Busy Being Born | 10 Songs | 1996 - 1999
Original Release Date: January 1999 - Akashic Record No.010 NOTICE: Remastered/New Release Date! -- November 2005
Songs from this CD are featured on The OXYGEN Television Network (Oprah Winfrey)
From 1995 through 1997 Alan Post with Mike Toth was seen on banners all over the New Brunswick area / Rutgers University Coffee House circuit. Things changed in 1998 when Toth married and moved to San Francisco -- bassist Bob Hart immediately replaced Toth, filling that space with his wonderful jazz-centered basslines, and soon afterwards, a popular Jersey group known as The Thin Men disbanded, leaving A. Perry Heller available to add his cool-handed techniques on bongos and congas and other percussion instruments. This event launched Horvath's stage show to a new level that was featured at the George Street Playhouse "Arts for Water" Music Festival in June of 1998 -- where he dropped the Alan Post stagename for the first time and started singing under his birthname.
Titled after the Bob Dylan lyric, "He not busy being born is busy dying ..." (from the song titled "It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding"), Busy Being Born is an appropriate title for Alan's reappearance as a solo folk artist. This was Horvath's first CD release on the web; a collection of early work-tapes (songs 1-8) followed by a "completed idea" (songs 9-10). The cover photo was taken in 1992 in Nashville, Tennessee - by Rusty Rust ... special effects and photo-treatment by Smokey Mirror Studios.
The first eight songs were recorded live with Mike Toth, in Toth's basement, 1996 - Piscataway (Pi-scat'-away), New Jersey ... some 16 or 17 songs were recorded on a Teac 4-track reel-to-reel recorder during the two years Alan and Mike performed together ... these are the "best eight" -- Alan is playing his 1968 Gibson Hummingbird guitar with Mike Toth displaying his wonderful sense of melody on a Fender Jazz bass guitar.
The last two tracks were recorded live with Alan playing his acoustic-electric Washburn guitar. A. Perry Heller is playing congas, bongos, and other various implements of percussion, with Bob Hart executing some of the sweetest fretless bass guitar you've ever heard, and Leah Coloff & Chris Lee are playing cello parts that Alan wrote. All was recorded live at Graphic Sound Studios, in Ringoes, New Jersey around Christmas of 1999, with Greg Di Gesu engineering.
Players:
Alan Horvath: Guitar and Vocals
Tracks 1 through 8:
Alan plays his Acoustic 1968 Gibson Hummingbird Guitar
Tracks 9 and 10:
Alan plays his Acoustic-Electric 1995 Washburn Guitar Mike Toth: Electric Bass Guitar (Tracks 1-7) Bob Hart: Fretless Electric Bass Guitar (Tracks 8-10) A. Perry Heller: Percussion (Tracks 8-10) Chris Lee & Leah Coloff: Cellos (Tracks 8-10)
