Mario’s Stuff

Happy New Year!

Yes… I know… I’ve done it again and not updated the blog in ages… Sorry!!

Let me start out by saying that I hope you all had a great holiday season and I wish you the very best for this New Year :-)

My daughter Skye turned three on the 21st of December, how time flies… She enjoyed her birthday and Christmas, though she got into trouble several times for systematically removing (and often damaging!) the decorations on our Christmas tree.  Little bugger…

So, the New Year is here and it should be a busy one for me with the release of a new album (Shadows & Light) plus several other things I’ve got on the go. Please see the news page for all formal announcements as it’s updated more often than the blog! :-p

The Magician - 20th Anniversary!

The Magician (1991)

2011 marks the 20th anniversary of my first solo album The Magician. It was recorded in London, England in April 1991 and mastered at Abbey Road Studios, London in May that same year.

We recorded it at the same studio (Watershed Studios) we recorded my guitars for the two Forcefield albums Let The Wild Run Free & Forcefield Instrumentals.

It feels weird looking at the album cover as I write this as I’ve not seen the physical CD nor listened to the album in years.

I still get a lot of mail from fans all over the world who enquire about The Magician, and I get asked a lot for tablature for ‘Heatwave’, possibly the most popular track on the album. I was at the NAMM show in ‘09 and got asked about ‘Heatwave’ there! :-)

President Records (who originally released The Magician) and I have been in touch recently and we’re thinking about possibilities for a ’20th Anniversary’ commemorative collaboration. Right now, I can tell you that we’re thinking about re-recording ‘Heatwave’ 20 years later with the way I sound and play now. It will probably be cunningly titled ‘Heatwave 2011′ and would be inititally offered as a free download. I’ll keep you posted on it. We would be open to suggestions from you too by the way, if you can think of something you’d like to see/hear regarding The Magician then please drop me a line via the contact page.

Congratulations to Pablo!

Late December also saw the birth of bassist Paul ‘Pablo’ Stanney’s baby daughter, Maia. Our congratulations go to Pablo and his wife, Sophia :-)

Mojave Sunset

We went for a drive into the desert at sunset a couple of days ago. I love the Mojave Desert, and especially so at sunset, twilight and dawn. We drove out of Nevada and into California, along part of the old Route 66 to one of our favorite places, Nipton. Shawna took photos of the desert mountains and canyons from out of the truck’s window. Due to the heavy rain we had a couple of weeks ago, parts of the desert dry lake beds were full of water and looked quite beautiful with their reflections of the sky.

View of the desert along the I.15, just past the Primm Valley. You can see how heavily it rained from the amount of water in the usually bone dry ancient lake bed.

The I.15 southbound at sunset. This Interstate is the road we take to Los Angeles whenever we visit.

Another view of the Mojave Desert from the I.15

Old signpost for Nipton and Searchlight just before Route 66.

Route 66 towards Nipton, CA. Part of the road was damaged a couple of years ago due to flooding.

The Nipton Trading Post with our truck in the foreground.