Though 7 of Harvey Reid's 21 albums are available on a number of online digital download services (including iTunes, Spotify, Napster and Amazon...) much of his best recorded guitar work has not been available online. In February 2010 two new download-only albums went into the system to help fill this void. The Solo Guitar Project: Vol. 1 and The Solo Guitar Project: Vol 2 each contains 12 instrumental tracks collected from previous recordings. These feature his inimitable 6-string, 12-string and slide guitar compositions and his arrangements of traditional melodies for solo guitar. The cuts, recorded between 1986 and 2000, have been remixed and remastered, and sound stellar. For a list of songs on these albums and the liner notes, click here. It is not yet clear if these will be pressed and sold as CD's. We welcome your feedback.
Soon to follow will be two more compilations (one of instrumentals and the other songs) showcasing Reid's ground-breaking partial capo guitar work. They will most likely follow about a month behind.
Harvey stayed home instead of touring, and released his 21st recording in the Spring of 2009. After 3 collaborations in a row with Joyce Andersen, this is his 1st solo project since the Autoharp Album in 2003, and the first to feature his guitar since 2000. Titled Blues & Branches, its 16 tracks showcase Reid's slide guitar and bluesier side of his music, with 7 originals, 7 arrangements of traditional tunes, and 2 covers. It was feayured in a 3-page interview & story in the Feb issue of Guitar Player Magazine.
Totally solo except for 2 cameos by Joyce Andersen on vocal and fiddle, it includes 2 autoharp songs, one on the 6-string banjo, and features Reid on 11 different guitars, including metal-body resonator, 12-string, Chrysalis, lap steel and dobro guitars. Mostly songs, with 3 instrumentals, "Blues & Branches" is a mature work, featuring one of America's strongest and most versatile acoustic musicians at the peak of his powers of performing, composing and arranging. It features some of Reid's strongest lyrics to date, some of his best vocals, and a fresh pile of new work from a very productive and versatile musician. As always, this recording is sparse, recorded live in the studio, and over 70 mins. of acoustic purity.
Harvey is finally on YouTube and 7 albums of songs are nowfor sale on iTunes beginning in October 2008. The list of Reid's YouTube videos appears here.
There are now a number of live and studio videos of Harvey like this one of him playing "Star Island Jig in a video he recorded in 1999 to help people who wanted to learn this piece, which is in his "Capo Inventions" book and on two CD's. (It seems to work better if you watch the one on the YouTube site (click the link in the previous sentence.) rather than this embedded movie. There should be more videos coming soon.
If you noticed, Harvey's schedule in Summer of '08 is pretty thin. This is because he stayed home to welcome a new member
to the family, baby Levi Andersen Reid, born
May 26. Levi is happy, healthy, and hungry, and doing great, and so is Joyce.
Harvey and Joyce worked all year in 2007 on a monumental recording project called "The Song Train that is designed to help people pay thir own music. It is a 56-song boxed set with 4 CD's (of all new recordings- not a compilation...) plus an 80-page deluxe color hardback book. It is such a large project that it has its own web site at www.songtrain.net . It is getting rave reviews and is proving to be a landmark. I you have never held one in your hand you are missing something.
Guitar TAB Book Finally FinishedPeople have been asking Harvey for years for transcriptions of his guitar work, and it got interrupted several times but is finally done. Titled "Capo Inventions," it features Harvey's original guitar compositions and some traditional arrangements that use the Esus/Open A partial capo, which is something he first pioneered in the 1970's, and that is now becoming widespread. The book contains a CD and is done in TAB and standard notation, with a lot of notes, tips, fingerings and commentary. 14 transcriptions nclude some of his best-known pieces, with some easier ones and a few of the really hard ones-- "Suite: For the Duchess," "Hard Times," "Arkansas Traveler," "The Highwire Hornpipe," "Red in the Sky," Norway Suite: Parts 1 &2," "Macallan's Jig," The Minstrel Boy" "Skye Boat Song," "The Unknown Soldier," "Star Island Jig," "Windy Grave" and "Prelude to the Minstrel's Dream."
Future books will likely present his arrangements of traditional tunes, and maybe one of his 6-string banjo music. Harvey does not read and write music, and his work is complex, so the forward progress on transcriptions of his music is very slow, and we apologize. Some of you are bugging us, and that helps keep it on the stove. We are sorry for all the false alarms. ORDER "CAPO INVENTIONS" ONLINE
"Christmas Morning" Reid & Andersen CD Receives Rave ReviewsYou fans in New England who have been to a Holiday concert probably know now what Harvey & Joyce Andersen sound like when they play Christmas shows, and those of you who have Harvey's classic solo Christmas CD have been waiting to see if another Holiday CD would ever emerge. They started recording on Christmas morning 2004, and the finished CD "Christmas Morning" shipped in November 2005. Iit features their sparkling sound and impeccable musicianship on 18 Holiday songs and instrumentals. Read some of the reviews.
Harvey's April 2003 concert at Cuyahoga National Park in Ohio was videotaped brilliantly by Dennis Suchetka of Channel 9 television, and Harvey is so happy with the video, audio, and his performance, that it has now been released as a DVD titled "One April Night.". The finished concert is over 70 minutes, and there will finally be something to watch of the Master Minstrel, and a new tool for those who want to see how he plays.It looked like the TAB book was going to get finished first, but it has slowed down, and the video has jumped ahead. The production is done,the graphics are in progress and it will be released in the Fall of 2004 for sale. It contains 16 songs: Scotland Suite: Part 1, Silver Blue, Cindy/Cripple Creek, In Dark Winter Rejoiceth, Sing Me A Lullaby, Gospel Medley, Star Island Jig, I Have Finally Found a Home, California Blues, Waltz of the Waves, Flowers of Saskatchewan, Maplewood March, Highwire Hornpipe, Above the Clouds, Cryin Shame, Trimmed & Burning
Modern
Folk Guitar Textbook Resurfaces
Not many people know that Harvey wrote the first college textbook for folk guitar back in 1982, and it has been in print for over 20 years, but only available from college bookstores when it was being used in a class.Titled Modern Folk Guitar, it is finally available outside of that market. The 330 page was intended for adult beginners with no previous musical background, and is a very respected book in its field, and the first such book to ever go through the process of scholarly peer review. In a field crowded with books written by all sorts of people, with no academic oversight, this book has been reviewed and critiqued by guitar educators and praised by the guitar education community. Though it was intended for classroom use, it is perfect for self-study and private lessons, and will be for sale on our web site and at Harvey's concerts for the first time. If you are a guitar teacher or camp counselor you might want to look into using this for your teaching. Now available for retail or wholesale.
Harvey's Guitar Featured in Apple Computer Software Release
Apple Computer chose Harvey's guitar version of Bach's Minuet in G as the default music for its very popular photo software iPhoto.The selection they used was actually a special re-recording he did in 2001 of the version he had on his first LP in 1982, and the new version was included on his 20th Anniversary collection "Dreamer or Believer" (see below)
Custom CD's
The out-of-print LP's and CD's (plus some exciting unreleased material from the archives) have been recently made available on a per-song basis for sale in our Custom CD section of the web site.
After years of changing strings, Harvey has completely switched to the new Gore-tex wound guitar strings made by Elixir, and couldn't be happier. "They don't break or go out of tune, and they last 20 times longer than bronze strings used to. I've got better things to do than change strings every concert." Look them up at http://www.goremusic.com
close-up
of CD cover-->
In
a friend's living room in Los Angeles, quite by accident, Harvey discovered that
there is a tune called "Waltz of the Waves" at Track 11 of a
CD titled "Musical Tour of Scotland" by a former folk musician
now comedian and movie star named Billy Connolly. It is played on autoharp
in the key of F, and is very clearly the tune Harvey wrote in 1988, which is also
an autoharp instrumental in F. It is credited on the CD as "Traditional."
Billy is a very big deal, is a famous comedian and actor (he was in the movie
"Mrs. Brown" and "Head of the Class" TV show, an HBO special
with Whoopi Goldberg, and even had a brief TV show of his own called "Billy.")
Not only is this a major label CD that has sold a lot of copies, but it was also a TV show on BBC, and a website found under Billy's video company (at http://www.sarsen.demon.co.uk/billy/videos.html) called "Sleepy Dumpling" brags that 400,000 copies of this video have been sold!
The show had
been run in Australia and New Zealand also, and that Polygram released the CD
in at least 2 countries. Actually the CD is the soundtrack from a 6-part TV show
called Billy Connolly's World Tour of Scotland, that won all kinds of awards,
and was a hugely successful show. Harvey's song was the only one Billy was actually
pictured playing in the whole 6 hours of the show!
Harvey is honored
that Billy liked his tune, and that he plays autoharp! Billy is reputedly the
most popular comedian ever to come out of the UK, and you know how long Harvey
has hoped for someone famous and cool to popularize the autoharp...
Well,
at first things look really good. Harvey contacted Billy, and Billy called personally
to apologize for the mistake, and to assure Harvey that things would be set right
and that he would be paid his proper royalties. (Click
here to download an MP3 audio file of Billy's phone message to Harvey)
Here is a transcript of what Billy said: (in case you can't understand the phone message quality and the Scottish accent or don't have the time to download the file.)
"Hello Harvey, this is Billy Connolly. I got your letter and the T shirt and all the goodies, and thank you very much. I'd like to apologize from the bottom of my heart. The fault entirely rests with me. I had forgotten your name when we were putting it down, and I promised them I would get it and I totally forgot. I'm really sorry, and everything has been put absolutely right... so you can expect a nice wee windfall. Thanks again for the... I'll try and phone again and get you because I'd like to get you personally. Buddy, thanks for the humane way you've treated me, and I'll be in touch. Bye, man." (12:46 PM Wednesday May 27 1998.)
This is a vastly complicated process involving wrtiter and publishing royalties for radio and TV airplay and sales of CD's, tapes and videos in at least 3 countries. So far only radio and TV airplay money has been paid, by the organizations that do that, who have been satisfied that the tune does indeed belong to Harvey and have paid him for airplay royalties. Thus far no payment has come from Billy or his record company. Billy's people have replied occasionally to Harvey's letters and faxes, but offered no accounting or payments. The smallest record company in the world is not really in a great position to take on the largest one in the world in an international royalty battle, but something needs to be done to right this wrong.
Harvey is now preparing a press campaign to publicize this problem and to see if he can get someone to open their checkbook and pay him what is he is due. This story is an interesting example of how hard it is for a little guy to get paid by the big guy who uses his copyrighted creations.
Seacoast
Guitar Society ThrivingHarvey launched a new non-profit arts organization in 1999 called the Seacoast Guitar Society. The extensive website (built by our friend and vital volunteer Marisa Donahue) is at http://www.seacoastguitar.org where there is a lot of information about what the SGS has done and hopes to accomplish. Harvey is the first Executive Director, and the first 3 concert seasons have been a smashing sucess, with Catfish Keith, John Renbourn, Chuck Pyle, Peter Huttlinger, David Surette, Bennett Hammond, Pat Donohue, Dick Gaughan, Al Petteway, Mary Flower, David Francey, Stephen Bennett, Chris Proctor, Buddy Mondlock, Preston Reed, Maria Zementauski and Dan Crary performing at various venues around the Seacoast. Harvey also has produced and released 3 compilation CD's of local guitarists and songwriters to support and promote the local music scene. Harvey is struggling to find time to launch some workshops on career and technical topics, featuring prominent local musicians and business people to address issues like recording, making and promoting recordings, songwriting, and touring. These would be tailored to assist local musicians and songwriters who are getting started in their careers. Many of the topics are already offered on the web site., and Harvey could use some help making them happen.
The SGS wants to involve the local music listening audience, as well local musicians to bring guitarists from around the world to the area for concerts and workshops. They will work with the local musicians, teachers, schools to make more guitar-related things happen locally. Local musicians and fans who are members will be offered the use of the web site for chat groups, finding gigs and band members, and for buying and selling instruments through our Classified Ads. Future plans include group insurance, guitar camps for kids, organized teaching, a festival, and listening libraries.
It is also possible to learn about or join the SGS, to obtain tickets or reservations to the concerts and workshops on the web site. Please take a look and tell your friends. Membership is growing. Please think about becoming a member or sponsor and support this good cause, and be sure to visit the web site and have a look.
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