"Raven's Wing" CD now available

An excerpt from a recent review on rambles.net, the online cultural arts magazine:

"Dale Rasmussen has a wonderfully seductive voice that is so well suited to his compositions on Raven's Wing. He is living proof that a song delivered in a simple, straightforward style can be every bit as epic as the many over-produced hits of the modern scene. For example, "In Your Eyes" is one of the best tracks on offer here. It is simplicity itself; thoughtful lyrics, easy arrangement and singing from the heart combine to jerk the tears. The album is worth buying just to have the thoughts and feelings of millions of us expressed so beautifully."

READ THE ENTIRE REVIEW

LISTEN TO AUDIO SAMPLES

To buy a copy:

If you live in the Kamloops, BC area:

EMAIL ME DIRECTLY TO ORDER CDs. (Cost is $20 each including postage.)

If you live outside of the Kamloops, BC area:

GO TO CDBABY.COM

Purchase and download individual songs from iTunes:

GO TO THE iTUNES SITE

A chat about making RAVEN'S WING

Raven's Wing includes nine original songs (three of which are co-writes) and one traditional number, the Stephen Foster classic Hard Times. The style is what I like to call sophisticated roots music, with a diverse range of influences, from jazz to folk, bossa nova, country and pop. Some of my favourites singers are contemporary folk artists like Emmy Lou Harris and Lyle Lovett, and I'm also influenced by the writers from the Great American Songbook, such as Cole Porter and George Gershwin. Many great pop songwriters, such as Paul Simon and Elton John and Bernie Taupin, also share space in my attic of inspiration.

In October 2003, in the early, pre-production stage, I was still trying to decide the best route to take in recording this album. Part of me wanted to just lay down the cash and have someone else guide the whole process, from setting up mics to making sure regular backup copies were made. But a larger part (probably the area of my brain ruled by my stubborn Capricorn nature) wanted to make this whole process an exploration of where I could take the tunes, and also how I could learn to record them (and expand my skill set, so to speak). I was still at a point where I knew that the tunes needed more work, whether it be from improved arrangements, or just finding the right voice to sing them. And I knew that would take time, probably lots of time.

So after recording some early vocal, guitar and bass tracks at Red Crow Studios (some of which made it onto the final recording), I decided to dive head-first into the process myself. Anyone who's done their own recording knows that the learning curve can be pretty steep. However, with a few false starts and a healthy dose of self-questioning at most stages of the journey, I simply started recording basic tracks, and the whole thing started rolling from there.

In a number of cases, the songs had to change keys, which meant playing and singing them differently. Never Said Goodbye is one of the best examples of a tune that required a whole lot of wrestling to the ground, by trying out different tempos, feels, playing styles and vocalizing. What started out as a country-folk number in the key of Eb morphed into something with a bit of a latin feel, with drop-D tuning, in the key of G. I even added some djembe to that one.

Which leads me to talk a little bit about the songwriting process:

Writing songs can be for me both easy and difficult. The music part can be quite effortless at times, but lyrics have so far been harder to come up with. I can usually sit down with the tape rolling, noodle around on piano or guitar and come up any number of interesting musical segments. But I have found that coming up with lyrics is more of a struggle. Not that I don't enjoy writing them, but I find I have to be in the right space and have some inspiration to put pen to paper. Whether I'm active at lyric writing at any particular time is very much dependent on how relaxed and open I am to letting ideas bubble up to the surface.

I've done some collaboration with other writers, and three of those efforts are on this album: Every Heartbeat and Raven's Wing, with Steve Alexander, and Standing Still, with Kitty King. Both are fine musicians whom I've known for a number of years. All three numbers stand on their own in different ways, but I'll talk a little bit about Raven's Wing, as an example of how serendipitous the process was for me.

Steve and I had collaborated on a few numbers leading up to Raven's Wing, and then he decided to send me this one (I think he was testing me out before offering this one). I immediately found the lyrics intriguing, so I sat down at the piano and in what I recall was less than half an hour the music was there, with virtually no variation in melody and chords from how it sounds now. And it's one of those tunes that for me stands up to repeated listening (and to be truthful, many others have felt the same way... a listener gave Steve and I the ultimate compliment when he said it sounded like something that would come out of Tin Pan Alley in its heyday). Of course, it doesn't sound like Gershwin or Rodgers and Hart, it's too modern for that, but it's got some interesting things going on in it. It will be fun to track the journey of this particular song.

The other originals on the album were written by me exclusively, and some of them were in my catalogue for a few years, waiting to be fleshed out and find their sound. Others were relatively new tunes, and here's a quick mention about two of them: Little Old Dogs and In Your Eyes. Interestingly, these were also two of the easiest songs I've written, and seem to be quite accessible to listeners.

Little Old Dogs has been receiving a really good response (live it's played a little differently, with acoustic bass and guitar, fiddle, snare and brushes). It's the simplest tune I've ever written (both chord-wise and lyric-wise), but it's resonating strongly with CD buyers and audiences. It's always interesting to see where a song will take you, and Little Old Dogs is a good example. By this I mean how a song can take on a life of its own, until the original idea has changed (and in many cases been improved on). It's almost like one idea can lead to another and after a while you find you've come up with a new, more intriguing song idea, or perhaps the idea was waiting there all along and you had to clear out the brush first in order to find it.

Little Old Dogs came about from an idea I had from reading about some dogs that were neglected and left outside by their owners during the cold snap of Christmas 2003. Most of these poor animals froze to death, and the story was reported in the local paper. I felt moved and inspired to write a song about it, but in the process of trying to get that idea into song-form I found other things to talk about: the funny names folks give their dogs, how many folks on my street have an old dog, and the lines about the lonesome old man in the window watching people pass him by (with their dogs in tow, or vice-versa). But of course those little old dogs would understand how he feels. So eventually, the original, quite sad and cruel story, never made the final cut. But a more universal story made it itself known through the song.

In Your Eyes was also a song that fell into my lap. It's pretty sentimental (is that a good or bad thing? I don't know... this seems to depend on which way the wind blows). Whatever the case, it's become one of listener's favourites. I must say I like hearing it again. I wanted to try to write a lullaby, and this was the result. I was inspired by two of my students who were once high-school sweethearts, who married young, and now have grandchildren. At the time of coming up with the song, they had become grandparents for (I think) the third time. So this tune is my attempt to convey the joy that they clearly felt when talking about this new arrival in their lives, and also a bit of a meditation on the nurturing nature, and how to the newborn's unjaded eyes, this world we find ourselves in (which can seem terribly chaotic and dangerous to us adults), is a wondrous place.

Recording and self-producing

When putting together this CD, the words labour of love came up a few times (and were suggested by my friend Wahl as a good place to start when discussing this aspect of the project). Yes, it was a lot of fun, and I did put a lot of effort into it (and I always felt I could put more into it, as well). I feel good about how these songs represent something about where I and my music are right now.

With the exception of some very solid and inventive acoustic bass by Paul Bergman, a sweet harmony vocal on the title track by Sue Malcolm, and a tasteful little bit of harmonica on Hard Times by Wahl, all the instrumental and vocal parts on the album were performed by yours truly. It was an exciting, if daunting, undertaking, but I did want this album to represent as much of my own "voice" as possible, and in the end, I think it has worked out even better than I anticipated. I should also mention that the task of mixing was in some ways just as creative and interesting as the recording and arranging. All I can say is: thank heavens for digital recording and 120 gigabyte hard drives.

My friend Wahl deserves an enormous amount of credit for helping with this project, from engineering to mixing, and many other intangibles. At those times when my ears stopped hearing, he would come in and help me notice things that I had forgotten were there. We both tried hard to keep it all sounding pretty real, and found that we didn't need to go to town on EQing or adding effects (not to say that we didn't use them when we needed to). We tried to let the natural sound of the acoustic instruments and my voice come through. Of course, I did have a lot of fun with doing overdubs and "orchestrating" things here and there. I hope that it all added to the value of the project rather than detracting from it.

Finally, (and it's still early in the stage of releasing the CD), I've been excited to hear back from people who've had a chance to listen to it, telling me how much they are enjoying the album, and how the songs have touched each of them differently. This has been gratifying, and is welcome inspiration to keep creating more music.