Touch The Earth by Derrik Jordan

It includes some older songs that you might remember from his days as leader of the well known southern Vermont-based band Cayenne - "Touch The Earth," "Love To Spare," Killing The Country," "Something's Gonna Change," and "True Love." Plus a number of new tunes. Featuring his 5 string electric violin playing throughout.

His song "Something's Gonna Change" from the CD won top honors as 2002 Reggae Song of the Year from Just Plain Folks, the world's largest songwriter organization.

Worldsoul Records "10% of profits for the planet"

Mitakuye Oyasin (a Lakota phrase which means "we are all related") and no nukes forever!

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Derrik Jordan Wins International Songwriting Award!!!

Well known southern Vermont musician, Derrik Jordan, has won 2nd place in the 2004 USA Songwriting Competition, known as the world's leading international songwriting competition. His song, "Speak Through Me," co-written with Stephanie Lewis and Lorraine Ferro won 1st place in the Gospel category and 2nd place overall out of 32,500 songs considered.

The song, from his first CD, "Expecting A Miracle," will be featured on a compilation CD put out by the organization and sent out to radio stations. It will be played on NPR's popular show Acoustic Cafe which has 1,000,000 listeners and also on XM radio. The prize awarded to Jordan and his co-writers totals $9000 in cash and merchandise. You can see the other winners and read more about the USA Songwriting Competition at http://www.songwriting.net.

"I'm delighted and deeply honored to have placed second in such a large song contest," says Jordan. "I've always felt that 'Speak Through Me' was a very special song. Hopefully this win will help my songs reach a wider audience and perhaps I'll even get some popular recording artists to record some of them, which is every songwriter's dream. I've been writing for 35 years but have never entered a song contest before this one. Maybe I should enter another one...."

The CD is available on CD BABY at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/jordan

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Derrik Jordan's first instrumental CD featuring his electric violin, "SuperString Theory - Exotic Duets and Improvisations" is also available on CD BABY. Featuring duets with Lisa Sokolov (vocalist extraordinaire and winner of the Downbeat Magazine's 2004 Jazz CD of the Year), Steve Leicach (balafon), Nebulai (didgeridoo), John Hughes (kora), Jared Shapiro (cello) and Barry Hyman (sitar) plus many other exotic and wonderful pieces. And you can hear it right here on CD BABY at - www.cdbaby.com/superstring

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DERRIK JORDAN RELEASES NEW CD, "TOUCH THE EARTH"

BRATTLEBORO, VT

Derrik Jordan has been composing songs for a very long time, many of which reflect his deep concern for the environment. His brand new CD "Touch The Earth" is a rare document that can be heard both as a concept album and a career retrospective.

"I have been writing songs since 1970 and one of my major themes has been nature and environmentalism," explained the Putney resident. "I thought it might be a good idea to include the best ones on a CD."

Area music fans will recognize songs such as the sprightly soul/funk "Love To Spare," the reggae-tinged "Killing The Country," and the rhythmic title track from two of Jordan's former bands, the popular Spunk and Cayenne, groups that, in their heyday, had folks dancing up a storm at The Common Ground.

The organic collection took more than a year to grow to fruition. Originally, Jordan envisioned a record where he played all of the parts, a la one of his musical inspirations, Stevie Wonder. But as the project progressed, Jordan's vision expanded.

"I kept wanting to hear things that I couldn't play, like horns and didgeridoo. So I created

arrangements that incorporated these elements and invited my friends (such as T-Bone Wolk, Johnny Yuma, Sean McLoughlin, Nebulai, and The Mighty Simba Horns) to join in." The versatile Jordan added vocals, violin, bass, flute, mandolin, djembe, steel pan and more than 20 other instruments.

At a recent performance at the Brattleboro Commons, Jordan and his Sundog Revolutionary Orchestra (actually Dan DeWalt on trombone, accordion, steel drum,

keyboards and bass along with Johnny Yuma on drums), performed with dexterity and exuberance both old and new originals that had feet tapping and hips shaking.

"Touch The Earth" (available through www.derrikjordan.com) deftly blends '70s style soul with flourishes of world beat-afro-pop, calypso-soca, samba, along with some infectious all-American funk. Lyrically, Jordan takes the high road, devoting his prayer-like anthems to his concerns about the degradation of environment.

Some of the new compositions were directly inspired by Jordan's interactions with Chief Phil Crazybull, a full blood Lakota medicine man who has recently been elected to be the international chief of his people.

"I had the very good fortune to meet him and work with him here in Putney where I am part of a traditional sweat lodge. I had the opportunity to do hanbleca with him, which is the ancient Lakota vision quest. It is a powerful ceremony where after some preparation you go out in the woods by yourself for four days and four nights without food or water ... You get a lot of time to think about your life and about what's important and not so important to you."

Two songs on the CD, "Indigenous" and "Standing Prayer" come directly out of Jordan's vision quest experience. The Bennington Middle School chorus performed "Standing Prayer" as part of its spring concert.

"They did a very enthusiastic job of it, too," Jordan said. "It seems to be getting a really strong response from people who hear it. I can't say that I understand why that is really, except that maybe it's just a song of the moment, something that people are already feeling inside themselves but can't put into words. It's a song about longing to be connected to all life on earth."

The part-time music teacher, record producer and political activist has a number of future projects in development. "I've got literally seven CD's planned. I've almost finished with one that features my electric violin playing with some great local musicians in improvisational duet settings. This winter I'll be working on a double CD of my best Brazilian flavored compositions, 23 sambas and bossa novas," he said.

Somehow, Jordan finds the time to play improvisational, indigenous music with Natural History, as well as with area newgrass mainstays The Stockwell Brothers, a wedding band, the horn-fueled Simba, as well as the aforementioned Sundog Revolutionary Orchestra, who will be backing Jordan at his CD release party Friday night at The Loft in Brattleboro.

The tireless singer added, "Did I mention that I'm married and have three kids?"

-Dave Madeloni, Brattleboro Reformer, September 19, 2002

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