The story of how Emerald Green Sound Productions came into being is a wild and wonderful series of events. But I must diverge for a moment and provide the back story.
As a young boy I would take refuge from the world to a small secluded pond located about ¼ mile behind my home in Houston, Texas, which I called, “Hidden Lake.” This was a pilgrimage I’d take whenever I needed to get away and reclaim myself. Like a lot of kids, I didn’t fit in with my peers. I’d lie down on the grassy banks of this small lake and look up watching the light dance through the moss covered oak trees while clouds were drifting by. It was indeed sublime. I would hear music in my head: sometimes a soaring melody; or a sonic texture, or a mix of nature sounds and music. All I knew is that I felt really good and complete and I was hearing sound in the experience. I never spoke a word of it to anyone. It was private and special.
After living in Los Angeles for 10 years, doing the hustle and quest for achievement and excellence, in 1986 I made a visit to property that I had won when I was 12 or 13. You see, I have been paying $5 annually for New Mexico property taxes since ca. 1967, but had never visited the land/lot in Taos, N.M. The story of how I won is for another time, because it’s long and must be articulated properly. I saw the property, and yes it’s in a primitive beautiful desert, and no I don’t want to move and build a straw bail house there. That said, I was in Northern New Mexico for the first time in my life and I was loving the place, air, atmosphere, color, texture, charge, beauty, all of it! So driving south from Santa Fe I stopped for 2 days at a friend’s home, and in a moment I knew this was the place that I was going to pack up and move to; And did. Before I left to collect my belongings in Los Angeles, I made a flyer that I put in every house I thought I’d like to live in. So I drove south of town and every house with acreage that was beautiful with a view in Sunlit Hills or Arroyo Hondo, I put a note in their box stating: House sitter available, musician, computer programmer, handyman, single with a scotty dog of 8 years (Cutty, the “Dogwhan”). For the next 1.5 years I lived in the desert with my dog composing music with the place being the inspiration, computer code (haven’t done that in ages), hiking/walking, rejuvenating, and playing a weekly jazz gig every Monday night at El Farol in Santa Fe, NM on Canyon Road, in a then funky Spanish Tapas restaurant that had a lively and sometimes bizarre music scene. It was outstanding! One night after a night of jazz at El Farol, Riki, a patron of the restaurant came up to me and asked me what I was doing out in the desert. You see, I would only come into town on Mondays. Being in the quiet of the desert after ten years of the Los Angeles experience was heaven. So I said I was writing music reflecting on the desert, which was very minimal, sparce, an with simple melodic content. There was the emptiness of the “first noticed” desert but as you listened closer there is detail and activity. Anyway, I gave a cassette mix down of some pieces I had recorded to Riki. She raved over the music and said it was better than of the current “new age” music. I’d never heard that term for a genre of music, nor knew that quiet reflective music was called that. I was simply reflecting on the high desert of N.M. in music. And yes the music was quiet, simple, without many elements, and serene. That’s what I was feeling. Then Riki asked what I’d like to do with this music and I said I wanted to merge music, place, and nature soundscapes while being in “Sacred Places” (places acknowledged to possess a “special something” about them). It all popped out of mouth. The next question was where would I like to go for a project. Out of the blue I said, “Machu Picchu, Peru, without hesitation. Why Machu Picchu, I don’t know. Maybe I had seen a photogragh of the misty shrouded ruins earlier in life.
This is an ongoing story, so I’ll continue later.