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Mandolin Mondays #375 w/ Special Guest Brian Carroll

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This week on Mandolin Mondays we're joined by mandolinist, songwriter, and music journalist, Brian Carroll of the online music publication Red Line Roots, playing an original instrumental called "Man in a Ballon" on his guitar bodied octave mandolin made by Andrew Mueller of Muleskinner Instruments.



Brian is a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter who spent over a decade in the Boston music community, releasing 4 EPs in that time and starting the online music publication Red Line Roots. Upon moving to Vermont 6 and a half years ago, he refocused his creative outlets in other areas (mainly film work), picked up the upright bass and started playing in a 5 piece roots music outfit and lost sight of writing original music for a while. "Man in a Balloon" marks his re-entry to releasing original work, publicly, and my first foray into original instrumental music. Acquiring one of Andy Mueller's first octave mandolin builds coupled with the release of instrumental records in the last few years from Andrew Marlin, Christian Sedelmyer, Ethan Setiawan and Joe K. Walsh, really provided the fuel to fire his interests in "songs with no words" that still have a beautiful and incredible ability to elicit specific emotions and senses of place and time. Those records provided a stable ground (and extremely high bar) of inspiration for his own attempts at writing instrumental tunes.

The studio single is being released into the wild on 15-March-2023--be sure to look out for it later this week!

Here's a quote from Brian about this video, “My wife and I were fortunate enough to take a hot air balloon ride with a local legend, Brian Boland, just a few months before he passed away unexpectedly in a tragic ballooning accident. It was around that time that I was spending a lot of time on my back porch playing octave mandolin and upon hearing this news, this melody poured out. I only met him once, spending a few hours setting up the hot air balloon, sailing within the clouds and high above the foliage in the Upper Valley where we live, then setting down and putting the balloon away. Certain types of folks, though, can leave an impression that is lasting, infectious and heavy. Something that sticks with you long after. A thirst for life that is palpable. Brian was one of those people.”

Be sure to connect with Brian at the following links below for more information about his music:

https://www.facebook.com/burdsandcarroll
http://www.redlineroots.com/

And as always, tune in next week for more Mandolin Mondays! Until then...

Happy Picking!
David

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Comments

  1. Todd Bowman's Avatar
    Aptly titled! A very relaxing journey. Wonderful playing!! Thank you, Brian and David, for sharing!
  2. Alfons's Avatar
    A fine tribute and a nice sounding mando. Thanks for sharing.
  3. Chuck Leyda's Avatar
    Very nice! Thank you.
  4. cayuga red's Avatar
    Beautiful. The tune and the very tasteful playing. The octave sounds great.