Some time ago, I began to experience a compelling urge to put down in durable form (make a record of) a representative selection of such tunes, and this is the result. (Debuting exceptions are Little Wheel Spin and Spin, which I always meant to be in the repertoire for all that time, and Circle Back, which, for a change of pace, revisits a world-music sort of place you might have come across in the group's middle period.)
I view this collection as a “subset” of the larger eclecticism of Stone Soup. It is more of a type, certainly, yet nonetheless plenty varied, I would like to think.
~pkf
New Album Release!
Entitled Big Wheel Turn, the new CD Album takes a bit of a side trip from the customary breadth of the group's signature eclecticism to instead collect a particular group of longtime favorites, as explained in the liner notes:
The name “Stone Soup” conveys a premise and a promise of eclecticism. (It is derived from the European folk tale where some of everything in the villagers' larders ends up going in the pot.) Our previous release probably couldn’t be more obvious in that way. In fact, it was deliberately tilted in an almost musicological direction to emphasize what we (the people in the group at that time) felt made us unique. This album has a different purpose. It does not try to represent or indicate the particular eclectic range of the current members of Stone Soup. Instead, it focuses mostly on songs that were there at the group’s founding or added early on, and have been standbys through the years.
