Country music has always been a huge part of my life. I was born and spent many years in the province of Newfoundland, Canada, and at the age of five, I learned my first song called “The Knoxville Girl.” I started playing music and singing professionally when I joined my first band at the age of 17. Although my musical influences varied from rock to blues to country, as well as Newfoundland folk music, country was always a huge part of a night’s work with the band. My early influences were country artist Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings, George Jones, Hank Snow, Merle Haggard and Hank Williams Sr. More recent influences have been George Strait, Randy Travis and Alan Jackson, and I enjoy music from the Eagles, Lynard Skynard, Marshall Tucker Band, Charlie Daniel’s Band and The Band. My first album, Honky Tonks and Steel Guitars was released in 1998. All 12 songs were written or co-written by me. Some singles from this album were released to radio in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, by Ross Allen’s Hillcrest Records of Ontario, Canada. The singles were received well by listeners in all countries, and the album was reviewed favourably by several country music publications in Europe and several other countries. My second album, Sparks Among The Coals was released in 2002. This 12 song album contained songs written by Roy G. Ownbey from San Diego, California and others written by me. The single, “Crazy As A Man Could Be,” written by Roy was released to radio by Hillcrest Records and quickly climbed to number one on the (ECMA) European Country Music Association charts, and stayed several weeks in the top ten. It was honored as one of the most played songs in Europe. Several other songs from the album were released by Hillcrest Records and all were received well by listeners in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. I teamed up with Roy Ownbey again, along with some other great writers for two new albums for 2007 - A Country Afternoon and More Precious Than Life. These albums were popular by country fans and received high praise from the music critics. In this In this new album, I have seledted 15 songs of my personal favorites. As with my earlier recordings, these songs reflect my continuing interest in telling stories about the pain and joy of life experiences by folks - wherever they live. I hope some of these songs touch your heart. Ronnie Masters