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I recently decided to just jam on the piano with the tape rolling to see what might transpire, trying to have a little fun and break out of a musical rut. While playing I hit upon/fell into an old piece written by one of my best friends, Bryan Celano, who I've written about before.

As the jam progressed, I ended up piecing together two of Bryan's pieces of music -- two of my favs of his. The first one is a really cool 6/8 rhythmic intro to a song that we never played live or recorded. I think we only rehearsed it once and I can't remember the rest of the song other than that really cool intro, which always gets me going and has been entrenched in my memory ever since Bryan played it for me. This is what starts this recording, until about 1:17. It gets reprised and expounded upon from 2:48-3:34, then briefly reprised again at the very end to bring it home.

The other bit, which takes up a majority of this recording, was from a piano piece that Bryan called, "All In A Student's Dream", which we only played part of live a couple of times, usually with Bryan on piano and me on drums. We usually threw it in between a couple of other numbers as a linking section, or as an off-the-cuff intro to another song. To make it mesh with the 6/8 intro-jam (shoe-horn it in is more like it), it is rendered as a 6/8 piece the first time it is introduced, with a number of variations, before I forcibly kick it into 4/4 at the 3:49 mark, at which point I continue through with lots of variations until I decided to make it more "dream-like" and add a little contrast by throwing in a free-form piano solo, which vaguely makes use of some of the chord progressions from the rest of the piece.

At 6:20, the song returns and from that point forward is rendered as closely as possible to the way Bryan used to play it, with the piano in the forefront. On the repeat, a lead synth, along with a subtle bass pedal and mellotron string/choir layer is added, which is what I think we we'd have done with it in the old days if we'd ever have recorded it. A short reprise of the 6/8 intro jam was reprised at the end to round it out.

Bryan's response to this (in part):
"It's like you crawled inside my head and created exactly what I was imagining when I wrote it. I love the changes you've put in there. Dude, it is exactly how I heard it in my head, I just couldn't play piano well enough to express it. Holy Moly. It sounds like a lost track from the boys from Genesis (start with a Bank of Tony Rigatoni, shake it up with rhythm and Thyme for PHILavor, squeeze low pedel tones on the [Mike] Rutherford side, [Steve] Hackett up with sizzling melodic tones, and serve HOT!!!) Swwweeet."

Bryan has very graciously allowed me to present this recording as this month's offering. I can't thank him enough, not only for unknowingly helping me out of my little musical rut, but for his friendship and musical/spiritual influence/encouragement through the years. The years we spent playing music together were a huge key/influence in helping me become the musician and person I am today.

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