Album Notes

This is a biography of my career in music. In my case a career in music is a
contradiction in terms. I've always thought that music was free, and it
still is. However, after over forty years of writing songs I've finally put
together a CD and I've come to realize(yet again) that the music IS free,
it's the shipping and handling that'll cost you. With that in mind, I hope
you buy the CD. It's time for me to quit my day job and learn the music biz.
So here's a chronological breakdown of my musical past.

David Gilliland and Eliza Gilkyson had a coffee house in Santa Fe NM late
sixties early seventies. I had started to write my own songs. David and
Eliza were very good at writing and performing so I learned a lot right
there. It was a small scene and all the musicians knew each other so there
were many changes happening. I joined a group called the Family Lotus,
headed up by Jerry Faires and Jim Bowie. We played Claude's Bar on Canyon
road, the Bourban and Blues on Cerrillos road, the Line Camp in Pojoaque and
any other place that would hire us. That band morphed into a bluegrass
orchestra, with violin, cello, bass, guitars, banjo, piano, mandolin and
sometimes two drummers. We did some recording in LA but I don't even know
what became of that. The band just imploded or something and I went back to
my solo act.

Then along came Tusker. I just loved that band. That was David Gilliland on
guitar and vocals, Eliza Gilkyson vocals and guitar, Baird Banner on drums,
Steve Lindsay on bass, and Dennis Culver on piano and vocals and myself on
guitar and vocals. We ruled for a couple of years, if I do say so myself.
That band just atomized or something and I went back to my solo act. Eliza
split for Austin so I picked up some "opening act" gigs. I opened a show at
the Line Camp for Country Joe McDonald and one at the Paolo Soleri for David
Bromberg. The Bromberg show turned out to be my last public performance for
quite some time. I had mysteriously disappeared, rarely to be seen or heard
from until now.

Not really much of a mystery....I became a family guy,with a homestead to
build and a day job. Well, the house is still a long way from done, but day
job is coming to an end and my kids have all grown up and we like to sing
and play. We play whenever we can. We were on a radio show called "The Home
of Happy Feet" last year sometime and Marilyn Altenbach said our music
reminded her of island music. She thought we should call ourselves the
Cerrillos Islanders, and the rest is history. We recorded in the fall of
last year. My son Ian engineered the project at Cerrillos Island Sound, our
in-home studio, adjacent to the Ho-Hum Cafe, our kitchen. We hope people
like it.