When John Coltrane recorded his first solo album Blue Train in 1957, I was two years old. Just ten years later I was listening to Coltrane’s music as if he was a God. Soul, Blues and Rock also figured in my ravenous musical diet, inspiring my youthful hope and desire to be a great musician. By the end of my twelfth year I had listened and copied every jazz and blues album I could get my hands on. Though self taught at this point, my improvisational skills progressed fast and I formed my first band at the age of thirteen. Soon I was regularly sitting in on jam sessions at the jazz clubs Tom Foolery and Blues Alley in Washington DC, which led to my playing a gig in Europe a year later and living there ever since. I found music at the tender age when most boys find girls – and the muse has been with me ever since. With the making of this CD my musical life has spiraled in on itself, so that that which seems retrogressive in some of the pieces, is, but it is also the root which gave my early creative life energy and momentum, culminating in all that drives me now. Therefore, the first half of this recording is actually paying homage to some of the stylistic influences of my early years. I leave it up to the listener to discover which ones those were. Only John Coltrane’s Blue Train is a standard, as it was my youthful awakening and my recent re-awakening to jazz. Standing Still like a Hummingbird is a departure into a different world of sound – which I hope listeners will enjoy hearing as much as I enjoyed playing it. One never really changes; rather, with work one becomes more one’s self. The trick is to understand what that self is. As a kid I followed my inner voice, and it still calls, chiming out musical journeys that I never really know the direction of until I’m suddenly there; all the journeys ultimately leading back in to that inner voice. This CD is a sharing of yet one more journey. Randall Meyers, July 4, 2008 Wash. DC