Album Notes

Welcome to my site. The feature songs for March are "Bobby McGee" and "Truck Drivin' Man" Note: For Folk songs such as Turkey In The Straw, Red Wing, Red River Valley,etc. ....go to my Harmonica Favorites site at www.cdbaby/eddiek2

***NEWS FLASH**** Two bonus tracks have been added to this CD for a limited time only. #17 Original Demo of "Seasons" song by Carl Beck from 1965 and #18 Myrna Lorrie's version of "Changing of the Seasons" from 1968.

Eddie K Lively is a songwriter/singer/harmonica player from Colorado who creates country music with meaningful lyrics that bring the listener profound messages about life.

He specializes in using a diatonic harmonica to bring a special flavor and quality to his music.

Songwriter/Harmonica Player delivers easy listening "folk and country harmonica music" with a bluesy, plaintive, melody-driven diatonic style; adding expression, ambience & flavoring to traditional country music like a fiddle or steel guitar.

I invite you to take a listening tour through my album to see what I mean. You don't have to learn blues or cross harp harmonica to play along with country music. Start your tour with "Shenandoah" which is straight melody but with a little bluesy ambience done by bending a few notes here and there. Next listen to Bobby McGee and listen for the suttle harmonica shuffle licks and flavoring in the background. Next listen to "Changing of the Seasons" (or) Help Me Make It Through The Night and listen to my unique way of adding the flavor and ambience to the music using melody licks here and there like you would add with any other lead instrument like a fiddle, steel guitar or lead guitar (or) even a flute like you can hear in Tracks #8 and #9. Continue listening to songs throughout the album and listen for more examples of how you can add flavor and ambience to story songs playing straight melody diatonic harmonica.

If you are are a beginning Harmonica Player. Listen to my American Folk song CD "Harmonica Favorites" and play along. Go to www.cdbaby.com/eddiek2 .All songs are in the Key of C and are done with a regular 10-hole Hohner diatonic harmonica. Even if you want to learn to play Blues and Cross Harmonca....most instructors will encourage you to learn to play some simple folk songs and camp songs in the straight melody style to begin with. If you can hum a tune or whistle...you can learn to play harmonica and it will be a companion for life.

Note:
For some very interesting stories....be sure to go to my web site and read the "Stories Behind The Songs". You'll be glad you did.

This album comes complete with a selection of interesting and unusual original story songs: "Ode to John Denver" ( a cabaret style tongue-in-cheek ballad about the life of this super star ), "The Epitaph" (an epic ballad about a Colordo Ghost Mining Town and the people who lived and died there), "Changing of the Seasons" ( #1 Country Song in Canada in 1968 by Myrna Lorrie), "Gypsy in my Soul" ( a song for the wanderlust in us all) , "Happiness for Sale" ( novelty song about the hype of real estate development and suburban living ), and "Thank You For The Flowers" ( ballad about a broken romance ). Plus a beautiful poem "Roses for Rose" by talented author and poet James Kisner that I was inspired to set to music >> (a heart-wrenching story about a man's love for his adoring wife and the confusion he left following his untimely death). Perhaps the longest, saddest song ever written. Could this be too sad for even a little ol' country song? Let me know what you think? All of these integrated with a few old favorites and country classics that you will want to hear over and over again.


BIOGRAPHY:

I grew up in the small rural town of Herndon located along the Beaver Creek Valley between Atwood, Kansas and McCook, Neb. in the rolling hills of Northwestern Kansas.

This is prime pheasant hunting country due to the abundance of corn along the creek bottoms coupled with the wheat stubble fields on the high plains and the many draws and blind canyons providing plentiful cover and habitat for the birds.

My first musical influence was when, as a toddler, my father would drag out his fiddle (after a chorus of pleading and coaxing by all the kids) and play some of the fine old favorites such as; Over The Waves, Red River Valley, Red Wing , Turkey In The Straw, etc.

Then on Saturday nights the whole family would sit around the old philco radio and listen to whatever country music it would pull in from the Grand Ol' Opry out of Nashville and the WLS Barn Dance from Chicago. By the time I was nine yrs. old we could even pick up some live country music shows in the early morning hours like Lulla Belle and Scotty out of WIBW in Topeka, Kans.

I started learning to play the Harmonica at the age of 15 when my older brother came home on furlough from the army and taught me my first harmonica licks which he had just learned from a buddy. About this time I also found a late night country music hit parade hosted by Johnny Hicks on KRLD Dallas, Texas and after listening to the likes of Ernest Tubbs, Eddie Arnold, Hank Williams, Lefty Frizell and George Morgan I became an avid country music fan and started singing and strumming the guitar to imitate my idols. I also started playing melodies on the mandolin by ear about this time. I might have picked up the fiddle at this time as well but my Dad didn't offer to teach me or encourage me in any way in this direction. I guess he figured the fiddle was his domain.
Over the years I became an avid fan of other songwriters and artists especially those who wrote and sang their own songs. Some of my favorite artists are Hank Williams, George Jones, Merl Haggard, Ray Price, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash ,Willie Nelson, George Strait, Vince Gill and Alan Jackson. You can probably detect some of these influences in my music.

I hope you enjoy my CD and that you will tell all your friends of country music about it.

Sincerely, Eddie K Lively