Harvey Reid is possibly best-known for his instrumental guitar work, but he is as good an example of an all-around troubadour as we have. He made the first of what we now call "Indie CD's" and this one is one that many consider to be his finest work. It is typical Reid- with beautifully played and carefully arranged and recorded material; done "on-location" in a variety of places, with the urgency of live performance but in tune and recorded with good studio mikes that captured complete performances in "living stereo" digital sound. Hot instrumentals, ragtime, celtic, slide guitar blues, down-home Appalachian and straight bluegrass-- Reid does it all and this CD covers a lot of bases. His arrangements of traditional tunes are legendary, but this CD shows that his body of original songs and instrumentals is as large and varied as anyone's. After being nearly out of print and un-distributed for many years, this album was carefully re-mastered, re-mixed and re-released in 2011. Due to the tremendous improvements in digital sound over the last 20 years, these early digital recordings now have significantly more warmth, resonance and depth than the original CD release. "Circles" has 18 Reid originals, and as he says on the back of the CD: "This collection of songs and instrumentals includes baroque, ragtime and Celtic solo guitar pieces, an epic ballad, a gospel harmony song, two mandolin instrumentals, a couple of rocking songs, some introspective art songs, an autoharp march, an almost-protest song, an anti-love song, a love song, a country song, a vocal duet and some folk songs. They were recorded at about 7 different locations, including several motel rooms, my home, a cabin in Maine, a house in New Mexico, and a tavern in New Hampshire. All the tracks were recorded with only a digital tape recorder and a pair of microphones, in hopes that the music could be captured “alive” in its natural habitat. I hate to over-season things or cook the natural juices out. If you eat fish, then think of this as one pulled right out of the stream and tossed into the skillet. If not, think of a fresh ear of corn, picked from the garden when the water was already boiling..." Reid's songwriting is well-represented here. A number of his better-known songs first showed up on this CD in 1993, and have been unavailable on-line for many years until 2011 when they finally went up for digital download. A pioneer in independent artistry, digital recording, desktop publishing, stage amplification, Reid is also responsible for the idea of the partial guitar capo. This CD features 8 tracks that use a partial capo, including one capo configuration (Oh Marie) that appears nowhere else in the world. Google for "partial capo" to learn more about the capos or go to Reid's own web site to learn more about him, his large creative output and his long career outside the music business mainstream.