Hands On – My first album of solo guitar rereleased

It’s just 40 years since I went into a studio and recorded a bunch of instrumental guitar pieces. I had recorded before. I’d been on recordings for other people, particularly with the Winter Consort, but this felt different. I’d always been hired to do a job, this time I was paying for it myself.  I wondered why I was doing it even as I was doing it. This album was originally called Jim Scott – Alone. But that sounds lonely, and there’s some happy music here, as well as spacey and meditative mood. So, we’ve changed the name.

I made what I think is a fine remastering of the album with Dan Searle of “Lit Honey Productions” in Framingham MA, and I’m kind of amazed how it sounds after all these years. Several of the tunes were ones we had been playing in the Consort at the time. I think it was done all in one week – and then what? I didn’t know anything about selling records. My repertoire of vocal songs was small at that point, only a few. I thought of myself as a guitar player who sometimes sang. In the ensuing years, as I wrote more songs and so many went in an activist direction, I found my identity to grow into.

A small record company put this album out in the 80s, along with two albums we made with the group Radiance, which was several of us who played together in the Paul Winter Consort. They manufactured cassettes of this one, but it never made it to a CD when that era came in. After a few years, I bought the albums back from GRD Records. Some of the music we made with that group is now reorganized on the albums For A Time and Instruments of Peace.

So finally, here’s my solo effort from 1981. I’d gone from classical guitarist to jazz (and any style music in bars) electric guitar, and then evolved to use the classical guitar on gigs, and then of course with the Winter Consort. This was my statement on the nylon string clasical guitar that, “I’m here.” I would say, “I arrived,” but I’m not sure where I arrived at.