Album Notes

BLACKBIRDS was born in late 2005 when an old Chicago veteran decided to return to the music scene in a more active way, and decided he needed a partner. MIKE SLAJCHERT is the old vet: began playing rock and blues in the 60s, shifted into folk-rock and then straight acoustic folk in the 70s (the heyday of Chicago folk, when the Quiet Knight and the Earl of Old Town were the best places in the world to be), then put away the guitars for the law books in the 80s. A decade and a half of law was more than enough, so Mike took a full-time teaching job at Fenwick HS in Oak Park, IL, and also took over the campus ministry outreach projects. It was while he was working on raising funds for various charities that it occurred to him that music could help him do that, so he dusted off the old guitars in ’99, hooked up with MATT SCHARPF, formerly of “Jamestown”, and began a series of benefit concerts for organizations like Heifer and Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos orphanages. The musical virus, which had been lying dormant for so many years, made a virulent return, and Mike began to devote more serious time to writing and recording.

CLAIRE HELLIGE was a student of Mike’s and a tireless worker in outreach tasks. Mike was aware of Claire’s voice from student productions and knew there was something special about it. Since Claire loved to sing, it didn’t take too much arm-twisting to convince her that this kind of experiment might be fun, so they cut a few songs in the summer of ’05, then got more serious about the material later that year. The obstacles to the partnership were pretty clear: Claire was going to school in St. Louis, and Mike had little experience in writing songs from the “feminine” perspective for her to sing. Both obstacles were overcome in a fashion, and the task of blending Claire’s silky-smooth vocals with Mike’s backwoods-gravel-road-used-up-long-ago voice remains the biggest challenge.

BLACKBIRDS exists for many reasons: the joy of the music, the challenge of trying new approaches, the opportunity to comment on the climate of society, and the chance to raise money to help those who want to change things. We hope you will enjoy the songs, and, more importantly, become involved in what some of the songs are about. There are links on our website that allow you to do that. Thanks.