FairyTale by InZaneCountry

Every sound you hear is me, no one else is involved. I don't use a recording studio, I do everything on my PC, right here at home, in Bristol, England, with very few resources, and almost no money! My only concession to the 'do it yourself' approach is that a friend 'masters' my work in her studio, but that is an essential step for anyone if they want 'radio ready' CD audio quality in their finished product..and I certainly do!

About the Album, 'Fairytale'

It's just a modern FairyTale........

This record is a very honest one. I could have taken the songs into a studio and spent a lot of time and money on musicians, professional sound engineers and technicians, and employed a professional producer to make a ‘Radio Ready’ quality album, just like the Country Music pro’s do. The truth is I didn’t have the money when I started the project, and I didn’t have the songs either. I didn’t even have the idea of making an album, and I certainly wasn’t a professional musician. When I started writing this music, my intention was to write one song. One song, to help lift someone’s spirits a little.

Donna and I had been friends for a while. She lives in Ohio, I live in England. We’d become friends over the internet, chatting about music, family, work, our domestic and social lives, the weather, anything and everything. We laughed a lot, mostly at life’s little idiosyncrasies, and we had a surprising amount in common, considering our very different cultures. Donna seemed slightly nutty, but in an endearing way. She was warm, caring, bright, witty and funny, with the tremendous personal quality of being able to laugh at her self, and that’s something I’ve always admired. Though she didn’t make a big thing out of it, slowly, from our internet conversations and e-mail exchanges, it began to dawn on me that Donna was bravely tackling some very difficult problems, problems that almost cost her life…On top of all that, her husband went to work one day, just as usual, and never came home. By the time Donna and her kids reached the hospital, it was too late, Sadly, Eddie had passed away. Clearly, I couldn’t do much to help, except try to keep her positive, so, I wrote ‘Donna’s Song’ just to help cheer her up, at a time when I know she felt afraid and alone, grieving for a lost life, wondering how to live a new one, and blaming herself for just about everything that ever befell her.

Just then, I was also at a crossroads in my life, and was wondering how to move on. I had been out of work once before, but, for the first time in my life, I really had lost my way. I felt a failure in life, burned out, mentally exhausted, down and depressed. After writing my first tune, I found writing the music helped me to cope. Maybe, I thought, it would help my friend Donna too. So, before too long, one song led to another, and the ‘FairyTale’ concept was born.

I decided, early on, that the album would be an ‘honest’ record, nothing too fancy. I could have raised the money to make ‘FairyTale’ a perfect album, in a studio, but, somehow, there was a risk of losing the ‘magic’. Instead, I decided, I would just write the songs, perform them, record them, and leave them just as they are; if there are imperfections, so be it, that’s the ‘FairyTale’ story…..just like real life, for most of us, we make it up as we go along, and hope for the best.

‘FairyTale’ is not just a collection of Country flavoured songs. It is the story, told as a musical allegory, of two people who ‘met’, four and a half thousand miles apart, at just the right time in their lives, to help and support each other through difficult times. The older I get, and the more I learn, the less I seem to know. However, oddly, making this record,‘FairyTale’, taught me something that, perhaps, I already suspected, but didn’t really want to accept. I knew that the world is a very strange and mysterious place…

I'm a trained Scientist and I understand and appreciate the subtlety of what modern Science is telling us about our world. The Universe's laws are slowly being unravelled, and Physicists can tell us much about the way the Universe works. What they are unable to do is show us the underlying reality, to tell us why the Universe works as it does, really what drives it...FairyTale taught me that the world is not just an infinite machine, something else lies behind the rules by which our world works.. What I do know, with certainty, is that the rules of our world allow us free will, and, it seems, the guidance to use it for the better, if you look hard enough. So, don’t give up, whatever troubles life throws your way…because a benevolent something, someone, out there, is waiting to help…

Follow the sign posts you are given, travel happily and well.

Sincerely,

George Bolam : InZaneCountry, November 2006

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