Here’s an early Christmas present for the whole bluegrass community – a new album from Tim Stafford.
Entitled Tunes & Ballads, it contains 16 songs and tunes Tim has written, all recorded in small ensembles or solo, including 10 instrumentals and 7 vocals, with a cover of Sunny, a pop/soul hit for Bobby Hebb in 1963. This one is set for release on December 16, and pre-orders will not only ship for free, they will also receive a free copy of Tim’s 2004 album, Endless Line, sent in time for Christmas.
These days most folks think of Tim as a member of supergroup Blue Highway, but this will mark the fourth solo project under his own name. That is on top of his two songwriter records with the late Steve Gulley, and one with Bobby Starnes. And don’t forget his memorable, though brief, time with Alison Krauss & Union Station, appearing on the Every Time You Say Goodbye album.
Tim offered this sample from Tunes & Ballads, a song called Wild West, which is Tim’s telling of the history of “Buffalo Bill” Cody, who became a hero of the wild west less through his actual deeds, which were many, but because of glowing profiles that were written about him in the cities back east. That led to a career in entertainment that defined the legend that history remembers of Cody.
Stafford described the song thusly…
“It’s the story of ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody (1846-1917) and his Wild West Show, which began in 1883 and ran until 1913. With a cast of over 1200 performers over the years, including luminaries such as Wild Bill Hickok, Sitting Bull, and Annie Oakley, it employed real horses, riders, cowboys, Native people, and sharpshooters in an effort to memorialize an image of the West which was fast disappearing in reality and emerging in popular imagination.”
Here’s a taste. Tim plays both guitars, with Jacob Burleson on mandolin.
Pre-orders for Tunes & Ballads can be placed now from Tim’s web site, with the free copy of Endless Line.
