Album Notes

Cold Fusion is FiddleSticks' celebration of the music that brightens the Christmas season. The Cold Fusion that we bring you here isn't the long-sought discovery of perpetual energy, but still we hope that our particular "fusion" of various carols, tunes, musical styles and traditions will provide a welcome kind of energy of its own to warm the cold winter season.

Our musical interweavings are of many types on this collection: we have sometimes played contrasting tunes together, sometimes joined like with like; we've taken old carols and merged them with resonant Celtic or traditional American (or newly written) tunes or songs; we've taken new tunes and given them a festive wintery context; and we have given familiar tunes some very unfamiliar twists. We've brought African percussion into some of the tunes and jazz bass into others. And we've included two of our favorite Hanukkah songs in our collection.

Like everything we do, the music on this album evolved as we have performed and played together. Often the tune matches were unplanned or accidental -- two people playing independently and discovering that the tunes "work" together. While other tunes seem to be natural allies, some ideas started almost as "dares" -- "I bet you can't make that work minor, or in mixolydian!" The arrangements, as always with FiddleSticks, have been developed by group effort, normally more an improvisation than a formal arranging session -- sometimes even occurring on stage in a moment of irresistible (but potentially startling) creativity. We like to feel that the music is there for us to discover and develop, but it's not really our invention.

May our musical Cold Fusion give you some of the warm holiday cheer we have enjoyed in bringing together this collection.