Album Notes

The main work on this album is John Melcher’s composition “Play the Piano Drunk”, a wild, raucous and often funny collection of songs on texts of American poet Charles Bukowski. Written for male voice and a modern “chamber orchestra” that includes electric guitar and bass, a huge percussion arsenal and up to six keyboard players, the 12 songs touch on subjects such as drinking, women, the creative process and growing old, sometimes all at once.

They are preceded by an instrumental Prelude, and followed by a six-voice Fugue where all the stops are pulled out. Vocalist Paul Amrod provides a bonus track, the jazzy “Variations on a Drunk Piano” for piano solo.