If you're in Chicago, make sure to check out Brian on the first Friday of each month live at The Whistler: whistlerchicago.com/calendar.

Says Brian, “looking back now, I can see the trajectory that led from the beginning of the pandemic to Acoustic Pastime – Solo Guitar. At the time, I was grounded—literally, forced to cancel a fully planned trip to Ghana in March 2020—coping with the sudden halt in my work as a human rights lawyer and the fear surrounding the disease. So I refocused on something I could control, things I could create despite everything—playing solo guitar, recommitting myself to writing music, and learning to record. Acoustic Pastime is the result and my first solo effort.

Central to all of this was my Martin acoustic guitar, with all its warmth, rich resonance, and imperfections. The instrument came my way just as I started exploring playing solo guitar. I had come full circle from the beat-up, $26 red acoustic my uncle Robbie bought me after I showed interest in a friend’s at age 12. Inspired by my new instrument, I decided to record an entire album on steel-string, using only my fingers—no pick—to draw out the depth of its sound and find a groove to navigate the lonely space of solo guitar.

I also took inspiration from the brilliant American maverick Thelonious Monk, whose I Mean You was one of the first jazz tunes I ever learned in high school. Monk’s Pannonica is also an ever-present joy and challenge to play with its shifting harmonies and languid melody. And I still remember the first time I heard Betty Carter’s version of Moonlight in Vermont from her 1955 album Meet Betty Carter and Ray Bryant—such elegant, soulful phrasing. I’ve been in love with the song ever since, arranging and rearranging it many times for solo guitar. With these pieces, I hope to add my voice to the rich, constantly evolving jazz guitar tradition.

My own pieces are a little harder for me to pin down. I hope you’ll enjoy reading my uncle, award-winning poet Christopher Citro’s liner notes. He captures their essence and shares his singular, lyrical interpretation of their feel and sound. I listen to and am influenced by so much music it’s difficult to say from where my compositions come. I can say that over the years I’ve learned to dedicate myself to following my ear and heart when I write, to chase what I’m hearing and feeling rather than what I “should” be writing or playing. My hope is that this results in earnest, engaging music.

With Acoustic Pastime, I’m also coming back full circle to ears&eyes Records, who released my 2007 album, Video Gum Culture’s Perseverance with Charles Gorczynski, Nate Lepine, Ernie Adams, and Harrison Bankhead. Since then, I’ve been extremely fortunate to live, work, and play music around the world in Cuba, India, Ghana, and elsewhere. Recently, I’ve held down a monthly solo guitar residency at The Whistler here in Chicago, where I’ve debuted the new pieces from this album and refined my solo guitar playing. Constant during all this is a desire to make compelling music inspired by the people around me and the traditions I love, connecting with listeners as directly as possible. Acoustic Pastime – Solo Guitar moves me further along this journey. I hope it moves you as well …” - Brian Citro, Chicago, May 2022

====================================================

Liner notes
by award-winning poet Christopher Citro.

I Mean You (Thelonious Monk, Coleman Hawkins) The title reaches out for us, and this tune does the same. Brian interprets the tunes of Monk so beautifully. He lives inside them like cozy little houses with unusual windows. This song is like those days when I wake up in a good mood, my clothes are soft and warm, fit correctly on my body, and I feel capable for the day ahead; I don't feel that way very often, but I want to. What a great tune to open this album, a fitting doorway through which to begin this intimate journey together: we three: Brian, his guitar, and the listener.

All I Do The title has the same rhythm as the opening title (with which it rhymes), and it takes the musical baton from Monk, from "you" to "I," as it continues our journey. There's such warmth and breath between each of those chops of Brian's palm on the strings. I love how this tune keeps rising, over and over, even when things get off balance, a little damaged, slightly chromatic and askew—it takes a breath and comes back again, to lift us up.

Plateaus & Inclined Planes We're in the midst of life's exciting hustle-bustle. It's a summer's day and I want to do six different things simultaneously. It's all so lovely out there! This song makes me feel like I can have all six of those at the same time. Sunlight stretches across the room. I look over at my lover. She's smiling. She's coming along too.

March Ballad The earth is thawing. A long winter is coming to an end. That yellow thing in the sky? That's the sun. It hasn't forgotten us. This song is like watching water bubbles moving under an ice-covered stream. The grip is loosening. We catch a glimpse of our face reflected as we lean in.

Back to Ghana This song tells me things are going to be okay. Get up off the floor—it knows I've been on the floor—brush off the dust and go look at the sky, there's a little cloud up there in the shape of an egg; things are going to be okay. In Kurt Vonnegut's 1998 novel Timequake, the world wakes from an unbearable, years-long natural catastrophe. We're confused and frightened. Kilgore Trout comes along to tell us: "You were sick, but now you're well again, and there's work to do." This helps people. A lot.

Moonlight in Vermont (John Blackburn, Karl Suessdorf) A tune about Vermont written by a guy living in California (Karl Suessdorf), popular during WW2, especially among GIs stationed overseas. A song of remembrance and longing, fleeting like moonlight. The lyrics were written by a guy who grew up in northeastern Ohio, like Brian did. The words to this song are written as a series of haikus, moments that "extend past the perimeter of what is said" (in the words of poet Jane Hirshfield). In this instrumental version, those lyrical rhythms persist. We are the moonlit stream some sycamore leaves fall into—the song's notes drop onto the water—and the ripples continue inside us.

Postcards from a Relative So beautiful! Chords and string slaps ring out as the song pulses along, with lovely little runs inside each rising wave. Everything comes to a pause in the middle followed by an especially gorgeous new melody inside the song's larger tune—is there a name for a solo inside a song that's already a solo? One particular postcard stops us in our tracks, dives down into our heart and hums there quietly for a moment, and then we go back about our day.

Pannonica (Thelonious Monk) A tune Monk named for his stalwart friend and patron, the Baroness—a woman named after a moth, Nica, to those who knew her. Listening to Brian's music, I pulled my vinyl copy of Monk's 1963 album Criss-Cross and re-read the liner notes Pannonica wrote for it. When she described that album as "the happiest of albums, leaving one with an extraordinary feeling of elation," I couldn't help think that those words suit Brian's album as well. Quiet elation. When this tune lands on its final resonant chords, we feel we've arrived, completed the journey we began with "I Mean You," and whenever I land there I want to go back and take the trip all over again.