
Revue Date August 31, 2009
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA – Every now and then you find a cd that has everything – Soul Complete by Cagle and Nash falls into that elite category.
The essence of a great tune is that it is created with such simplicity you think you could write a similar one ourself.
Greg Cagle and Rick Nash are brilliant tunesmiths – there’s no doubt about that.
There are eleven songs on the cd and each one stands alone in its own right.
Right from the first track Pick Up The Phone, you start thinking Chicago and Steely Dan – not to compare but the musical brain has to focus on something seemingly familiar.
Soul Complete has a freshness and excitement about it that it makes you look forward to each new track.
Greg Cagle has a voice that drags you into the very core of a lyric. Rick Nash’s trumpet work gives a solid foundation for the lush arrangements of the songs.
This is without doubt the best vocal album I have heard this year. The whole cd is a winner as far as I am concerned, but my favourite tune is Sentimental About Everything. I love the way Kenneth Leonard Jr on organ drives the arrangement and the solo is magic to the ears.
More Love is a wonderful social commentary – the lyrics are very powerful.
We Can’t Go Back To Yesterday has a hypnotic samba beat and No One Else offers a nice change of pace.
In And Suddenly Greg Cagle does a nice duet with Di Yonna Mitchell.
Special mention should also be made of the supporting musicians who have contributed so much to this most enjoyable CD.
John Holden (Pavlov Dee)
2CCR FM 90.5,
Sydney, Australia.
It’s summer. The summer in mill cities such as Rock Hill even if the mills are dead, the legacy remains means “the beach.” The mills would close for a week and the working world would load up and go to the beach. Myrtle Beach, specifically, North Myrtle Beach and Ocean Drive, for those who loved then, and love still, beach music. That means music you can shag to.
The shag is South Carolina’s state dance. It is not just a dance, it is religion to many. Rock Hill’s shag club is legendary. Beach music might be this area’s theme song of generations.
All that adds up to a 58-year-old guy from Rock Hill, a trumpet player in bands since he was 15 years old, having the top beach music song of them all on the Cashbox list for the past three weeks.
“Pick Up the Phone,” by Cagle & Nash. The Nash is Rock Hill’s Rick Nash, a mill guy in his bones from growing up in Concord, N.C., where Cannon Mills was king.
“My parents both worked in the mill,” Nash said. “We’d go to the beach, and I would peak through the boards of the fence at ‘The Pad’ and watch people shag and drink beer.”
Nash played in soul bands in those teenage days — the bands including Anthony Maner and the Aqualads Review fronted by the legendary Little Earl Dawkins — that played the music of the shag that the Carolinas mill workers danced to at the beach. He went on with his life, the Navy, working for a design company, but the music remained. It remained when he went to work at Fort Mill’s Muzak Co., after he moved to Rock Hill a dozen years ago.
“But I never could shag because I was up on stage playing, not dancing with the audience,” he said.
Something pulled Nash back to beach music even though he didn’t even look for it. He and a buddy from those Concord music days, Charlotte banking executive Greg Cagle, started writing songs and compiling a CD. It took almost a year. A lady at Muzak remarked: “You could dance the shag to that.”
So Nash took the CD, with “Pick Up the Phone” on it, to radio stations hoping for airplay.
‘It’s more smooth jazz’
The musicians didn’t then, and don’t now, consider it beach music.
“It’s more smooth jazz, I would say,” Nash said.
“Soul, and jazz,” Cagle said.
But the deejays in the beach music universe started playing it. A lot. So much so that what started out as a jazz song with some soul thrown in has turned into this beach music hit.
Sure, these guys played at the beach for so long four decades ago. They know and love the music that is part of their heritage. But still, this song “wasn’t written for the beach market,” Nash said.
“I’m not even sure I understand how it got so popular,” Cagle said.
And the topper might be that Nash has been married for 28 years to a lady named Mary Charles Nash. She’s from Tennessee. Although the couple took some shag lessons one time, in all these years she has never been to Myrtle Beach, the home of beach music and the shag.
“Not even once,” Mary Charles Nash admitted.
But if the music takes off more, Mary Charles Nash said she might just take that trip and shag to her own husband’s music. Along the beach where the dreams started all those years ago, and dreams of music success still are alive.
adys@heraldonline.com
February 1, 2009
We Just uploaded to the MySpace page, the final mixes to six tracks from the “Soul Complete” CD which has a scheduled release date of Mid-February. Please give them a listen – we would love to have your feedback. You can check out samples of all 12 tracks on our website: http://www.cagleandnash.com
These 12 tracks have been compared lots of different artists but we like to think it was all those influences throughout our musical lives have been a huge part of where our own unique sound comes from.
Some really good friends of ours have lent a tremendous amount of talent to the Soul Complete project. We had our friend Kenneth Leonard Jr. (of Anthony Hamilton’s touring band) lend some awesome piano and organ chops to the project. Bill Baucom, Larry Farber and Bobby Aycock played some excellent keyboard stuff on the project as well. Sax players? Of Course! Greg played a big majority of the sax tracks but we had some really fills by Larry Gianneschi and awesome Alto sax work on solos and parts from Zach Wheeler of The Entertainers and Chris Mitchell (incredible sax talent who is still a high school student). Some really funky and tight drumming on the project from Tovaris Matthews, Steve McGuirt and Dave Rhyne (who also engineered the whole project). Joe Mier played some tight funky bass on a big majority of these tracks. If you haven’t heard of these cats, trust me you will.
Stay tuned, as we get closer to our anticipated late February CD Release. You will be able to purchase from CD Baby, iTunes, Rhapsody, Amazon MP3, and a host of others.
Meanwhile you can catch the Greg Cagle Acoustic Sets regularly at Dolcetto Wine Room in Charlotte on every Friday & Saturday night.
Peace Love and SOUL COMPLETE
Cagle & Nash
There’s too much trouble in the world today (troubles to bear),
There’s too much trouble and there’s too much hate (hate everywhere),
There’s too many wars that we’re fighting again and again,
There’s too many wars & it’s ‘causing way too much pain…
And it’s time for this conflict to end.
More love…
That’s what it’s gonna take,
More love…
‘Cause only love can make,
This world a better place for us and everyone else.
Now tell me my brothers and sisters, where do we turn?
In a world of religious conviction, what have we learned?
To all our countries and leaders, to whom it concerns,
And to all of those who believe in the power of love…
It’s the power to change everything.
CHORUS
Why in the world can’t we find another way,
And keep from making the same mistakes?
Why in the world can’t we try a better way,
To bring love to the whole human race,
To bring love to the whole human race,
To bring love to the whole human race.
Albums used to be songs, liner notes, and cover art. Doesn’t work any more. Albums now must be the collection of social objects created during the process of writing and creating the songs. Once the album is completed, the artist’s site (not their damnable MySpace page) becomes the central repository/point of dispensation for these social objects. People come to the artist’s site to gather the social objects. They then share these social objects in order to convert others. These others then come to the artist’s site for more.
In order to fully appreciate the importance of social objects, consider the process of making a record.
The process itself becomes a social object. Prior to note one being recorded, a micro site/blog dedicated to the project/album (which is connected to the artist’s main site) is created. The microsite/blog is shareable; it exposes and (hopefully/axiomatically) attract people to the artist’s main site.
As the project continues, so too does the creation of more social objects.
The micro site/blog for the project (again housed on/connected to the main site) collects email addresses/Twitter followers/FB friends and communicates to these followers regarding the process.
Notes on the progress of the recording are posted to the blog, demos of songs are posted, videos are posted, photos are posted. Naturally, all of these are shareable/embed-able. Naturally, they all reference the artist’s main site.
The documentation continues with the making of the record; video, sample tracks, interviews, photos, commentary. All of these represent social objects being created.
Importantly, these social objects operate at their highest level when they are not a monologue but rather a conversation. As the songs are posted, the constituents could, for example, have a say in the order of the songs on the record, etc. The result is an injection of energy.
If the tools used to create these social objects are things like Flip cameras and a blog, there is little cost involved with either the creation of the social objects or the platform.
It’s important to differentiate the album/project’s microsite/blog from the artist’s main site. The blog/micro site serves a different, albeit related, purpose than the main site. The main site is gathering place for the artist’s tribe. The microsite/blog is the central repository/dispensation point of the accumulated social objects connected to the specific project.
Over time, an artist will create numerous interconnected blogs/microsites that each represent the neo-album (the collection of social objects for specific albums/projects). Each are connected with the others and with the main site, but each have a unique perspective and purpose. Ultimately, these become the artist’s new catalog.
The old concept of the album is dead. However, we now have an opportunity – if we think in terms of social objects – to reinvent the album.
YouTube Taps Rumblefish for Music Catalog Access
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When it comes to the masters of strings arrangements , David Floyd is one of those folks in the “A” List that immediately comes to mind. He has quite a strong reputation in the Charlotte area for more than 35 years and has built up a large clientele in Nashville as well in the past 10 years.
David and I played in a band together back in the “%&*ties” where he showed his R&B chops on such funky keyboard stuff diverse ad Herbie and Horace to Stevie as well.
When we started contemplating how best to sweeten these tracks of ours for this “Soul Complete” project, the first name out of my mouth was David Floyd of Floyd’s Produce. We’ve given him three of the tracks thus far and got back an incredible score already on “Any Where You Wanna Go” (I’ll try to get a rough mix up in the next few days).
The transparency and the tastefulness he captured with a sixties string sound is beyond compare. We are very excited to have him working on this project with us and cannot wait to share his gift when Cagle & Nash’s “Soul Complete” drops in a few short weeks.
Be sure to check out his MySpace Page and leave a comment and check out some of his fine strings samples on his Nashville Music Pros profile page.
http://www.nashvillemusicpros.com/profile/davidfloyd
http://www.davidfloyd.us
http://www.myspace.com/floydsproduce
This is a brief excerpt from an article written by Janis Ian for Performing Songwriter Magazine, May 2002
I apologize Ms. Ian for not publishing this article in its entirety but due to space limitations I will paste this hyperlink to the full article. http://www.janisian.com/article-internet_debacle.html
Excerpted . . .
“If you think about it, the music industry should be rejoicing at this new technological advance! Here’s a fool-proof way to deliver music to millions who might otherwise never purchase a CD in a store. The cross-marketing opportunities are unbelievable. It’s instantaneous, costs are minimal, shipping nonexistant…a staggering vehicle for higher earnings and lower costs. Instead, they’re running around like chickens with their heads cut off, bleeding on everyone and making no sense. As an alternative to encrypting everything, and tying up money for years (potentially decades) fighting consumer suits demanding their first amendment rights be protected (which have always gone to the consumer, as witness the availability of blank and unencrypted VHS tapes and casettes), why not take a tip from book publishers and writers?
Baen Free Library is one success story. SFWA is another. The SFWA site is one of the best out there for hands-on advice to writers, featuring in depth articles about everything from agent and publisher scams, to a continuously updated series of reports on various intellectual property issues. More important, many of the science fiction writers it represents have been heavily involved in the Internet since its inception. Each year, when the science fiction community votes for the Hugo and Nebula Awards (their equivalent of the Grammys), most of the works nominated are put on the site in their entirety, allowing voters and non-voters the opportunity to peruse them. Free. If you are a member or associate (at a nominal fee), you have access to even more works. The site is also full of links to members’ own web pages and on-line stories, even when they aren’t nominated for anything. Reading this material, again for free, allows browsers to figure out which writers they want to find more of – and buy their books. Wouldn’t it be nice if all the records nominated for awards each year were available for free downloading, even if it were only the winners? People who hadn’t bought the albums might actually listen to the singles, then go out and purchase the records.
I have no objection to Greene et al trying to protect the record labels, who are the ones fomenting this hysteria. RIAA is funded by them. NARAS is supported by them. However, I object violently to the pretense that they are in any way doing this for our benefit. If they really wanted to do something for the great majority of artists, who eke out a living against all odds, they could tackle some of the real issues facing us:
Additionally, we should be speaking up, and Congress should be listening. At this point they’re only hearing from multi-platinum acts. What about someone like Ani Difranco, one of the most trusted voices in college entertainment today? What about those of us who live most of our lives outside the big corporate system, and who might have very different views on the subject?
There is zero evidence that material available for free online downloading is financially harming anyone. In fact, most of the hard evidence is to the contrary.
Greene and the RIAA are correct in one thing – these are times of great change in our industry. But at a time when there are arguably only four record labels left in America (Sony, AOL/Time/Warner, Universal, BMG – and where is the RICO act when we need it?)… when entire genres are glorifying the gangster mentality and losing their biggest voices to violence…when executives change positions as often as Zsa Zsa Gabor changed clothes, and “A&R” has become a euphemism for “Absent & Redundant”… well, we have other things to worry about.
It’s absurd for us, as artists, to sanction – or countenance – the shutting down of something like this. It’s sheer stupidity to rejoice at the Napster decision. Short-sighted, and ignorant.
After much deliberation, gesticulations, gyrations and debates and wise cracks and snide remarks and half-hearted and half-baked attempts at other titles we have finally decided upon the title for our latest CD. Now I want repeat this out load over and over “Soul Complete”; “Soul Complete”, “Soul Complete”. The name of the new Cagle & Nash release of love songs is titled “Soul Complete“.
First we thought of titles such as “More Love” and “And Suddenly” because those are two of our actual track titles. But we decided we needed to say more about the genre and the vibe of the music: Soul. Some have called it new soul or neo-soul and some would even say classic soul; but there is one thing for sure it is a complete collection of different stories about love, the need for it and the loss of it.
There are at least five ‘singles’ potential songs on this CD in addition there are just as many more with TV or movie sync potential and we have another three in mind for pitching to other recording artists. If you want to learn more or hear some samples be sure to go to http://www.soulcomplete.com