Melon by Mike Viola & Kelly Jones

Mike Viola and Kelly Jones singing and playing acoustic guitar together. Live on one mic, on analog tape, snowbound in the Hudson Valley. According to Mike, “Kelly and I had been working so closely together for a few years there, traveling a bunch, spending a lot of down time singing songs together and we built up this repertoire that demanded they be recorded. Pete Donnelly (producer) presented the idea of the church, me letting go of the wheel, and we were off and running.”

KJ Says:
Off the heels of SheBANG! (2008), I started performing more with Mike Viola. We played as a trio with Brian Wolfe on drums, and also as a duo. During that time, we developed more material suited to the simplicity of 2 acoustic guitars and 2 voices. More and more, after we'd perform, people would ask us if we had any recordings together, until finally we got the hint and booked some studio time. We decided to go to Waterfront Studios (old church-turned-recording studio), in Hudson, NY to work with one of the masters of tape, Henry Hirsch, along with good friend, Pete Donnelly (The Figgs), as producer. We recorded 5 songs live to tape over the course of 2 days and took pictures of each other and our surroundings with my Holga film cameras during lunch breaks. The whole experience felt like a pure exercise in performing and recording music. There were no added bells and whistles, no pitch corrections, no splicing and dicing. Melon (2010) is just the two of us with our guitars and voices and a couple of microphones to catch it all. Mike Viola - http://www.mikeviola.com/ Brian Wolfe - http://www.allmusic.com/artist/brian-wolfe-mn0001841102/credits Waterfront Studios - http://www.waterfrontstudios.org/Waterfront_Studio/Welcome.html The Figgs - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Figgs

Kelly Jones was raised on a horse farm in Ridgefield, WA. But her voice has carried her far and wide: Brooklyn, Manhattan’s East Village, Nashville and now Los Angeles. It’s a journey reflected in her vocal style: a mélange of west coast sunshine and east coast grit, held together with an effortlessly sweet confidence. Hers is a rare gift — a voice you can listen to all day and still want more.

kellyjones.com
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