{"id":105,"date":"2007-11-14T14:46:26","date_gmt":"2007-11-14T19:46:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/2007\/11\/14\/bill-cooley-cds\/"},"modified":"2007-11-14T14:46:26","modified_gmt":"2007-11-14T19:46:26","slug":"bill-cooley-cds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/2007\/11\/14\/bill-cooley-cds\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Cooley CDs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In <a href=\"https:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/25\/kathy-mattea-at-joes-pub\/\" title=\"Kathy Mattea at Joe's Pub\">this<\/a> post about Kathy Mattea at Joe&#8217;s Pub, I mentioned that I thought that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.billcooleymusic.com\/\" title=\"Bill Cooley\" target=\"_blank\">Bill Cooley<\/a> was possibly the best acoustic guitarist I have ever heard. I&#8217;m glad I said <em>possibly<\/em>, because only four days later, I saw <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cgtrio.com\/\" title=\"California Guitar Trio\" target=\"_blank\">California Guitar Trio<\/a> at BB King, and as my <a href=\"https:\/\/www.opticality.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/29\/california-guitar-trio-at-bb-king\/\" title=\"California Guitar Trio at BB King\">post<\/a> on that concert attests, all three of them are amazing as well. I haven&#8217;t changed my mind on Bill, I&#8217;m just glad I allowed for others to be in his league, by adding <em>possibly<\/em>. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n<p>So, as I reported, I immediately ordered both of Bill&#8217;s CDs. I was lucky enough to have Bill himself respond to my email, and he informed me that his first CD, Unravel&#8217;d, was officially <em>out of print<\/em>. He offered to burn a copy for me, and he also had the original artwork for the CD cover, so I would be getting nearly the same experience as purchasing the original CD. (Yes, folks, I paid for that, so don&#8217;t think Bill is or should be giving anything away!).<\/p>\n<p>I ordered two sets of each CD, so that we could give one away as a gift should the urge hit us.<\/p>\n<p>Both CDs just showed up a little while ago, and I was like a kid at Christmas unwrapping them. Having the <em>burned<\/em> CD is an extra treat, because Bill hand wrote the title of the CD and his name, and on one of the two, it&#8217;s more like a signature, so I have a signed copy of his original CD, which I would not have had if I had bought a shrink-wrapped original. Cool!<\/p>\n<p>The range of music on Unravel&#8217;d is impressive, and his playing is exceptional throughout. As the styles change, so do the variety of instruments that accompany him, including horns, flutes, harmonica, drums, etc. Bill picks, strums, uses a slide, sometimes all at once (no, I&#8217;m not kidding), and it&#8217;s simply gorgeous. I&#8217;ll be listening to this CD over and over, it&#8217;s a real treat!<\/p>\n<p>The newer CD is A Turn In The Road. The first song Butter Fingers is really cool, and is a nice double entendre.  Obviously, Bill is anthing <strong><em>but<\/em><\/strong> a <em>Butter Fingers<\/em> in the classical sense of that meaning. Of course, his fingers are as smooth and rich as butter, so that part applies. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n<p>On the second track, Uno Tuno, there is both a really good electric guitar playing, as well as a superb acoustic one, so I&#8217;m not sure if the song is dubbed, and he plays both, or if someone is accompanying him on the electric guitar.<\/p>\n<p>The third track, The Voice Of The Wind is in a more classical guitar style (and you know how much I love that!), accompanied only by violins (or some other strings, cello, etc.). OK, OK, I&#8217;ll stop describing each individual song.<\/p>\n<p>Obviously, even though there were seven years between the release of these CDs, Bill didn&#8217;t lose his touch. A Turn In The Road is gorgeous as well!<\/p>\n<p>According to Bill, his third CD will be coming out in 2008. I for one, can&#8217;t wait!<\/p>\n<p>I checked the Tour Dates section of Bill&#8217;s site, and nothing in the near future can really be worked into our schedule. That said, one show in particular really intrigued me, and I&#8217;ll mention it here, since I have a number of buddies who live in Minneapolis.<\/p>\n<p>Kathy Mattea (and therefore Bill!) are performing with the Minneapolis Orchestra on December 21st, in a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.minnesotaorchestra.org\/season\/event_detail.cfm?id_event=5955219\" title=\"Kathy Mattea and the Minneapolis Orchestra in a Christmas Concert\" target=\"_blank\">Christmas Concert<\/a>. Aside from an opportunity to see Bill live, this sounds like a special opportunity to see Kathy perform her magic as well. If you can be in Minneapolis on December 21st, you should lock in your tickets now! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, you just have to love it when you look forward to something as much as I was looking forward to getting Bill&#8217;s CDs, and not being disappointed when the day finally arrives! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this post about Kathy Mattea at Joe&#8217;s Pub, I mentioned that I thought that Bill Cooley was possibly the best acoustic guitarist I have ever heard. I&#8217;m glad I said possibly, because only four days later, I saw California Guitar Trio at BB King, and as my post on that concert attests, all three [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17,2],"tags":[80,84,77,1367],"class_list":["post-105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-2","tag-bill-cooley","tag-california-guitar-trio","tag-kathy-mattea","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticality.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}