Folk Musician Dvorak back home with new CD
RIVERSIDE IL - When singer-songwriter Mark Dvorak began his career in music, he knew right away he was in it for the long haul. Thirty-four years later, “Back Home,” his latest release on Ten Fingers, marks an important milestone.
“At this stage of the game,” said Dvorak, “I feel like I’m doing my best work. ‘Back Home’ has a lot of variety, and is a sampling of what I like to do before a live audience.”
Of the ten tracks on the disc, three of them were recorded live, at a WFMT 98.7 fm “Folk Stage” event in 2012: “Ruben You Can Play Your Banjo,” “I Hate to See the Summer Go,” and Dvorak’s rousing commentary, “It’ll Be Better.”
“North Platte, Nebraska,” is a spoken word essay, from Dvorak’s 2013 book, “Bowling for Christmas & Other Tales from the Road.”
“Once I Had an Old Banjo,” is a traditional song Dvorak learned from a 1965 cassette recording of Old Town School of Folk Music banjo legend Fleming Brown teaching it to his class. Dvorak also arranged the medley, “Over the Waterfall / Arkansas Traveler,” two tunes he, “picked up somewhere along the way and have always admired,” he said. They are done in a style Dvorak describes as, “a strange hybrid of Pete Seeger’s approach to the banjo. I just stayed with it until it seemed to work.”
Two classics from the Great American Songbook are also included in the set. “It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie,” was first recorded by Fats Waller in 1936 and over the years has become a concert favorite for Dvorak. George and Ira Gershwin’s “Someone to Watch Over Me,” “was a challenging arrangement to get on top of,” said the singer. “The melody is just beautiful; the theme eternal,” he said.
“This is the first project where I did everything myself,” he said. “I arranged all the material and played all the instruments. I took all the photographs, except for one, and designed the jacket.”
“All the tracks were recorded in my upstairs studio here at home in Riverside, Illinois,” Dvorak added. “I have lots of new ideas and hope to do at least one CD a year.”
The officcial release date for “Back Home” is July 15, when it will be available from iTunes, amazon.com, CDBaby.com and the markdvorak.com store.
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