**NOTE**
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A continuation of my June 2020 release, this recording returns you to the vistas and inspirations of my home state of Colorado and the majestic Collegiate Peaks. It is an homage to my Dad, author and playwright Richard Bissell, who literally opened the “doors of perception” to all things of rail and river. My Dad’s particular passion was the Mississippi River, upon which he worked, he traveled, and we as a family vacationed (see “Lotus Lounge” on my previous recording, “A Thousand Voices Strong”). My auditory senses were filled overflowing with memories of whistles, bells, the chuff-chuff of powerful engines, and that unique creak of a weight-load of rail carriages chundering around a deep curve of railroad. Embedded in my being are unwritten moans and river tides, barges bumping along a midnight mooring, dawn birdsong, and frogs.

The Collegiate Peaks stride the central Rocky Mountains of Colorado, near Buena Vista and west of South Park (from which the television series is named) where the winds blow damn hard across the valley. Technically, they run from just southwest of Granite then south, to the world-famous Mt. Princeton Hot Springs, west of Nathrop.
Each of these peaks in the San Isabel National Forest, speaks to me through the gurgle and rush of the ever-present rivers and streams, the whisper, sigh, and howl of their winds through the evergreens and Quaking Aspens, spectral revelry echoing in the ghost towns scattered in hidden nooks and crannies throughout the mountains. Weather is a force, an element and a kingdom ruling these mountains, its gifts, and its dangers, bringing mystery clouds, leafy autumnal splendour, killing Winters and a Spring air as spirited like mountain champagne.

You will find traditional music on this recording as well as sound combinations which carry you, the eager sound explorer, deeper and deeper into the compositions. From sparkling brooks and wide riverbeds of swift current and tumbled stones, and welcome underground streams invigorating parched and tired travelers to derechos, a line of intense and fast-moving windstorms and thunderstorms striding great distances bringing damaging winds and intense rain.

I gift you with certainty that steam trains and their whistles can be heard coming and going throughout these compositions, just as the steam trains of yore made their whistle-stops at each little town along the valley and into the canyons on their ways to the gold camps buried in the mountains. In this way, this recording is dedicated to my Dad, whose lifelong love of rails and steam I was abundantly enriched by.

One last note: the cover art for this album is a photo of Bristlecone Pines, which can be found at 11,500' elevation and higher. They are some of the oldest trees on Planet Earth!

All artwork & liner notes © 2020 Samuel Bissell