My old chum Matt Malley, one of the co-founders of Counting Crows back in the day and a very fine person to boot, sends me notice that he and the legendary Jon Anderson of Yes! fame have come together to produce a lovely charity single for this fall season.
The single, called Family Circle, features a typically awesome vocal from Sir Anderson, along with some fine lyrics and a suitably lush musical arrangement. It’s very nice indeed. So I trust you will support these fine artists, and the charities they are sending the money to, and hurry over to the store to purchase this fine track for your collection. This has been a public service announcement.
PS There’s an interesting story about how the two of them came about to produce the single.
“Not only am I a fan of Jon’s voice but I’m a fan of his fearless spiritual outlook which appears in all of his music. A mutual friend said we should meet and got us in touch and after talking a little, Jon said, ‘So send some music!’ – so I had a cup of my best Darjeeling tea, went into my studio and came up with the instrumental arrangement that you hear on ‘Family Circle’. I sent the file up to Jon and it came back with his marvelous voice, lyrics…everything that brought the song to becoming fully realized.” – Matt Malley
very nice
Lovely effort for the sake of the charity, but frankly all of Anderson’s stuff of the past several years sounds as if it was recorded on an iPad in his bedroom, with him just singing on top of some gentle music noodling. Perhaps he doesn’t have the lungs anymore but I would like to hear him sing a bit louder such as on Relayer or even the Ladder
Oh but forget about the technicals…that voice. :)