July

(Written and arranged by Reynold D. Philipsek, 1998 copyright Zino-Rephi Music BMI)
Guitars, bass, vocal-Reynold
Violins- David Haugen, Karen Dahl
Percussion-J.R. Hammond 

In the late 1990s, I went back to a pretty intense Jobim period. I say “went back to” because I had already played plenty of his music since I was about 20. I came up with this song at that time. 

At the time, I also was into this very “minimalistic” phase and played guitar solos with my right-hand thumb only, which further pushed me into a sparse approach. My idea at the time (I’m prone to various manias) was that by only using my thumb I would be forced to make good note choices.

John Hammond (engineer) and I also worked hard to make the recording as 1960’s authentic as we could. That in itself was fun. It’s odd to listen to early recordings because, after all of this time, it is very close to (or as close as one can get) to listening to someone else.

Even though this recording is more than 20 years old, I put it on the more recent “Last Summer” album simply because it fit. As the summer fades (as it sadly always does) I wanted to send one more “summer” mood your way.

Be safe. Have fun. But safe fun.

Link below:
https://youtu.be/MKRLhfGIyv8