Spirit of the Holidays

Recording Anecdotes:
I met Byron Duckwall, a cellist, at an arts festival in a park. He was selling music there that he had produced with his Indie label up in the Boston area. I had a cassette copy of Heal of the Hand with me and gave him one, thinking that if he liked it, he could carry my tapes as well. We chatted about the music business for a while and then I left. A few days later, Byron called and told me that he had put the cassette on after I had left and several people wanted to purchase it. Soon Byron was my A-#1 distributor! Hundreds of people have purchased Heal of the Hand thanks to his participation is various festivals throughout this nation's "Arts in the Parks" programs. Byron later introduced me to his guitarist friend Chris Theriault. They had recorded a few albums together. I drove up to Chris' house near Albany, New York one weekend and the three of us worked on some music. Byron thought we should work on a holiday album and so we each started to write arrangements of cello, piano and guitar of holiday music. Around this time I was signing on with North Star as a solo artist. I gave the President of North Star a tape of our work-in-progress and he loved it. North Star puts out a lot of fine instrumental Christmas albums each year and so our newly founded group, LunaMoon was signed on to create one for the l994 season. It was pretty amazing because we had all just met and had never worked together before. North Star helped us out by providing a wonderful rehearsal studio in a small Massachusetts town. We spent five weeks rehearsing, arranging, composing. We also ate a lot of bad take-out chinese food. We each took turns arranging songs and leading the rehearsals. We spent about 7 hours a day in that room; it was a wonderful experience for all of us. We had our share of arguments and moodswings, but the music was always the most important thing--bigger than any of our egos. I'll always look back on those days as precious and wonderful.
Steven Miller had engineered my solo album, Heal of the Hand, the year before, and he agreed to work on this project as well. When our arrangements were set and we were ready for the studio, Steven met us up in a Rhode Island recording studio near the record label (North Star Music) and we recorded Spirit of the Holidays in two day's time. I spent a day with Steven mixing it and then went home. A few months later North Star called us during a rehearsal session in my home to tell us that the Nature Company chain (now they are known as the Discovery Stores) had decided to carry our release for the holiday season. We opened a bottle of Dom Perignon and called the rehearsal early. The album went on to be North Star's top holiday seller. The album continues to be a holiday hit each year.

Spirit of the Holidays Reviews