Polkadots & Moonbeams

Some records arrive with a plan. This one arrived as a conversation in the car on the way to Jim Clouse’s Park West Studio in Brooklyn.

Eri Yamamoto and I first met recording Sparks with William Parker and Steve Hirsh. Somewhere in those sessions I suggested we try spontaneously composing folk songs. Looking back, that idea revealed something we already shared. We kept playing together over the years in different settings, including Eri’s Quadraphonic ensemble. This album extends that first conversation.

The music moves between grief and joy, memory and celebration. “Ash” was written in the days after my father died, after I brought his ashes home. At the other end is “Polkadots and Moonbeams,” the song played at my wedding nearly thirty years ago, the song whose opening bars are tattooed on my arm.

Everything in between was improvised.

These pieces were never discussed, rehearsed, or arranged. Yet they arrived with the shape of songs that had been waiting for us all along. Nothing was planned. Very little feels accidental. Even the moments of struggle seem to belong exactly where they are.

The cover was created by my wife, Kelly Jeanne. After hearing the finished album, she responded with the embroidered image that accompanies it. To me, it is not an illustration of the title so much as an expression of what “Polkadots and Moonbeams” has come to mean in our lives: wonder, tenderness, beauty, love, and the strange passage of time.

These pieces travel from a son’s farewell to a wedding song, with a great deal of life in between. Some were written before they were played. Most were written while they were being played.

— Chad Fowler