Album Notes

Intended for digital distribution only.

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You can now buy Free & Easy Blues from iTunes, in its entirety or one song at a time. Just go into your iTunes program and search for Free and Easy Blues or Joanne Crabtree.

Free & Easy Blues is also available in downloadable form from these fine on-line services:

AudioLunchbox, BuyMusic, Inprodicon, MP3tunes, Ruckus, Verizon, PayPlay, MusicIsHere, Bitmunk, Daiki, Snocap, MP3-Extension, Rhapsody, Tradebit, Muze, ZuKool, Sonific, and Napster.

And now a few words about the CD.


Free & Easy Blues Liner notes

This is a compilation album. The first seven tracks are borrowed from my solo CD, All the Good Times. The other eight belong to the Crabtree&Mills duo CD, Flight of Fancy. Both of those delightful recordings are for sale here at CD Baby. They were lovingly created in the warm cocoon that is the Millstream Studio in Toronto, under the watchful eye of master producer/engineer Paul Mills. Paul is also the band leader and principal guitar player on every track except Cotton Eyed Joe, which I sing a capella, and My Sweetie, which uses only a piano as backup.

I asked Paul to make this new master in an attempt to simplify my life. I wanted my songs to have digital distribution, and I wanted to be sure I did not infringe on anyone’s copyright rights in the process of making that happen. For a year, I fussed over the legalities and waded through the labyrinth of conflicting information that is the world of electronic copyright protection. Then voila! The idea came to me, simplicity itself. Create a CD with no copyright issues.

There are several cover songs on All the Good Times and Flight of Fancy, and though I believe that our versions are unusual, distinctive, and creative, all our rented songs had lives before us and will have lives after us. They do not need me to give them a future in cyberspace. Their place in history is already assured.

It is my own songs - the ones I wrote or rewrote or cobbled together – it is they that need my support and guidance, and I choose to guide them to iTunes and its brethren.

Of the songs I’ve written throughout my life so far, these are my favourites. Of the four I did not write in the collection, I like to think the arrangements we’ve created would make their long-dead authors proud.

And by “we”, I mean Paul Mills and myself, for it was through our collaboration during the arranging process that most of the songs here sprang to life.

You can find more information about Paul’s and my individual and joint projects at our cluster of CD Baby locations and at these web sites.

All the Good Times is at www.joannecrabtree.com

Flight of Fancy is at www.joannecrabtree.com/crabtree&mills

Crabtree&Mills' MySpace page is at www.myspace.com/crabtreemills

Paul Mills’ production house is at www.themillstream.com