Sunflower

by SANDER | SOMMERS

2022

Double album. Recorded and produced by Matt Sommers at Sommersville 2021-2022. All instruments/voices by Bob Sander and Matt Sommers.

6:36

Old Maui

Sander | Sommers
3:23

Dinah

Sander | Sommers
3:52

Cluck old hen

Sander | Sommers
5:55

The bonny light horseman

Sander | Sommers
4:59

Kitchen gals

Sander | Sommers
5:28

The Longford weaver / Rock the cradle Joe

Sander | Sommers
5:39

Sloop John B.

Sander | Sommers
4:11

Desert places

Sander | Sommers
3:18

Jay Gould's daughter

Sander | Sommers
5:29

My sunflower

Sander | Sommers
3:32

Matt's fancy

Sander | Sommers
5:32

Spancil Hill

Sander | Sommers
9:37

The hermit of Shark Tooth Shoals

Sander | Sommers
6:11

Little stars

Sander | Sommers
4:51

Loop de loo / Mockingbird

Sander | Sommers
5:40

Reflections of a boomer

Sander | Sommers

Album notes by Bob Sander

Old maui

I learned this whaling shanty in the early 80’s from the always brilliant Stan Rogers. Along with 4-5 other Preservation Band voices, we’d sing it a cappella, just the way we first heard it. Do you wonder why this version is painted over in blues / rock & roll? I do too. Maybe 40 more years of living embedded a deep vein of blues and rock in me that wants to seep back out into every musical thing nearby. But that’s just a guess.

Bob: Acoustic Guitar / Lead Voice / Backing Voices / Harmonica / Violin / Percussion
Matt: Slide Guitar / Drum Programming / Drum Kit / Percussion / Synthesizers / Piano / Vocoder / Upright Bass

Dinah

This was a Broadway tune penned in 1925. Evidently scads of people have done it, including one Fanny Rose Shore. Her version was so popular she became known as Dinah Shore. Though I’m old enough to remember her as a singer & her popular TV variety show, I never heard her sing it. My source was a ‘70’s string band (can’t remember who). I’m goin’ from memory here, but some form of their version is what sticks to my wall. And here it is.

Bob: Acoustic Guitar / Lead Voice / Backing Voices / Violin / Snaps
Matt: Drum Kit / Marimba / Vibraphone / Bass / Drum Programming / Coconuts / Snaps

Cluck old hen

Every old-time fiddle / banjo player knows this tune – just not like this. I probably learned the banjo version decades ago from my bud Don Lathan, a great claw-hammer guy. All these years later, here’s that tune re-sculpted in blue. Matt’s bass high-horse is rockin’ up a storm here.

Bob: Octave Mandolin / Lead Voice / Backing Voices / Harmonica / Bodhran / Snaps
Matt: Drum Kit / Electric Bass / Electric Guitars / Mellotron / Synthesizer / Drum Programming / Snaps

The bonny light horseman

Learned from the singing of Delores Keane. Set in the age of Napoleon, it recounts a young woman’s grief at the loss of her fallen lover who was killed in battle. Sadly, the theme of this song’s lament never seems to go out of style. Maybe our species is doomed to repeat the obscenity that is war over and over. War crimes? War is the crime.

Bob: Banjo / Lead Voice / Backing Voices / Concertina / Tin Whistle
Matt: Drum Programming / 808 Bass / Electric Bass / Jaw Harp / Synthesizers / Shaker / Snare Drum

Kitchen gals

Kitchen Gals is likely the first old-time tune I learned on a hammer dulcimer. None on this recording, however. Instead, the first sound you hear is the Armenian duduk, a great, breathy, moody reed instrument that is reminiscent of a clarinet. Oh, and there’s one of those too. Followed by turns on the didgeridoo and Khaen. Naturally. I guess this is World Music (or at least instruments of the world) having a hoe-down with an American reel.

Bob: Violin / Octave Mandolin / Khaen / Duduk / Didgeridoo / Flute / Harmonica / Clarinet / Wave Drum / Claps
Matt: Synthesizers / Jaw Harp / Bodhran / Drum Programming / Wave Drum / Percussion / Claps

The longford weaver / Rock the cradle joe

Irish musician Andy Irvine is my source for ‘The Longford Weaver’ and thinking about the weaver in the song put me in mind of a huge beezer of a book titled The Makings of the English Working Class by E.F. Thompson. The weavers of the day were prosperous, skilled, fiercely independent masters of their own home craft. When industrial scale weaving machines / factories came in, the weavers objected not only to the shoddy product produced, but also to the concentration of power put into factory owners’ hands. The impoverishment and relegation of formerly skilled tradesmen into mere machine tenders was a new serfdom. Hand weavers went from prosperous craftsmen to beggars in the streets virtually overnight. Some weavers joined with other disgruntled tradesmen who’d seen like displacements and smashed frames. They were labeled Luddites (after the maybe apocryphal Ned Lud). Soon their nuanced argument about political and economic power would be dumbed down to ‘someone who hates machines’. Duh. Surely the weaver in the song is from the pre-factory era. But enough of my drivel. The great old-time tune that follows I definitely learned from afore-mentioned banjo wizard Don Lathan.

Bob: Lead Voice / Backing Voices / Violin / Banjo / Acoustic Guitar / Bodhran / Flute / Octave Mandolin
Matt: Electric Bass / Drum Kit / Synthesizer / Drum Programming / Claps / Snaps

Sloop john b.

Long history - a traditional Bahamian song about an actual sloop. The first published version from 1916 eventually passed through hands as diverse as Carl Sandburg, The Kingston Trio, Blind Blake, Johnny Cash and, of course, The Beach Boys (and many, many more). We sailed down an entirely different stretch of road, er, water.

Bob: Piano / Lead Voice / Backing Voices / Violin / Harmonica
Matt: Electric Guitar / Electric Bass / Piano / Synthesizers / Mellotron / Slide Guitar / Drum Kit / Drum Programming

Desert places

Some of Robert Frost’s poems recently entered public domain, and I believe Desert Places is one of them. Matt’s hand-punched music box notes begin the melody. I added a tune to go with the lyrics and we were off to the races.

Bob: Piano / Lead Voice / Backing Voices / Violin
Matt: Music Box / Synthesizers / Drum Kit / Drum Programming / Electric Bass / Acoustic Guitar / Percussion

Jay gould’s daughter

Railroad owner and financial mischief maker, Jay Gould was one of many robber barons of the Gilded Age. This is a trad tune that slides into the hobo folksong slot with ease. Fun to play, fun to sing along with, poking fun at the Uber rich: what’s not to like?

Bob: Harmonica / Lead Voice / Banjo / Acoustic Guitar / Backing Voices / Drum Kit
Matt: Drum Kit / Drum Programming / Claps / Stomps / Electric Bass / Percussion

My sunflower

Hawaiian slack key guitar player and singer Gabby Pahinui made a seminal album with Ry Cooder back in the 70’s and the melody for one of the songs went straight to my heart. The lyrics not so much. (Though I loved Gabby’s voice, the words extolled the virtues of a particularly tasty reef fish). A wee while later I met my future wife and both her willowy good looks and her penchant for flowers inspired me to compose a song. I thought Gabby’s melody was a good fit for it, so I did the honorable thing: I borrowed it. There’s honor in that, right? Reminds me that Woody Guthrie once (supposedly) said: “That guy? He just steals from me. I steal from everyone.”

Bob: 12 String Acoustic Guitar / Violin / Acoustic Guitar / Lead Voice / Backing Voices
Matt: Vibraphone / Drum Programming / Electric Bass / Synthesizers / Drum Kit

Matt’s fancy

Thanks to music buddy Dave Linder for the loan of his lovely guitar to lay down the melody on this instrumental. I composed this untitled piece decades ago and finally decided on a name for it. That’s both a traditional way to moniker a tune dedicated to someone special (in this case my music partner) but also an acknowledgement that in the later part of the tune he does indeed get ‘fancy’ with his guitar additions. I hope you all fancy it as much as we do.

Bob: 12 String Acoustic Guitar / Claps
Matt: Drum Programming / Drum Kit / Slide Guitar / Electric Bass / Synthesizers / Electric Guitar / Claps

Spancil hill

Though I first heard this on some now forgotten album, it didn’t make an impression on me until I heard my friend Terry Bellner sing it. Always soulful and possessed of a genius for hauntingly good delivery, Terry finds just the right facets of a song to make it his own. Here’s me, with a new version, trying to do the same. Spancil Hill in County Clare, Ireland is a real place and the lyrics come from Michael Considine, a young Irishman who immigrated to the U.S. in 1870. He worked to send money home to his sweetheart, intending to return and marry her. Instead, he contracted a fatal illness in far away California. Knowing he was on his death bed he wrote this song. He was just 24. If this song doesn’t move you, maybe nothing else will.

Bob: Violin / Lead Voice / Acoustic Guitar / Flute
Matt: Synthesizers / Bass / Percussion

The hermit of shark tooth shoals

This was penned by Edward Paramore as an homage (or parody) to the long and famous poem-recitations of Robert Service. Many of Service’s Yukon characters and situations get referenced in the piece. Many of my local long-time music friends first heard this as a recitation from the late and legendary musician and gadfly Bill Arthur. He used to say he first heard it delivered decades before computers were even a glimmer in anyone’s imagination. He’d ducked into a bar in some backwater town in Arizona. “At 10 p.m. the barman rang a bell and everyone in the bar stood up and, in unison, recited the whole damn thing, beginning to end. I went back night after night until I had it all written down.” That might even be true.

Bob: Acoustic Guitar / Lead Voice / Backing Voices / Flute / Violin / Cajon / Percussion
Matt: Electric Guitar / Electric Bass / Drum Kit / Drum Programming / Guiro / Bongos / Percussion / SFX

Little stars

I wrote this piece for our two sons, circa 1995-6. I was 46 then. I thought I was too old to be a parent of such young kids, which was true. Little did I know that scarcely a year later we’d be new parents yet again. So, the boys got this song. Later, in her commanding way, my daughter got several songs from me. They’ll show up on the next album. If you too are an older parent maybe you can relate to these parental musings.

Bob: Acoustic Guitar / Violin / Lead Voice / Backing Voices / Harmonica / Octave Mandolin / Tin Whistle
Matt: Drum Programming / Marimba / Synthesizers / Bass / Piano / E-bow / Electric Guitar / Electric Bass / Drum Kit / Percussion

Loop de loo / Mockingbird

So much fun. Two folksy nursery rhyme pieces, smooshed together just for the heck of it. We’re all covered in rocky-blue again here, so get ready for that unstoppable train. I used to perform Loop de Loo a cappella in Preservation Band days and always wondered what it might be like with full instrumentation. Now I know.

Bob: Wave Drum / Bodhran / Lead Voice / Backing Voices / Acoustic Guitar / Piano / Harmonica
Matt: Drum Kit / Drum Programming / Wave Drum / Upright Bass / Slide Guitar

Reflections of a boomer

The Internet is one hell of a multi-faceted thingamajig, ain’t it? You never know what unexpected enlightenment or hate-filled claptrap might show up. One day, through the good graces of a discerning friend, the words to this missive appeared. I tried to track down its author and origins but alas - only dead ends. It seems to be part of the great iceberg of anonymous ramblings that get posted and reposted ad infinitum. In company offices of an earlier era it would have been photo-copied and thumb-tacked to the wall by the water cooler. Thank you, whoever you are, for taking the time to cleverly link these titles and verses together. They spoke to this boomer by birth (but anti-label by choice), so here’s a tune to make them sing.

Bob: Violin / Harmonica / Piano / Lead Voice / Backing Voices / Percussion
Matt: Slide Guitar / Electric Guitar / Drum Kit / Drum Programming / Electric Bass / Synthesizers / Mellotron / Vibraphone / Percussion