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Thread: Gerald Trimble

  1. #26
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    Default Re: Gerald Trimble

    This is available still, and was groundbreaking, memorable and quite superb - definitely crucial listening imho
    Kevin

    http://www.musicscotland.com/cd/Easy...Easy-Club.html

  2. #27
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    Default Re: Gerald Trimble

    there were two other albums, Chance or Design and then Skirlie Beat - not sure if the are on cd or download ....

  3. #28
    Registered User Mike Anderson's Avatar
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    Default Re: Gerald Trimble

    Quote Originally Posted by kmmando View Post
    This is available still, and was groundbreaking, memorable and quite superb - definitely crucial listening imho
    Kevin

    http://www.musicscotland.com/cd/Easy...Easy-Club.html
    Thanks for the link Kevin - they have Jock Tamson's Bairns too.

  4. #29

    Default Re: Gerald Trimble

    Quote Originally Posted by kmmando View Post
    I picked up an old copy of Geralds 1986 release "Crosscurrents", which I knew nothing about, and its full of sparkly picking on ringy and wellrecorded Sobell citterns and more. I haven't heard a lot about Trimble over the years - does he still perform and record?
    Hi.
    I'm the guitarist/co-arranger on the Crosscurrents album. I though you might appreciate some background on the long twisted story of that album. I had a copy of First Flight, which I loved. I went to see Gerald at a festival in NY, and approached him after his set. I learned that he had recently moved to just a few miles from me in CT. I asked for a lesson in Celtic music (I had already been a jazz guitar major at the New England Conservatory). By the end of the lesson, I was his accompanist, and within a few weeks, we became a duo, planning to make a duo album with equal billing (however, the record deal was his, and he paid for production). We were both Beatle freaks, frustrated jazz guitar players, celtic nuts, and quite fond of ECM jazz and the early windham hill fingerstyle guitar players. This was in the summer of '84. Gerald had completed but not yet released Heartland Messenger. Gerald was very generous by letting me tape much of his great collection of irish and scottish music, and he got me into Nic Jones.
    The way we'd work is that he would find or write a melody, and I would take the lead on arranging it, adding chords and rhythm. I did much of this while he was away and he kind of freaked out when he got back and heard what I had done. Gerald would add harmony melodies and structure the overall tune or set of tunes, and make the final call on everything. And later, in the studio, John Cunningham added some important ideas and parts. Much of this was pretty cutting edge: walking bass lines, bebop chords, modal vamps, key changes, solos. Two pieces he wrote by himself, and I added one short piece of my own. We had a great time. We had a few blazingly good duo pieces - more on that later. I think it was Gerald's idea to get a jazz bass player, and I reached out to Brian Torff, who was then playing with George Shearing. Michael O'Dhominail played guitar n the first two albums, and gerald had the idea to have him play piano on this album, but after hearing the demos he told us on a phone call that he thought we had it well in hand and had nothing to offer to this one. I think he was sincere when he said he liked the music.
    Personally, it was rewarding for me insofar as I got to arrange, compose, play solos, play fingerstyle, and use some open tunings. We had BIG plans.
    But it all went very south after we had finished tracking. I was finishing college at the time, after my time at NEC (we recorded the album as I was taking mid term exams). And I then was accepted to get a masters degree at Yale. This was a big deal for me. We had played very few gigs, less than 10 (the highlight was opening for Newgrass Revival at the Sanders Theater at Harvard, and for Greg Brown up in Vermont; we also had memorable gigs at the Town Crier in NY, in Woods Hole, MA, and at the U of Bridgeport - they had a great radio station. I'll always be thankful to the goggle eyed fan who came up after that show and said "I've never seen anything like that."). So I told Gerald I was going to go to grad school, but would be available to play gigs in the east coast any time, and tour across the country or beyond in the summer and over holidays and breaks. I figured by the time we had momentum, I'd be finished with school. This wasn't enough and he got mad. We argued. It escalated. We criticized each other's significant others. We were young hot heads, 25 and 27. In the end, he though I was ungrateful and owed him more, and I thought he was an unbalanced spoiled narcissist given to fantastical beliefs, and told him so. He had witches put a hex on me. We never spoke again. I later learned I was one of many in the wake.
    That was that. He erased as many of my parts as he could, most notably the duo work. Months later, after relocating back home to KC, he scheduled studio time with John Cunningham and rerecorded facsimiles of my parts using a second cittern, and finished what became the released album. Wendy Newton was as exhausted as everyone else and told me Gerald would never make an album for Green Linnet again, and he didn't (probably for the best, as we now know they were crooks).
    However, I have a recording of the intact rough mix, and recently digitized it and did a home mastering version of it. It's not perfect, but it documents what was and what might have been. It exists as one long file, I still have to break it down to individual files for each song.
    Gerald is a talented and interesting guy, who has been able to follow his muse with no other responsibilities or interruptions due mostly to an inheritance. I'm glad he does the music he does. He means well. I just wish his demons didn't get in the way.
    This is the first I've ever spoken of it. We're all older now, Johnny is gone, and Michael too. Wendy has disappeared. After Yale, I moved on to songwriting and my career outside of music. I still play avery day and have a very good studio at home. I did see Johnny once years later backstage in Chicago in the late 80's when he was touring the show that became the Silly Wizard live album. I was in a suit and tie and had come straight from my job in advertising. A good but strange moment, but he was friendly as could be.
    One little fun story: one song was rather uptempo and in the key of C. So when Tim Britten came in to play Uillian pipes on it, we sped up the tape to the key of D to fit his instrument, and he played his ass off at a faster tempo!!! Also, flautist and fife master Skip Healy was playing with Gerald at the time we met, and for a while we played as a trio. But they too had a falling out, so Skip left. I had envisioned a touring band of Gerald, Me, Skip, Tim, a fiddler, drummer, and bassist, like a modern, american, rocking, jazzy Bothy Band. But it was not to be. But I still sometimes envision it.
    My fondest memories of the experience are of wood floors, plaster walls, fast fingers and the sound of wood and steel made by two energetic and eclectic guys with endless ideas and their lives ahead of them.

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  6. #30
    Registered User mandrian's Avatar
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    Default Re: Gerald Trimble

    Hi,

    Thanks for sharing this story. Great reading even for those of us not familiar with the music.

    Regards

  7. #31
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    Default Re: Gerald Trimble

    Gerald Trimble has a new CD Uncharted which has been advertised in the UK world music magazine Songlines.

    He now concentrates on the viola de gamba.

    http://www.geraldtrimble.com/

    https://www.facebook.com/CelticAndWorldMusic/
    David A. Gordon

  8. #32
    Registered User DavidKOS's Avatar
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    Default Re: Gerald Trimble

    I haven't heard the name in a while either.

    Last time I saw Gerald he was in Mendocino and mandolin maker Ernie Fischbach and I re-headed Gerald's unusual 3 head Persian Tar.

    I'm glad he's still making music.

  9. #33

    Default Re: Gerald Trimble

    I was just listening to the clips above from First Flight and my kids gathered around... Now they are chasing him down on the Internet... A new generation is hooked...

  10. #34
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    Default Re: Gerald Trimble

    just subscribed to Gerald's You tube channel, there nothing for it I'm just going to have to sit down and learn this set

    Stormy Morning Orchestra

    My YouTube Channel

    "Mean Old Timer, He's got grey hair, Mean Old Timer he just don't care
    Got no compassion, thinks its a sin
    All he does is sit around an play the Mandolin"

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