• To give credit to the artists and musicians whose work inspired my own love of music
• To spread the word about fellow songwriters and artists whose work I admire
• To provide a forum for promoting my own gigs and projects, and those of my friends

Hello, my friends... 

    Life continues to move at an incredible pace, leaving a myriad of changes in it's wake. Weatherwise, it wasn't much of a summer here in Buffalo, but the constant rain has recently given way to sunny skies and pleasant temperatures as we near the Equinox. 

    Memories abound of many great nights of music shared with various friends: Folk Feast 2000 at SUNY Buffalo; singing songs of the Indigo Girls and Peter, Paul & Mary around a beachfront campfire later the same night with Aerin Tedesco, Jenn Guillow, and Michael Schenkel; a rockin' set at this year's Allentown Art Fest shared with Katie Miller and Leah Zicari; a great blues jam the previous day with blues/boogie pianist Annie Phillipone and members of the all-woman blues-rock band Ethyl; appreciative audiences at Nietzsche's, Compton's, Ethereal Dreams, and the new Coffee Bean Cafe; watching the release of three young barn owls from a rain-soaked stage at Hawk's Creek; singing Malvina Reynolds' What Have they Done To The Rain to a great response from a crowd of environmental activists; sharing gigs with so many great songwriters and musicians.... 

    My 5th annual End of Summer Birthday Bash suffered a bit in attendance this year thanks to a scheduling conflict with the Buffalo Bills' televised home opener, but the tradition of great music continued, with wonderful sets by Mike Maffei and Kim Kerns; bluesman Kearney Fitzpatrick, singer-songwriters Jessica Grant, Mari Anderson, Lea Prentiss and Katie Miller (accompanied by Leah Zicari on electric bass), Ann Janish and Ray Lorigo of Cloudwall; Russian Hands & Roman Fingers; and a closing set by my son David Baldwin. 

    The winds of change also carried away two songwriters whose friendship and music is near and dear to my heart. Both Aerin Tedesco (Chicago IL) and Jessica Grant (Portland OR) will be sorely missed.... 

    Yet, the road that leads away can also lead back, as recent performances by Aerin, Tina Crapsi, and Celia White will attest.... 

    The end of summer also saw the realization of a long-awaited dream, with the release through MP3.com's Digital Automated Music format of two CDs of original material, titled Outside - Looking In and Full Circle Round.  The reaction to the music on the web thus far has exceeded my fondest expectations.

   All of the songs on Full Circle Round were recorded 'live' - acoustic guitar and voice into a single microphone - save for a lead guitar overdub on Wyoming Skies. The songs on Outide - Looking In were recorded in a similar fashion, save for three soundboard recordings taken from separate shows at Nietzsche's in Buffalo, one each in 1998, 1999, and 2000. The analog tapes were then digitally recorded, processed, and edited using Acoustica 2.11 and converted into MP3 files using Electronic Cosmo's Mpeg Suite 1.5. Many tracks contain minor imperfections - a creaking chair here, a bent note there, a muffled cough elsewhere - real life sounds not normally associated with high fidelity recordings. In this digital age, anyone with enough time and money can make a 'perfect' recording, but the songs on these CDs could only be created from one person's unique experience - my own....