Charlie Bear on guard against squirrels real and imagined.
“Beautiful and soothing… The guitar melody is awesome.”
Allison Abbo Simon Lowe (AbboMusic)
“Music for Chasing Squirrels” is here! A follow-up to last year’s “Music to Squeak By”, it’s another album of guitar-driven instrumentals with odd and unexpected twists.
Check it out today streaming, at Bandcamp, on CD, or on lathe-cut vinyl. Thanks for listening!
-Vic Dillahay
Tracks
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Mrs. Harvey’s (3:19)
Mrs. Harvey’s Bakery is an historic building on 11th Avenue in Longmont. I wrote this back in 2010 after driving by it a dozen or more times while moving my recording gear from CMIC to my new place off Pratt Street.
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Nines (3:28)
Graphite Addiction recorded an alternate swinging version of this and “Mental Morphology”. This is my take on the funkier original, trying (and failing) to play bass like Tim Carmichael and drums like Pete Ehrmann.
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Cibeles (3:21)
A quick one in Phrygian/Phrygian Dominant. Named for the Plaza de Cibeles in Madrid, since Phrygia’s goddess is Cybele.
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Blues for Phrygia (3:54)
I was in a Phrygian kind of mood, so here’s a 16 bar blues in Phrygian. Sort of. It’s in 4/4 but there’s a sort of prelude section in 6/8, because if you’re going to write a blues it might as well also be a jazz waltz.
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Dearest (2:37)
I found this melody sketched on a Colorado Music Instruction Center payment reminder card from the early 2000s with the word “Dearest” written in script beside it. Given that context, I don’t know if I intended it as a declaration of love or as a reminder to settle a delinquent account. I like to think the finished tune works in either case.
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Fossil Creek Tunnel (4:06)
Fort Collins has an excellent system of bike paths. When I moved to the south side of town in 2012, I was thrilled to learn that the Fossil Creek Path would soon be finished allowing me to ride a loop around town. All that remained was a single, soon to be completed tunnel under a railroad track. It was finally finished a few weeks before I moved away in 2019. I got to use it once, so wrote this to commemorate the occasion.
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For C and D (3:27)
Definitely one for us jazz nerds. I was trying to make triad pairs sound natural, so this entire melody is alternating C major and D minor triads doing their best impression of the Great American Songbook.
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Near Majority (3:17)
8 bars of this melody are from way back in 1999. I wrote it for an assignment at CU Denver and intentionally tried to make it as difficult to sightread as possible to trip up my professor as he played it in front of the class. It was a jerk move, so as a bit of penance 21 years later I finished and recorded it here. I hope it’s the ugliest thing I ever release.
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Somewhere West of Wichita (4:09)
This companion piece to “Somewhere East of Omaha” from “Music to Squeak By” shares its odd little 5 note rhythmic quirk. Mainly it’s included to feature my lovely Collings baritone.
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Actually, Actually (3:09)
I am trying to break my habit of prefacing every differing opinion with “actually”. Actually, actually as a filler word is rather obnoxious. The former manager of Fort Collins Coffeehouse, Hayley, called me out on this bad habit one day after I informed her that “actually, my Irish cream latte is quite delicious”. I happened to be writing the chords to the B section of this tune at the time so this seemed an appropriate title.