A Prison in the Heart
Bob Ryan
© Copyright-Bob Ryan
(884501058988)
Record Label: Leaping Armadillo
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The CD \"A Prison in the Heart\" (2004) which proceeded \"The Spirit of Andy Devine\" contains 15 tracks, five of which are instrumentals from the soundtrack of the stageplay \"A Prison in the Heart\" which Bob Ryan wrote and directed for Sharkey Productions -- first for a performance in Sarajevo, Bosnia, in 2002 and then in Phoenix, Arizona at the prestigious Herberger Theater Center, Stage West.
The play, and the songs on the CD, were written over a period of 7 or 8 years during which Bob and his wife were involved with refugees from the wars in former Yugoslavia. That began first with a 2-week involvement with a refugee camp in Eastern Croatia in 1995, during which they experienced a bombardment by the forces surrounding the city of Osijek. When they returned to their home in Phoenix, Arizona, they discovered that thousands of refugees of the Bosnian conflict were being resettled there.
That led to a grassroots humanitarian effort with Refugees that lasted from Summer 1995 until spring of 2002. The stories of those people and the experience of several trips to Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina over those intervening years influenced many of the songs Bob was writing at the time.
The CD then, is a chronicle not just of the senselessness of war, but of the range of experience -- loss, greed, sadness, hope, fear and goodness that humans meet every day in this life, with the Bosnian conflict serving as a filter.
As on \"Andy Devine,\" the engineering, mixing and mastering were done by grammy award winner Billy Williams. It\'s a little more of a stripped-down effort than \"Andy Devine.\"
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Sad and Beautiful
author: CJDocker
A very different effort than \"the Spirit of Andy Devine,\" this is nevertheless a fascinating recording with very strong songs and some compelling performances. Dark, yet hopeful, the album carries a mood that reflects its subject well. The opening track \"Stari Most\" is a brooding, haunting instrumental that draws the listener into the album and perfectly sets the stage for what\'s to come. \"Wide Miles of Mystery\" begins \"The sea strokes the soft shore of Italy/and it fills up the deep, rolling distance...\" before asking the ultimate question \"...Who knows what new thing the morning might bring?\" The backing track contains an acoustic guitar duet that recalls Neil Young and Stephen Stills together. Other standout cuts are \"Shattered Dream,\" with its lyrical painting of the realities of war, and \"No One Wins,\" with it\'s shimmering electric guitar supporting Ryan\'s raw, yearning vocal. \"Maja\'s Eyes\" is simply beautiful, with piano by Gordon Barr and a lyric that watches the young girl Maja, who has \"...seen more than a young girl\'s eye\'s should see.\"
The closing track, \"Sometimes By Faith,\" is a whisper of real hope at the end of the whole affair, clinging to the promise of sunrise that follows every dark night - as a pattern for all of life. It\'s an acoustic guitar and voice solo track that lifts the spirit above the dark realities of war to a better day ahead.
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