zebra, Carpetbaggers, The New Vintage. Rich: the Glenrustles, Ol' Yeller. They started performing together for the first time in 2005 as the Bitter Spills. Grant Johnson's lifelong fascination with folk music wore off over the years on a more contemporary-trained Rich Mattson, and after the late 2004 "Minnesota Folk Tour" (that included Charlie Parr), Rich was infected with the folk style. The two decided to carry on as an acoustic duo with an idea: To find as many folk chestnuts as they could learn together, record them, and travel the country performing and selling CD's from the stage...always finding new tunes along the way. Between these two performers a wide variety of folk material is covered. They pull numbers from Johnny Cash to Leadbelly, Mississippi John Hurt to Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson to Blind Willie McTell, Fairport Convention to ZZ Top(?!). However unlikely, the Spills manage to arrange this material in a unique and decidedly folk style. Original songs are also thrown in, many of them collaborations of the two performers. This cd, "Folksong Favorites" contains 14 songs, a collection of original compositions and traditional folk songs.