THE MAKING OF COMMON GROUND

COMMON GROUND

ALBUM: RICH IN A TROUBLED TIME

RECORDED 1997

RELEASED 1999

LABEL WORLD GROOVE RECORDS

One summer afternoon in June of 1993, I was in my apartment in New Orleans. I lived uptown on Perrier Street which is a nice place to live its rather quiet but has a funk that is different from the rest of the city. The area that I lived in was rather well to do kinda of a clean funk if you will but like most of New Orleans one does not have to go to far to find something more challenging to occupy ones creative and or wild urges. Such was this day. Some how I just felt that there was some real evil in the world and I thought if we could all just come together as one we could maybe be able to get along. Now this may sound like an old hippie gesture of some sort or even maybe a bit naive. But one has to set the scene: New Orleans until quite recently was a much different place.There was a lot of gang violence at the time and crack cocaine had just arrived which made people all the crazier. In fact there were many nights I could sit on my porch after practising or hanging with some friends after a gig and hear automatic weapon fire like it was the 4th of July or New Years as it is here in Europe. So this bothered me quite a bit. Coupled with the world situation at the time with Rwanda and various other places it was hard not to want to write songs about human kindness and us as a world trying some how to make a collective stand to rid ourselves of a certain degree of self hatred. Sounds kind of large I know but one has to live in a place where there are murders as common as everyday to have this kinda we got to do something attitude about life and there I was smack dab in the middle of this very profile. So I decided one day to write down some words.The first two where "I decide" then "We Decide" then "we are all the same" then "we are common" then "COMMON GROUND" I knew I had something strong when everytime I looked around in the months and years to come I could hear this word be used as buzz word and catch phrase (Clinton even used it quite a few times). So immediatly I set out to find a way to deal with the words in music. Because contrary to popular beliefs sometimes music and lyrics come at the same time. And this is what was happening with this song. When I first put the music down it was nice, a cool reggae sound played on my Ensonique keyboard with some lite pan in the verse and chorus. I showed the song a good friend of mine in LA and she commented that it was real good possibly the kind of stuff that could get on the radio. So naturally I was waaaay excited and continued to work on it. When I got to the point to where I thought the song was finished I decided to perform it. Which scared the crap out of me because I'm a confident person but sometimes there are certain messages that are kinda sacred in a ceratin way and I think this was one of them because it took me a very long time to feel comfortable about the song. Today I am fine with it, but it took a minute......

End of Part one...

Gregory Boyd

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THE MAKING OF COMMON GROUND

I have had a few people ask about this song from time to time. It was really a work of ease. as i explained in some of my other posts. But to talk about it a minute is actually kind of refreshing because there was a lot going through my mind at the time. In the photo to the right this was sevreal years after I wrote this song and had written many more since that time but the thing about New Orleans is there is always a great air of 3rd world that goes on and if you want to be inspired inspiration is always there. This apartment for example was a place where I created quite a few songsyou can see my keyboard in the foreground. It was a great place because if you want to practise one can just do so and no one really complains. So it gives on a chance to think makes it so that ones mind can wander a bit.

"We are all the same people"

Tag line Common Ground

Gregory

THRASH STEEL DRUMS

I think that the most difficult part of being a singer song writer steel pannist is realizing that you meant to do what you did performance wise. All of this still seems like magic to me and I find it so exhilarating to go back and listen to work I did years earlier. I released a project in 1997 with six songs on it. The record was recorded in Austin Texas with some nice musicians on it. Very raw recording. I got some nice reviews on it. I felt the time of its release that was not endicative of my best work,   that it was too raw of a recording. But eventually decided that things happen for a reason and there was indeed something in the recording that screamed in my ears to be heard despite  in my ears its unfinished quality.  I have to explain a bit about this recording to some of my fans and interested people. So in this Blog basically I will talk a bit about how the idea came about and what was going on in my head at the time. In the meantime one can listen to or purchase the recording at Itunes and many places online.

Peace
B-Pan

www.gregoryboyd.dk