Album Notes

We've all heard the story: an old lost guitar, which family members occasionally wonder about, is discovered in the attic after decades of neglect. It turns out to be a priceless masterpiece. The guitar is taken to a master craftsman, restored with care, and becomes a valued family inheritance. Passed down from one generation to the next, the guitar has a story, waiting to be told by a sympathetic musician.

Pat Wictor wrote the songs on his latest CD, Temporary Stay, on just such an instrument, a little 100 year-old heirloom guitar with a big sound and stories to tell. "Ghost Radio," the opening cut, is a tale of music stirring up long-forgotten memories. Several other songs explore how we deal with events that spin beyond our control, and how we're left with stories and memories when everything has changed around us.

Using that old guitar, Pat blends a range of rootsy influences to create a distinctive style of his own. From Dave Carter and Bruce Cockburn he draws a sense of adventure and a fondness for symbolic and spiritual imagery. From Kelly Joe Phelps, a variety of intricate guitar sounds, including the unusual lap-style slide guitar. The music of country pioneers Dock Boggs and the Stanley Brothers, and bluesmen Son House and Fred McDowell, all find echoes in the memorable melodies and direct language of Pat's songs.

Songs like "Still Point," with its weary soldier wandering home along dusty roads, "Walk With the Spirits," a cautionary tale of vengeance, and "Send You Off In Style," a back-porch party for the departed, all resonate with the memories of music from rural America. Yet the songs also speak directly to our doubt and ambivalence, and capture some of the mood of our times.

A couple of cover tunes, Fred Neil's "The Dolphins," and "Gathering Flowers for the Master's Bouquet," which the Stanley Brothers recorded, were both dusted off and brought down from the storeroom of great (and underrated) American songs, and Dave Carter's more recent "Gentle Arms of Eden" would fit in perfectly there. All three help reinforce the theme and tone of Temporary Stay. Playing them on slide guitar, Pat makes each version completely his own, giving us fresh interpretations of all three songs.

So, you never know what you might find, next time you go rummaging through the attic. You may find memories and musical treasures beyond anything you'd imagined.