Canvas' contribution to the Santana Tribute CD from Mellow Records, Santana's
"Brightest Star", from the album Zebop!), Matt Sweitzer and Greg Lounsberry
began to discuss a project to provide an expanded role for Tammy as lead vocalist.
Greg asked Tammy what her album should be about, and she said "I want to do an
album about Fairies." Greg wrote the lyrics to "The Fairy's Wing", and narrated the
story to her. She said "I really like the story! Where did you get it?" He was surprised,
"I made it up!" He said. The story was based on real events, although told as an
allegory.
They submitted a very rough 1 minute demo of an earlier although unrecognizable
version of "The Fairy' Wing" to Matt for his opinion and he said "I want to play on it!"
Matt began as drummer, but switched to Bass as John Swope came on board. Wait
until you hear John's stunning drumming on "Epiphanies"! Greg then asked Matt to
add some guitar, parts because he takes an entirely different approach than Greg,
and he felt that it widened the sonic palette.
Son, Daniel played some of his hammond organ riffs for his Father that became the
basis for the song, "Howl". The original working title was "Organ Harvest" , and that
probably contributed to the final lyrical idea about a Werewolf's bite.
Tammy had never tried to write a song before, but her electric piano compositions
became the songs "The Fairy's Wing", and "Ogre", arguably two of the best songs
on the album. A musician friend, Bill Unger played the Bass Guitar on "Ogre".
At this point, Chris Cobel offered to add keyboard "sweetening" tracks to these and
other songs, and that is when the material really began to shine. The effect that Chris'
minimalist playing has added to these songs cannot be overstated.
Matt submitted a song with the working title of "White Out" that he wrote during a
blizzard. When the guitar melodies were added, it became the instrumental, "Cult of
the White Witch". (Note how working titles sometimes spur lyrical ideas for the final
song)
The soul of the album is a trilogy of songs that Greg wrote based on a couple of
melodic themes, called "Parallels", "Mirrors", and "Epiphanies" The first, being the
observation by the Minstrel who loved the main character, the second, her reflections,
and third, her epiphany.
As song writer, producer, guitarist , and keyboardist, Greg was possibly the busiest
band member of all. In addition to writing the lyrics, he wrote the story in Novelette
form, available as a Kindle book at Amazon, and on the octobertree.net website.
Through this process, October Tree had become a band. Although they swiped a few
members from Canvas, they surely won't mind, because all are simultaneously at work
on the new Canvas album!
Welcome to the world of High Adventure
Band Line-Up:
Greg Lounsberry
Matt Sweitzer
Daniel Lounsberry
Chris Cobel
John Swope
Tracklisting:
2. Dark Carnival 6:11
3. Parallels 2:12
4. The Ogre 4:05
5. Into the Glade 0:52
6. Howl 5:47
7. Mirrors 2:53
8. Mortis Urgan 4:20
9. Cult of the White Witch 4:14
10. Epiphanies 7:57
www.octobertree.net
--
