Album Notes

On September 9, 1998, I went into the Paris Studios in Ronkonkoma, New York with Buddy Merriam, a world-class mandolin player (in the Bill Monroe style) and a good friend. We made the setting intimate - twenty friends sat at tables adorned by candles - and hence called it the Paris Café.

The songs and the empathy between Buddy and myself make this album very personal. I was close to nature - some of the music comes from time I spent sitting on a marble bench in a rock garden and listening to a particularly soulful mockingbird - and thinking about friends, about love, about family. My Reiki master’s presence deeply affected me as did some ongoing emotions about the death of my father many years before. You can hear all of that in the song Cry Myself to Sleep. (I somehow feel he is a songwriting partner on the other side.)

Live at the Paris Café is unique in my recordings since it’s mostly about one-to-one communication between two musicians and the sharing of those feelings with a small group of supportive people.