Greetings to everyone from Liberty, Tennessee, on the edge of the Cumberland Plateau. I do hope you are well and enjoying July so far. There’s so much music out just now I want to listen to. I am looking forward to having some sit with headphones time, perhaps over the next weekend. I am interested in two of my favorite artists, Bob Dylan and Neil Young. Both have new records and both are elders of music that I have consumed since I was sixteen.
And speaking of new records, many of you know I recently announced a new record I’ve released, The Craig Demos, on June 18. The physical CDs arrived on July 1, and I wanted to let you know they are available now from my website. Please visit and have a listen. I hope that you enjoy it. These are recordings I wasn’t thinking about releasing when I tracked them, so this is my first unintentional record.
Other news is a virtual concert coming up on Friday, July 10. The concert is being presented by 3rd Street Coffeehouse out of Roanoke, Virginia. I played for them last year and was suppose to have a return visit this July. They are presenting virtual concerts, and I am looking forward to sharing the music in an ethereal kind of way. The plan is to perform the songs from my new record but if you have any requests, please let me know. I am excited to have Sue Griffiths on banjo and vocals for the concert.
I’ll close with a song and a story from the new record.
Is This Called Falling In Love – In 1983 I was living in Nashville and touring with a country music singer named Tommy Overstreet. Tommy’s uncle was a singer named Gene Austin who had the first million selling record for the song, “My Blue Heaven.” Tommy did a record called Memories Old & New, which featured songs that his uncle sang from the Great American Songbook and Tin Pan Alley. I was one of the session musicians on that record. Up to that point in my career, I knew three chords. That enabled me to play folk, country, rock-n-roll and blues. I learned chords 4, 5, 6, 7 & 8 doing that record with Tommy. One chord in particular that I learned and grew fond of was the diminished chord. It features several times in the music for this song. My songwriting collaborator, Geoffrey Himes, wrote this story about the puzzled lover. – Billy Kemp
I’ve always loved the Great American Songbook, and I had long wanted to write some songs in that vein. When Billy gave me the music for this song, I knew this was my chance. I decided to have some fun with the whole idea of falling, as my heroes Ira Gershwin and Cole Porter might. I described different kinds of falling on the bridge, and on the final stanza I had the narrator admit that he had once “obeyed all the laws of gravity,” but now his new lover has “made an outlaw out of me.” –Geoffrey Himes
Thanks again for supporting recorded and live music. Wishing everyone a happy and healthy July.
Much Happiness,
