The first two weekends in September will be spent in the recording studio of Peter Sprague in Leucadia, CA. We have been looking forward to this because this time, Steve has included his cousin from Albuquerque to record with the band. Jimmy Abraham, a blues/folk/Americana musician and composer like Steve (is there something about genetics going on here?), with two great CDs of his own, will stay with us for two weeks while we record enough material for two CDs this time. Hopefully, we will have studio time to record a few songs with just Steve, Jimmy and our son, Daniel and we’ll call them The Sons of Silas, because Steve and Jimmy are both the great grandsons of Silas Baird and Daniel is the great-great grandson of Silas. Silas Baird was the great-great grandson of the the Baird patriarch, Adam, who came to Charleston, SC in 1773 with his son, John. Or so the story goes.
This leads me to another subject. I have commissioned Steve to write enough songs for a genealogical CD about the migration of his family from Europe to America. Songs, like “The Old Yellow Picture” about my great-uncle will be included. But that will come in another couple of years as soon as I can take his manuscript away from him. The book he is re-editing has taken on a life of its own and there is always one more thing he wants to add to make it more cogent, more funny or more concise. The working title of the book is “The Evolution of Creation.” Unfortunately, we cannot find a publisher who understands that he wants the reader to see the continuum of thinking from man’s earliest religious concepts of creation to our modern science-based concepts of cosmology, origin of life and evolution.
The first recorded CD will be dedicated to Charles Darwin on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of his birth, 12 February 2009. It will contain most of the new biological songs sung at recent Darwin birthday concerts, among them being, “Born Down Near The Olduvai” about ‘Lucy,’ “Homo Habilis – Handy Man,” and “Acanthastega Blues.” The second CD will contain songs about Intelligent Design or the lack thereof; songs like “It Looks Designed” and “Ain’t No Rabbits In The Burgess Shale.” We will produce just enough CDs for sale at concerts because all the songs (as well as all the songs from the previous 4 CDs) will be given to a website like TuneCore for distribution to music outlets i.e. Sony, I-Tunes, etc. so you can pick and choose songs to buy to make your own MP3s to carry around on your I-Pod, or use as your cell phone ringer! These songs will be available in time for Darwin’s 200th birthday celebration in February.
At that time, we are planning a dinner concert February 12, 2009 at the UCSD Faculty Club to honor Charlie and his Theory of Evolution, the single best idea anybody ever had. Be sure to save the date for this tribute by The Galapagos Mountain Folk.