Album Notes

From the small town of Reading PA comes a singer/songwriter who's music is destined to become the new sound track of life. Rick Massley was introduced to the potential of the spot light at the age of ten when a nun asked him to step out of his Catholic school ensemble and sing a solo. However his shyness would halt his singing progress for the next fifteen years.

As he began his undergraduate education Rick considered a career as a history teacher with the attraction of having summers off and lots of holidays.

On the suggestion of one of his professors Massley moved to CA to begin a masters degree in special education. After he finished his masters he then moved to Seattle WA Where he took a job teaching orientation and mobility to the blind and visually impaired. He discovered a great satisfaction in being able to teach people with visual disabilities how to get around confidently on their own, but that solo experience at ten years old never died, and the spark of music would begin to grow.

"I loved to sing along with my favorite artists at the time," reminisces Massley. "John Lee Hooker, BB King, Elvis, Fats Domino, The Beatles, Dylan, I thought, I'm singing along with these tunes note for note, I can do this." He went out and bought a guitar, took a few lessons, learned a few chords, and began to sing. He did open mikes, amateur shows, and soon he began to write, but the confidence to sing his own songs was still a long way off.

With most of his family and friends back east Rick decided to move to New York to see if he could make something happen in music. He began to take piano lessons which helped his songwriting skills considerably. Soon after wards Massley formed a cover band, and they played in blues clubs around the city. Soon he started touring around the country and in Europe opening for and backing such acts as Chuck Berry, The Drifters, The Coasters, The Sherells, and the Marvelettes. "It was fun," Massley remembers, "but eventually it ran it's course. My real dream was to make my own CD of my own songs, and so I did. It wasn't bad, but the production wasn't very strong, and my very limited business skills assured that the CD was going nowhere." While this CD was being done he was still teaching, and as he realized the problems of this recording he began to feel like his career was over.

After five long years the music bug started to bite again. He returned to practicing piano and guitar and songwriting. About one year later, in the spring of 2007, Massley got a teaching assignment in Manhattan. It was with a visually impaired gentleman getting ready to attend Julliard to take on a masters degree in music composition. That gentleman was producer, arranger, songwriter, and label executive Rod Clemmons. Rick showed Clemmons a few songs from his first CD effort, and Rod was impressed and inspired by the lyrics, melodies, and the overall potential of the production. Very quickly the teacher/student relationship between Massley and Clemmons turned in to a musical partnership. They collaborated on the writing of several songs as Clemmons would begin to produce, arrange, orchestrate, engineer, and mix what would become Rick Massley's official debut CD, "One Lifetime."