All
original compositions © 2023 Jeff Wyatt (SOCAN)
except
Winning Hand {© 2023
Jeff Wyatt and Mike Reilly (SOCAN)}. All arrangements by
Jeff Wyatt.
**************************
Album
Title:
Wanted (Soundtrack to Mike Reilly's
"Tumbleweed")
Label:
Cardboard Alley Music
Catalogue
No.:
CAM-007
Release
Date:
January
13th, 2014
Availability:
This album is available by contacting this website only at
this time
Produced
by:
Jeff Wyatt
Recorded
at:
Cardboard Alley Music recording
facility, Burnaby BC.
Engineered
& Mixed by:
Jeff Wyatt
Mastered
by:
Richard Dolmat at Digital Sound Magic Recording Studios
Ltd,
Nov. 2013 with some additional, minor after the fact
tweaks by Jeff.
Art
Work & Cover Design by:
Janice and Jeff Wyatt
Photography
by:
Jeff Wyatt
Particulars:
5th solo album. Vocals, acoustic and electric guitars,
mandolin, harmonica, bass and keyboards performed by Jeff
Wyatt. Digital orchestration and percussion arranged and
programmed by Jeff Wyatt. Recorded
on a dual processor PowerMac G5. Software used
included
Digidesign
Pro Tools,
Reason,
Miroslav Philharmonik
and a
host of IK Multimedia processors
available in
T-RackS 3
Deluxe.
Canadian
west coast comedy scriptwriter Michael B. Reilly of
Canamera Entertainment Group (Radio
Comedy Shows) has
created another gem to add to his growing repertoire of
radio ready audio drama productions. This time it’s
built on a cowboy western theme, entitled TUMBLEWEED; a
fictional Wild West frontier town complete with colorful
period characters.
Every movie or audio drama deserves a corresponding musical
soundtrack. With this in mind, Mike hired Jeff to create
suitable music for this fun Wild West production and
"Wanted (Soundtrack to Mike Reilly’s “Tumbleweed”)" was
thus conceived.
Mike also called upon Jeff to be one of his voice actors,
playing 3 separate roles; Harry Lee the saloon piano
player, a Mexican bandito who was hired to kidnap a
Tumbleweed Hotel damsel (played by
singer/songwriter/recording artist Susan Jacks), and a
beaten up cowboy bully who was arrested after starting a
fight in the Tumbleweed Saloon.
With “Wanted (Soundtrack to Mike Reilly’s “Tumbleweed”)”
Mike gave Jeff tremendous freedom. Jeff had the creative
pleasure of taking old public domain songs by unknown
writers and known writers such as Stephen Foster, Percy
Montrose and Frank Maynard, re-working them as well as
writing new original material. Some of the music is serious
(as in the mournful version of “Clementine”) and some is
just plain silly and tongue in cheek (as in the quirky
“Lucy Found This Guy With Diamonds”). The final track on
the album (“Winning Hand”) was co-written by Mike Reilly
and Jeff; lyrics by Mike and Music by Jeff.
Jeff arranged, recorded and produced this musical
soundtrack album in its entirety. It was mastered by
Richard Dolmat of Digital Sound Magic Recording Studios Ltd
in Burnaby, BC., with some very slight additional tweaking
after the fact by Jeff.
Note:
The completed audio play TUMBLEWEED by
Michael B. Reilly is available as audio CD from Mike
Reilly’s Canamera Entertainment website as well as
through iTunes download.
COMPLETE TRACK LISTING OF MUSICAL SOUNDTRACK:
01 Tumbleweed Theme
(writer: Jeff Wyatt)
Here’s a big orchestral overture and opening theme,
reminiscent of the style of John Williams, with some added
Spike Jones style of tongue in cheeky-ness to keep the mood
from becoming too serious for too long.
02 Turkey in the Hay (Square Dance Fever)
(writer: unknown – public domain)
This is an adaptation and certainly a takeoff on the old
song “Turkey in the Straw”. Jeff wrote his own lyrics,
keeping the original melody intact, with some twists and
turns in key changes along the way. According to Wikipedia
"Turkey in the Straw" is a well-known American folk song
dating from the early 19th century. The song's tune is
derived from the ballad "My Grandmother Lived on Yonder
Little Green" which was derivative of the Irish ballad "The
Old Rose Tree." Originally a tune for fiddle players, it
was first popularized in the late 1820s and early 1830s by
performers such as George Washington Dixon and Bob
Farrell. Another
song, "Zip Coon", sung to the same tune, was popularized by
Dixon and flourished during the Andrew Jackson
administration. This version was first published between
1829 and 1834 in either New York or Baltimore. Both of the
above performers claimed to have written the song, and the
dispute is not resolved. Also, Ohio songwriter Daniel
Decatur Emmett is sometimes erroneously credited as the
song's author. But (like much Americana music) after all
this time, authorship is a mute point since the song has
been in the public domain for almost 2 centuries with no
hope of any royalty payments to family descendents of the
writer, whoever it was.
03 Red River Valley
(writer: unknown – public domain)
According to Wikipedia, the origins of this song appear to
date back to 1870 in the northern Red River Valley region
of Manitoba Canada during the time of the Wolseley
Expedition. And although the name James Kerrigan was the
first to be associated with the first printed versions of
the song in 1896 (under the title “Bright Mohawk Valley”),
the song was actually written by an unknown author almost
30 years prior.
04 Oh Susanna
(writer: Stephen Foster – public domain)
This popular old song was first published in Cincinnati in
1848. The original title by the writer Stephen Foster
actually contained an exclamation mark, and thus was
literally OH! SUSANNA. For Jeff’s version of the song, he
took Foster’s original, cleverly written lyrics, changed
them a bit here and there, and even wrote additional verses
relating to the fictional town of Tumbleweed.
05 Fiona
(writer: Jeff Wyatt)
Fiona, although not a specific character in the script
framework of Tumbleweed, she could easily be a behind the
scenes supporting role. She’s kind of the female version of
the character Mongo from Mel Brooks’ cowboy spoof “Blazing
Saddles”. She’s rough and tough, kind of dumb and
hygienically unkempt. According to Jeff, the idea for the
song stemmed from his appreciation of the old Frank Zappa
“200 Motels” song “Lonesome Cowboy Burt”, although the 2
songs are very different musically and lyrically.
06 Clementine
(writer: Percy Montrose – public domain)
Historically, this song is more properly titled “Oh My
Darling, Clementine”. Hey, this was cartoon character
Huckleberry Hound’s theme song back in the 1960’s.
According to Wikipedia the song is attributed to writer
Percy Montrose in 1884, although it is sometimes credited
to Barker Bradford around that same time. Jeff’s approach
to this song is somewhat unique; he doesn’t treat it as the
typical American folk song that it is, but as a mournful,
solo classical piano instrumental. In Jeff’s words,
“I tried to imagine how someone like 19th
century
pianist/composer Felix Mendelssohn would treat this old
melody, although he died decades before this song was even
written. In my fantasy, however, I imagined his
interpretation to be included in his popular series of
short lyrical, solo piano pieces known as “Songs Without
Words. With all due respect to Felix, I humbly tried to
play and interpret it in his spirit of arrangement.”
07 Shenandoah (Return to)
(writer: unknown – public domain)
According to Wikipedia, “Shenandoah" (also called “Oh
Shenandoah", or "Across the Wide Missouri") is a
traditional American folk song of uncertain origin, dating
at least to the early 19th century. It was first printed as
part of William L. Alden’s article “Sailor Songs” in the
July 1882 issue of “Harpers New Monthly Magazine”. The song
had become popular as a sea chanty by the 1880’s. Although
Jeff had previously treated this old melody as a dreamy
guitar instrumental on his 2008 album “Reflections at Every
Corner”, he took a totally different approach here. He
completely changed the melody, chord structure, tempo and
even messed with the lyrics, and added some of his own
verses. Is it sacrilegious to change Shenandoah so
drastically? I don’t know; Jeff hasn’t been struck by
lightening or by a musical purist yet. What was he trying
to do by changing this song so extensively? He imagined
what the young Johnny Cash and his trio might have done
with this song for Sun Records in a rockabilly format back
in the late 50’s, and thus tried to create that groove.
08 Mexican Jail
(writer: Jeff Wyatt)
Jeff originally wrote this song back in 1993, but never
recorded it at the time. He did perform it occasionally
until sometime in 1994, after which he completely forgot
about it, and it was lost in his memory banks at the time
of his father’s death. Rediscovering it in one of his old
lyric books, he decided it could be suitable for this
project. He expanded on the original lyrics in order to
“date” and round out the story more completely. For
example, the guy in the original lyric came into town on a
Harley,… but of course, for this project he would need to
ride in on a horse. As the lyric sadly states, “it’s a sad
tale of love and betrayal” that got this unfortunate dude
locked up in that Mexican jail.
09 Camptown Races
(writer: Stephen Foster – public domain)
Wikipedia states "Gwine to Run All Night”, or “De Camptown
Races" (popularly known as "Camptown Races") is a minstrel
song by Stephen Foster (1826–1864). It was published in
February 1850. Another edition was published in 1852 with
guitar accompaniment under the title, "The Celebrated
Ethiopian Song/Camptown Races". In 1974 Richard Jackson
wrote,
“Foster quite specifically tailored the song for use on the
minstrel stage. He composed it as a piece for solo voice
with group interjections and refrain ... his dialect verses
have all the wild exaggeration and rough charm of folk tale
as well as some of his most vivid imagery ... Together with
"Oh! Susanna", "Camptown Races" is one of the gems of the
minstrel era.”
Jeff messed with Foster’s original lyric and wrote some of
his own original verses to bring the song home to
Tumbleweed.
10 Streets of Laredo
(writer: Frank Maynard – public domain)
Wikipedia has this to say: "Streets of Laredo" also known
as the "Cowboy's Lament", is a famous American cowboy
ballad in which a dying cowboy tells his story to a cowboy
passerby. Derived from the English folk song "The
Unfortunate Rake", it has become a folk music standard, and
as such has been performed, recorded and adapted numerous
times, with many variations. The title refers to the city
of Laredo, Texas. The old-time cowboy Frank Maynard
(1853–1926) of Colorado Springs, Colorado, claimed
authorship of the revised Cowboy's
Lament, and his
story was widely reported in 1924 by the journalism
professor Elmo Scott Watson, then on the faculty of the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
11 Lucy Found This Guy With Diamonds
(writer: Jeff Wyatt)
Although the title is an obvious take off on the John
Lennon song title “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds”, this
mariachi style song does not resemble the Beatle song in
any possible way. Here’s the corny story of a colorful
Mexican bandito who’s constantly struggling with his
frustrating love life in the Wild West. As such he can’t
decide whether he wants to remain north of the border, or
go back home to Mexico. He doesn’t really think of himself
as a bad guy, per se. After all, he hadn’t “robbed a
stagecoach since last Thursday”.
12 Winning Hand
(writers: Jeff Wyatt and Mike Reilly)
Mike wrote the lyrics, Jeff the music. Here’s the sad story
of a broken hearted cowboy who, after spending what he
thought was a meaningful, romantic night in a room upstairs
at the Tumbleweed Hotel, awakes to find himself all alone.
His mind is filled with a thousand questions as to why this
beauty left him in the dark of the night. It’s the
Tumbleweed script that actually provides the answer to this
question. We won’t spoil it for you here, but it may
involve the Mexican bandito from track 11.