The Bushel Basket welcomed performers without musical restriction. Our styles ranged from traditional, blues, jug band, protest, bluegrass to songs that happily defied labels. It was a musical school, where we were introduced to many sounds and thoughts beyond the pop media of the day, like Mississippi John Hurt, Jim Kweskin or Tom Rush. We were also introduced to different instruments, like dulcimers, the washtub bass and kazoos. If somebody discovered a great new guitar chord, it was shared. And, new friends were made. Last year, Paul Grady had the idea for a Bushel Basket Reunion. Many of us hadn't seen one another for more than 30 years. Happily, the gathering was held in the same church basement. So, it was like cracking open a time capsule, except that many of us had less hair, perhaps a few more pounds and pictures of kids. And, we'd come from as far away as British Columbia or Quebec. Paul recorded the proceedings, then passed the master cassettes on to me. Originally, the plan was to simply do a few cleanup edits, then release a souvenir CD. But, the producing bug had always been part of me, dating back to when producers like Tom Wilson, Bob Johnston & Roy Hallee helped initiate the wave of folk rock through their work with Simon & Garfunkel and Bob Dylan. I'd recently bought the Logic Audio software for our Macintosh. So, I started adding a bit of guitar here, a little keyboard there and thoroughly enjoyed reliving the reunion many times, trying to find the right sound. I'm glad we could add these items for Cris' site. Whether he came to the Bushel Basket as Jeremy Dormouse, or just plain Cris, we always knew we would hear something interesting and creative. It was fun. - Terry Glecoff
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