About this product

Product Identifiers

Record LabelCD Baby, Cdb

UPC0837101309554

eBay Product ID (ePID)24046063570

Product Key Features

FormatCD

Release Year2007

GenreCountry

ArtistVarious

Release TitlePrairie Glimpses

Dimensions

Item Weight0.21 lb

Additional Product Features

Number of Tracks16

Number of Discs1

TracksPrairie Glimpses, Mill Creek Road - Lee Wright, What Jacob Reilly Saw - Judy Coder, Sunflower Song, Cotton Shirt of White, Fly Away-Amelia's Song, Blessed Be, Santa Fe Trail, Arikaree Breaks, Walk My Brother - Lemuel Sheppard, Farmers Bride, Rock of Earth, Ghost of Susan Fox - the Alferd Packer Memorial String Band, Damsel in Distress, Prairie Straight Line Wind - Anthony Delallo, Woman of the Sojourn

NotesDiane's Story about Prairie Glimpses: When Cally called me in the fall of 2002 I had just been laid off my job at a local television station. I decided to try teaching private music lessons at my house, teaching alternative styles of violin, like bluegrass and Celtic music. I knew that if I was ever going to make my living doing what I loved, this was the time. The minute I declared myself a teacher the students started coming. Cally was one of the first ones. My first memories of music is my dad playing records of classical music and Broadway shows. My mother, Shirley Meek, had been a music major at Washburn and my father, Fred Meek, had been an art major at Washburn. His father, my grandpa, had been a musician, having his own vaudeville show and traveling the northwest circuit. My uncle George had a great record collection of Sousa Marches and my favorite was Alvin and the Chipmunks. Because of my roots it's no surprise that I've been a musican all my life. I learned piano first, because my parents both played. Then when I was in the fourth grade you could pick an instrument to play in the school. We had a violin that my mom had used in college, so that was how I ended up playing the fiddle. Interestingly enough later on I discovered that my mother's grandfather had also been a fiddler. Musically, my first love was the band, The Monkees. I was 10 years old and I knew I was destined to be a rock and roll drummer. Then I heard Simon & Garfunkel, Peter Paul & Mary, James Taylor, John Denver, and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. I bought my first guitar when I was twelve years old and taught myself to play. I still remember the first tune I learned, "Gentle on My Mind". I played until I had to put band-aids on my finger tips so I could keep playing. I started taking private violin lessons when I was 13 and I was asked to join the Topeka Symphony when I was fourteen. I went to Washburn University on a Topeka Symphony Scholarship and graduated with a degree in Violin Performance in 1978. I never did get to play the kind of music I wanted on the violin with the exception of playing for musicals. I played for many different musicals for various groups around the Topeka area. The good thing about musicals is that I got to play a lot of different musical styles. Finally, after turning twenty-six, I was able to meet up with some people that played Bluegrass Music. As I mentioned, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's music was the style that spoke right to my heart. It was kind of a soft rock/bluegrass style. That was how my journey into Bluegrass Music began. I had to figure it out for myself because there were no local instructors in roots style music in the area. I played with a couple of different bands before joining up with the bluegrass band, Pastense in the summer of 1995. We have since recorded three CDs. I have become a fairly good bluegrass fiddler and I won the Kansas Fiddling and Picking Championship in 2002. All this leads up to the style of music I composed for the Kansas Song Project. I have been influenced by so many great artists over the years. I love the acoustic sound. I have used guitar, fiddle, mandolin, piano, dobro, and banjo in different configurations. I wanted this CD to have an totally acoustic sound. I wanted a common thread running throughout all the songs. A sound like playing in your living room, or being at a family gathering where several people played instruments and sang songs together. I composed most of the songs with the help of the performing artists assisting in the arrangements. I felt that I did not want to compose all the songs on the CD because I didn't want everything to sound alike. I also wanted to allow the other performing artists to have ownership in the arrangements of the songs. I stayed open to what other people might be hearing in the music and what strengths they brought to the songs. It was important to me from the start that we were all bringing something special to the project and