Album Notes

WENDY WEBB
MOON ON HAVANA

NEW CD: Lyrics included with photos from Havana, Cuba.
NEW CLASSIC AUDIOPHILE 12" VINYL LP: COMING FEBRUARY 1, 2010. Lyric insert included.

Pure -- Moon On Havana is an audiophile’s dream. Minimal engineering, no tricks, one woman alone with her piano, or guitar, performing her original music. This new live recording connects with the listener in ways that echo the quality and expression found in classic songwriter records.

QUOTES:

“Wendy Webb’s “Moon On Havana” is intelligent, complicated and above all musical. Webb sings with such emotional investment--jubilant, rueful, whatever she needs--that the listener has that rarest experience: of being swept away.”
-Thomas McGuane, novelist, recipient of the Rosenthall Award and the Wallace Stegner Award

“Laura Nyro lives! I mean that as the highest compliment. What a pleasure to listen to Wendy Webb play her piano and sing her breathtaking songs. I could go on for hours about her complex lyrics, but it is the sound of her voice that I find so haunting, the achingly beautiful voice of real experience.”
- Jeff Klinkenberg, columnist, St. Petersburg Times

ALBUM NOTES:

“ I was inspired to make this record after visiting Cuba, a place all about love and the longing for freedom. The songs on Moon On Havana are about my life and my experiences within that context.
All ten songs were recorded in a three day session, mostly first takes, in a seaside cabin on a Florida Indian mound built by contemporaries of the Maya. It’s an ancient place; a pre-Colombian complex of burial mounds, canals and a ceremonial plaza where, for more than two thousand years, people sang songs and told stories. At night alone, sitting at the piano, I felt a powerful connection to the people who built the mounds and who -- according to archaeologists -- fled to Havana in the late 1700s, only to vanish into extinction.
I decided to record in the same space where I had written the songs because I wanted the music and my performance to come alive, unadorned, to be a true representation of what I do. The music is not about an extinct people, it is the voice of my own solitude.
Long after midnight, as I wrote and recorded, it was energizing to know my music floated among the mounds, and could be heard on the dock that inspired the song "In The Blue Light". I think the music will speak for itself. ” - Wendy


AUDIOPHILE RECORDING DATA

“When Wendy Webb approached me about working on her first solo album I was excited but definitely knew I had some challenges ahead of me. The recordings would take place in a cabin on a two thousand year old Indian mound located on an island on Florida’s Gulf Coast. I would be recording her in an unfamiliar space from my personal studio and in a room that was not acoustically perfect. We utilized some of the best equipment on the market to capture these intimate and personal songs. Everything from Hand Crafted German Microphones to Hand Built Class A Tube Preamps. These tools gave us the detail and clarity needed to present her songs in the most pure form....”
David Arnold -- Engineer

MICROPHONES
Vocal: Neumann U87 AI on voice with Focusrite ISA 220 Channel Strip into Manley Vari Mu Compressor
Piano: Stereo Matched Pair Neumann KM 184’s on Mason & Hamlin Model BB 7’ Grand
Guitar: single Neumann KM 184 on Taylor Acoustic 914-CE
We used PreSonus Anthony Demaria Labs ADL 600 Tube Preamp on Piano

CREDITS:

Recorded & Mixed by David Arnold at Pineland Fl. & Stump Sound Recording in Louisburg N.C. • Wonderful lyrics ‘The Fall’ & ‘Nashville Can Wait’ by Mark Keller • Our studio technicians & friends, Ernesto & Ernesto with Joel at Radio Progreso Studio Havana • Mastering by Kent Bruce and Wolf Stephenson of Malaco Records Jackson Mississippi • To my family and friend Charles John Quarto, a most heartfelt thanks • To renowned Cuban Photographer Raúl Corrales, thank you for our magical time on the Malecón.

Photography Cuba - Raúl Corrales • Pineland & Cuba - Randy Wayne White • Design r studio Matlacha