Charles Gallagher
Rather than bore you with a chronology that would sound like a resume, here are a few random notes that will help you understand the music and the artist. You can fill in the blanks or search the rest of the site.
Instrument Sequence: plastic toys, cardboard drum set, accordion, piano, bugle, viola (high school orchestra), guitar (senior year, much too late), 12-string guitar (favorite form of acoustic), electric guitar, recorder, harmonica, synths, trumpet, violin, bass and banjo.
Musical Obsessions: I try to get a tune out of any instrument I encounter. It is difficult to pass an instrument without playing it.
Left Brain Encounters: Ogden Nash, Edmund Lear, Mad magazine, The Justice League of America, Aristophanes, Homer, Ovid, English Romantic poets, American Transcendental poets, Impressionists, Existentialism and the accrued legacy of 6,000 years of civilization.
Right Brain Encounters: Euclid, Archimedes, Galileo, DaVinci, Copernicus, Darwin, Newton, Einstein, Sagen, Hawking, business management, project management, marketing and the accrued legacy of 6,000 years of civilization.
Musical Persona: To quote “Wind Up” as performed by Jethro Tull, “…compose a better song, cause that’s a honest measure of my worth…” I label myself a songwriter because I get great enjoyment from discovering a musical idea and building on it until it has enough elements to be called a song.
It is also satisfying being a producer of a song, that is, making all the decisions on instrumentation, timing, structure and effects that take a song from a melody and accompaniment into a mature, robust work. On the larger scale, being the producer for an entire CD is rewarding considering all of the decisions to be made and all the people with whom you must work. Finishing the music is about 1/3rd of the effort required to produce a CD. All of the production decisions, whether it is packaging design, manufacturing, budgeting, scheduling or marketing, are based on the music.
I am a musician – singer because that’s the easiest way to get my songs recorded and out to the listeners. I have not yet found the right musicians or singers, at the right time, to work with in order to enhance my material.