Album Notes

"Teach Me to Breathe is about an awakening" says singer-songwriter Rob Hill. "It's about learning to be alive."

Hill teamed up with singer Derek Harris to form this Olympia, Washington based duo in 2003, and Harris & Hill released the Teach Me to Breathe CD in April of 2004. For both it has been a reconnection with music and spirit.

Though the spiritual aspects of the music are pretty subtle, the spiritual motivation behind the making
of the album is not.

"I got to a point in my life where I was re-examining and I realized that it's all about making the most of your time and your gifts," says Hill of his self-proclaimed mid-life crisis. "And I was convinced that God would have been kind of ticked off at me for not making the most of the gifts I've been given."

And the reason he was wasting his talents, he admits, was fear.

"I think fear is at the core of a lot of unhappiness," he says. "And I'm just now learning to trust my dreams and to believe that everything will be okay. The worst that can happen is that I'm going to have a great time doing what I love."

For Harris, the music is a return to a first love. Raised in a very musical family, he was performing his mom's original songs in front of hundreds of people as a child in Idaho. He's since dabbled in various singing projects, acting, modeling (he was crowned Mr. Elma in his senior year in high school in Elma, Washington - a VERY small town, Hill is quick to point out), and military service, including a combat tour in the first Persian Gulf War.

The country-twinged songwriting of Rob Hill is a leap from Harris' more rock-leaning musical tastes, but Harris says it's working for him.

"A lot of the music we're doing is stuff I wouldn't even have listened to a couple of years ago," he says. "But when you want to play music where lyrics and harmony matter, the best place to find it is in modern country music. I find myself listening to a lot of country radio and finding great new songs for us to cover in our live shows."

"Derek's got a great voice and a strong sense of harmony," says Hill. "But the truth is I picked him because of his pretty face," he jokes. "I guess chicks dig harmonies. I write the songs, play the instruments and sing lead, but I could do all that standing on my head and the pretty girls would still buy drinks for him. Go figure."

Though the recording of the album was completed before Rob and Derek had ever even rehearsed some of the songs for live performance, both say that live performance is the thing they enjoy most. And with the use of wireless microphones and transmitters, they have developed a live performance style that tears at the wall between the performer and the audience, often doing parts of their performances while standing by or even sitting at the tables with their listeners.

"As much of a rush as it is to play music for people," says Hill, "it's not something we let go to our heads. We keep in mind that you need an audience and a performer to make a show, and we're only half of that."

"If someone hires a babysitter or pays a cover charge or both to hear us play music, that's a real honor to us," Harris adds. "It doesn't seem like enough to thank them from a raised platform twenty or fifty feet away, so we like to play in places where we can get up and close and personal with them."