This recording started out as a Facebook message to fellow musician friends of Michael Alves who wanted to collaborate on a remote recording project as a way to occupy themselves creatively during this time of sheltering in place, locking down, quarantining, etc during the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic. Alves chose the song Hard Times Come Again No More by Stephen Foster beacuse of its connections to The Great Depression and its positive message. Michael Hill quickly laid down his lead vocal and acoustic guitar tracks. After that, many fellow musicians submitted their tracks by recording them in their homes with whatever technology they had under the “shelter-in-place” directive of the time. In the end, a dozen musicians hailing from Texas, Colorado and Florida worked together from their respective bunkers to record an inspired rendition of Stephen Foster’s perennially-relevant, pre-Civil War song. They even pulled together a Playing-For-Change-style video of the song, masterminded and edited by Russell Bartholomee who also mixed the recording.
| Last Name | First Name | |
|---|---|---|
| Alves | Michael | Electric Bass |
| B. | Bonnie | Lead Vocals |
| Bartholomee | Russell | Lead Vocals, Harmony Vocals, Mandolin, Resonator Guitar |
| Hill | Michael | Lead Vocals, Acoustic and Electric Guitar |
| Kautz | Steve | Drums and Percussion |
| Murphy | Kevin | Banjo |
| O’Padrick | Ian | Archtop and 12 String Guitar |
| Traveling Murphys, The | Group Vocals Chorus 3 and 4 | |
| Voellinger | Chuck | Slide Guitar |
| Winchester | Joanna | Ukulele |
Recorded in early April 2020. Mixed and Mastered by Russell Barthomee and Michael Alves
More information about the musicians can be found on the Musician Bios page.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.