January 2024: a 2023 retrospective

Here are just some of the highlights: Kevin McElroy is a Portland ME-based fiddler, mandolinist, guitarist and vocalist whose music sits firmly in the Irish Tradition. I’ve had a lot of fun playing music with Kevin up at Blue in Portland, and it was delight to work with him on his first vocal-centered CD. Kevin tours with the great Irish …

Summer 2021 Update

Lots of activity these past few months: Concord NH’s Lynda Nelson, whose first CD Forever in a Song we produced in Nashville, has completed the recording of a second Nashville-style CD right here at MPM Studio New England! We enlisted two excellent Boston-based musicians, Jesse Williams on bass and Grant Smith on drums to join me on acoustic guitar for …

Late Fall Update: London Bluegrass, Celtic Women, Nashville singer/songwriters.

A very busy Fall season at MPM Studio:  an intense session this past weekend with absolutely lovely Irish traditional tunes and songs from Celtic Woman stars Máiréad Nesbitt (fiddle), Lynn Hilary (vocals) and Eimar McGoewn (Flute, Tin Whistle), with composer/producer Tim Janis. This week, popular British bluegrass trio Lunch Special, fresh from a summer full of European festival performances (including the legendary …

NH’s Lynda Nelson ‘Forever in a Song’: New England to Nashville and back!

What a blast making this music was! When Lynda Nelson of Concord  NH came to my studio to start working on recordings of her songs, it became immediately apparent that putting her music in the hands of the legendary ‘Nashville Cats’ would be the way to go.  I knew Lynda’s exuberant positivity would bring out the best in Music City’s …

Josephine County- Celtic/American fusion

Those who know me and my eclectic and far-ranging musical tastes know that there’s usually one bridge I rarely cross: the fusion of idioms and styles.  All of that conservatism is shattered with this new project from 4 of my absolute favorite musicians/singers: Hanz Araki, Colleen Raney, Matt Shipman and Erica Brown.  I must say that I’ve always found that …

Liz and Dan Faiella

These are two of the finest young New England Celtic musicians I know, and it’s been an absolute delight to work with them on what was essentially a ‘live in the studio’ project.  Liz’s fiddle tone posed absolutely no challenges to the microphone, Dan’s guitar is so good it almost makes this aging guitar player a little mad!     …

Cathy Wilson: Celtic-flavored folk/country from Tennessee

My latest trip to Nashville yielded some more beautiful tracks from Cookeville Tennessee singer-songwriter Cathy Wilson, with further overdubs and mixing back here in (cooler?-not so much, lately) Portsmouth.  Bill Verdier on fiddle, John Mock on mando/banjo/whistle/drum, Jeff Taylor this time back on his first instrument, piano.

Latest Nashville sessions

March 16-19 found me in Nashville, producing and playing acoustic guitar on three days of recording. Song demos with various songwriters using my trusty team of Nashville A-list musicians, including Chris Leuzinger (Garth Brooks and just about everyone else), Gary Prim (Zac Brown Band, Alan Jackson, John Fogerty, etc.), Wayne Killius (Blake Shelton, Kenny Rogers, Luke Bryan, etc.). And, continued …

Jordan Tirrell-Wysocki Trio w. Dave Surette & Joe Deleault

 Jordan and his gang spent a memorable Sunday in December cooking up the new theme song for a major New Hampshire TV show (not sure if I can reveal more details), composed and arranged by JTW. Great work, lads, with modern sounding high-energy tracks including everything I love about traditional New England tune-playing.  Looking forward to the video, release time …

Catching up, May 2017

Here’s a problem with a blog-type website: I get so busy making music with all the wonderful people who come through my studio doors that I have no time to chronicle it all.  I promise I’ll catch up soon with more formal postings with pics and clips, but here’s a brief look at what’s been happening: Carrigan and Blair are …

Chris Vaughan: Portsmouth’s ‘Great Scot’!

One of the first projects that came to me at Mill Pond Music about five years ago involved my adding a few guitar parts to and mixing the Dave Hallowell-produced CD by Portsmouth’s Scot-about-town, bon vivant Chris Vaughan.  There’s now a new collection of his songs, ‘Americana 1974’. The production is in a folk-country vein, yours truly playing all the instruments, with bluesy …

Mill Pond Music : the Voice of Matlab

Everyone in the world of science, technology, engineering and mathematics knows Mathworks and its offshoot Matlab.  Their tutorial videos are concise, engaging and entertaining, and MPM Studio right here in Portsmouth is happy to contribute its pristine voice-over signal chain to their outstanding quality.  The vintage restored Neumann U 87, arguably the most well-know and respected broadcast microphones ever made, along …

Carrigan & Blair

Full disclosure:  I know Mike Blair and Steve Carrigan well, having played many a gig and concert with them as a part of Portsmouth’s Maritime/Celtic Folk ensemble Great Bay Sailor.   Great fun it was to blast through some of the songs we love on this new collection entitled O Chroi.  Thanks, Mike for giving me free rein to do all the instrumental …

Cathy Wilson: Celtic Folk in Cookeville TN

Out of the blue, while waiting for a plane at the Nashville airport, I got a call from Cathy.  She had found the Mill Pond Music Studio website on line, had seen all the Celtic Tribute Series CDs I’d produced and had read about all the wonderful Celtic acts that have found their way to my workspace, but had just realized I …

John Carew: Boston’s Celtic Folk troubador

John is one of the first musicians I met when I started exploring the idea of moving back to New England from Nashville.  I think it was in 2005, just after spending a wonderful week in upstate NY accompanying world-renowned fiddler Craig Duncan, a long-time colleague who was being inducted into the Northeast Fiddler’s Hall of Fame.  I stepped into a …

Mt. Philo: Young Folk-Rockers from Middlebury VT

It started with an urgent call from mandolinist/dobroist Eli Orland- his band Mt Philo’s fall break recording session at a studio in CT had fallen through at the last minute, and might I be able to accommodate them in a couple of days for a long-anticipated weekend of recording.  Eli had found me through a Nashville connection we share, and …