Album Notes

I am a long-time San Francisco Bay Area singer, songwriter, musician, & recording artist. I was raised by parents who were musical. They sang and exposed me to mostly opera and classical music, but they also encouraged my interest in strong well-crafted melodic popular music like Beatles music. I love playing music, whether it's on guitar, bass, piano, or drums. I hope that my joy for music comes through in my songs and their production.

This particular album of entirely new original material is a crossroads work of sorts. Halfway through this project (10 May 2007), my dear musical father, Tony Cuevas, passed away peacefully at the age of 80. A few days after, I was inspired to write the song "Sing To The World" in honor of him, and in honor of music in general. My father was such a great operatic baritone, with a very powerful voice, and also sang in vocal quartets in the late 40's, early 50's in San Francisco. If I can't have his physical being here with me, I can at least continue to sing and do music in his honor. I was always impressed by his musicality, and he was encouraging of mine.

Another aspect of this album is the fact that it is 12-string-centric. I previously released an album entitled "Ricky-12" which is available here at CDBaby.com. The Ricky-12 contains an assortment of my solo songs from past albums (1991-1996) which featured my 360-12V64 Rickenbacker 12-string. A few fans mentioned that I should do more 12-string songs. So I did. Thanks for the suggestions. This new album features the use of both the Rickenbacker 12-string, and a recently purchased Yamaha acoustic cutaway 12-string. Each song has at least one of those guitars on it, and some have the guitar quiet in the mix, but it's there.

As a side note, the song "Hummingbird, Hummingbird" is based on a true story told by my sister Donna Ames. Donna's female friend's 32 year old daughter passed away suddenly in September of 2001 (4 days after 9/11) from an asthma attack. On the day of her passing, an orange hummingbird came down and hovered in front of the grieving parents, flying up to each of their faces and then flying away. They felt as if it was a sign from their daughter's spirit, to say she was OK. The story impressed me enough for me to write this memorial song, even though I never knew the girl. I hope you enjoy it.

In fact, I hope you enjoy the entire album. It is a short album, but if you look at the very early Beatles albums, they were quite short as well! I recorded the songs in the order that you see here, as they came to me. Each song was written and recorded fairly quickly; within a few hours. When I came to song #8 "Nothing is Something, Too", I felt like that was a good song to end with; a good closer song. So I stopped right there.

Thanks & love to you all. Rick Cuevas