"This Moment" by Clint & Castille

2 hours, 34 minutes, 24 seconds

If you take all of the Clint & Castille collaborations to date and play them one after another, it takes two hours, 34 minutes, and 24 seconds to listen to them all. That's about 40 songs in all.........(and that's not even considering other collaborations we've done with The QuarryBastards and "The Lovely Kim")
Typical commercial CDs contain 11 or 12 songs, so that is nearly enough material for 4 of them !!

We've been working together since May 17, 2007. That was the day I surprised the hell out of Mr. Hollinson by posting "Fall At Your Feet", which I created by taking his performance of that song off of Youtube and adding several tracks to his original guitar and vocal.
This bold and "cheeky" move on my part was met with quite a positive response and so I was encouraged to do more . . . and more . . . and more. And so here we are, almost 2 1/2 years and 40 songs later. So here's the complete list in chronological order, more or less, starting with that great Crowded House tune and ending up with a song we just finished writing and performing ourselves called "This Moment".

Fall at Your Feet ~ 3:36
Waterloo Sunset - 3:11
Four Seasons In One Day - 3:09
For No One - 2:17
Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? ~ 3:19
Hey There Delilah - 4:03
More Than Us - 4:05
Angels Fear to Tread - 3:33
Weather With You - 3:19
Coming Back to Life - 7:02
You Do Something To Me ~ 3:19
Who Feels Love ~ 4:12
Anytime - 3:26
SILENT PRAYER - 3:32
42 (coldplay) - 4:06
Yellow - 4:05
Silent Prayer (STEREO) - 3:25
She Loves You - 2:40
It's Only Natural - 3:44
Nobody Wants To - 4:06
True Love Ways - 2:49
Gravity - 4:30
English Rose - 2:52
Delilah - Version 2 - 4:30
Where Did It All Go Wrong - 3:17
Viva La Vida - 4:26
Fix You - 4:45
Stand By Me - 5:43
Don't Dream It's Over ~ 4:18
The Hardest Part:::4:41
Distant Sun::4:02
We Can Work It Out ~ 2:20
What If - 4:59
Talk ~ 5:22
Sonnet_3:56
This Never Happened Before ~ 3:35
Echoes - 9:05
This Moment ~ 5:00

Clint and Castille new song

Finished the final bit of fine-tuning on our new original, no title yet. Minuet in D Major has been suggested by me several times but Mr. Hollinson has thus far given no indication of approval. He's generously offered to make the video for this one, which is a real break for me as I am having increasing difficulty trying to develop any new ideas, given the rather primitive video tools I have at my disposal.

At any rate, the song is pretty much finished. And,since I have only a few followers (2 followers to be exact, counting Clint), I may post it here first in some form or another. Stay tuned.

Happy Dogs

George was quite intimidating when I first met him. This was to be expected as I happened to be courting his first born child, Rachel. But it took no time at all before he made me feel completely welcome in his home, and really didn't seem to mind at all the attentions I gave his daughter. In fact, the entire family made me feel so comfortable right from the outset - and I think that George set the tone and everyone else followed suit. I'm sure that if I had rubbed him the wrong way, his wife and kids would have sensed that and it could have meant the gradual disintigration of my relationship with Rachel. So I thank him for that.

When Rachel and I decided to marry, I decided that it was right and proper to ask George for his daughter's hand. We set up a meeting at the dining room table and when I arrived that evening I think I was at my worst. I recall that I was very nervous...literally shaking in my boots. I can't actually recall very much about the conversation that we had except the ending. When I finally summoned the courage to ask for his blessing to marry Rachel, he smiled broadly, cleared his throat and declared: "Well....By ALL MEANS !!" And I thank him for that, although, to this day, I am still thinking about his answer and I often wonder if there could be more than one valid interpretation.

My father passed away about four years later. George, although he knew no one can replace your own dad, came as close as anyone could to accomplishing exactly that. Pop treated me with so much kindness and understanding over the years. I always felt he treated me as one of his own boys. And I thank him for that.

In the past 25 years I have had many great conversations with Pop. Discussions covering so many varied topics. He was interested in just about everything and could converse easily on virtually any subject, profound or mudane. Some of the most memorable talks we had were about the simplest of things. One of our recurring themes seemed to be "dogs". Pop loved dogs and loved talking about dogs, regaling me with stories of Fritzie, Bernie, and many other long gone family pets. Last Thursday was my last conversation with Pop. We discussed a number of things and had a very happy and pleasant talk. Finally he asked the question he had asked me so many times before: "How's Maya?" ( Maya is my dog )
"Maya is just great, Pop.", I replied...."I was just outside and I looked over at her and she was just standing there smiling at me !"

There was a short silence, and then a soft chuckle.

"Happy dogs...." was the response I heard over the phone. It wasn't so much a response to me. More like he was simply describing the image I had put in his mind.

"Happy dogs..."

Thank you Pop.

Mamas, Papas, Clint, and Castille

I think I need to force myself to attend to this blog thing otherwise it will end up just another ghost flailing around in the electronic netherworld. OK...the latest is that I'm waiting on Jane to complete her vocal tracks for our 2nd Mamas & Papas tune on YouTube. I have to admit I'm a little creeped out by the latest scary story about John Phillips (as revealed by his daughter on Oprah), but he's dead now, and not around to defend himself - and the daughter is doing a book promotion right now. So I remain a bit skeptical.

My current obsession is a new song, an original inspired by an idea Mr. Hollinson had about a week ago which he shared with me. I've long been dabbling in the art of songwriting - but this is new because I'm actually working on lyrics. I'm not real sure of myself in this regard. Have tried many times in the past to write lyrics, but every single word I've written so far has ended up in the trash. This time it seems different because Clint is doing it with me so I feel propped up and egged on by his enthusiasm. I should take this moment to thank Clint publicly for the musical experience I've had over the last several years. My confidence level has taken a quantum leap upward since working with him. The guy is a true star and a great friend. Clint & Castille is the best band I've ever been in.