Passo Gardena

This song came together entirely by accident. It is well known that I am in a Fleetwood Mac tribute band and while working out the guitar part for Silver Springs, I noticed a similarity with the guitar part for Rhiannon and starting playing around with it. Played on acoustic guitar, I ended up with a main riff that flowed well and so did a guide recording on my phone. Repeated listens showed promise, but that it was ultimately quite dull without a top line.

At the same time, I was recording a yet to be released track for Meg Scane and she thought the song needed some cellos. For Meg things needed to sound good and I ended up stumbling upon Spitfire Audio, who sell exceptionally expensive, but very high quality classical orchestration libraries and instruments. None of these could be justified financially, but it turns out they supply a whole host of free to download versions using the same basic sounds as their pricier big brothers. Many thanks to Spitfire for doing that as it has put some pretty tasty sounds in to my hands that I really have no right to have.

Naturally, I needed to learn how to use them before tackling Meg's track and having this riff there waiting to go, I set about building a full orchestration in support of that main riff. The results were very satisfying, but it still needed a top line and somehow it really didn't feel like vocals were the right direction. I have never released an instrumental before, not really feeling like I had an instrument that I could play with enough verve to do it justice. However, my touch on guitar has been improved by my playing in the Fleetwood Mac band, where there is quite a lot of improvisation on the early Peter Green blues tracks and so I decided to give it a go.

You can be the judge of whether I was successful, but the track put me in mind of a day when driving through the Dolomites with friends a few years ago. We were driving up out of Selva and stopped at the location where the picture for the cover was taken. By chance, Ara Batur by Sigur Ros was playing while we got out of the car to take in the view and the gravity of both he song and the landscape left us all in tears. When listening to this track, it takes me back to that moment and so I have named it after that stunning road.

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