Prairie Sunrise

Karen, Dick and I were sitting around, rehearsing Karen's vocal part for the song "They Don't Make 'em Like That Anymore" and discussing the concept for this album. Put simply, the concept was to have an album of songs that tell the life story of a fictitious Colorado cattle ranch between the years of 1858 and 1930. The idea was to have each of the songs "sung" from different perspectives of people and things that had lived on or passed through the ranch during those years. After explaining this idea, Karen said simply: "it's a ... Tapestry."
I really hadn't thought of it that way until she said it, but she was right. What we were trying to do is create a tapestry of ranch life as it really was (and in some cases, still is). Taking this idea a step further, I also wanted each of the songs to stand on their own own merit, while a the same time be connected to each other in some way. In other words, each song on the album refers to one or more of the other songs on the album through its lyrics.
For instance, as in real life, the story of THIS ranch - and the family that worked it - is centered around the old ranch house, whose story we can hear in "Still Stand Tall." There is the story of the "Yellow Bird", a canary that is bought by the original homesteader to keep his wife company in the sod house while he was out tending the fields and livestock. There is the old "High Back Saddle" that comes up from Texas and lives the rest of its life on the ranch. There's the young boy who dreams of riding the rodeo in "Points". Instead, he ends up taking a job at the ranch where he meets and falls in love with the rancher's daughter in "Love That Will Last." There's the cowboy who rides line in the "Cowboy Christmas," while the whole town is attending the Christmas ball in the big house. The passing of a generation in "First to Go". And finally, there are the great-grandkids of the original homesteaders bringing the story full circle in "They Don't Make 'em Like That Anymore".
Hopefully, you will enjoy the story this album has to tell as much as we have enjoyed putting it together.
Thanks for picking it up, and I hope the sun always shines on you all. -Mark Rashid.