Josh Fuson, who recorded and co-produced my EP COMMUNION BREAD, has just released a beautiful record about the Supreme Court justices, called The Supremes. Please do listen, enjoy, and purchase.

Yesterday we met up with Mr. Tony from GemsOnVHS, Nashville’s worthy answer to La Blogothèque, at my alma mater, Lipscomb University, to film a few tunes. Tony’s work is lovely, as you will see, and he made our time spent on the porch of Avalon, David Lipscomb’s 19th century home, very special indeed.

The good folks from Quite Strong Productions included a couple of tracks from A Decade Begins in their submission to the 48-Hour Film Project this month.  Take a moment to watch the short film, Mr. Wonderful, here.

To coincide with the release of my debut EP Communion Bread in January of 2010, I decided to write, record, and release a new instrumental each month of the year.  Each track was to be a reflection upon that particular month, and I stayed pretty well on track through April.  Then life stepped in, as it inexorably does, this time in the form of the May-Day floods in Nashville.   As I put my home back together, some more life happened – a pregnancy, long-term house guests, job changes, etc. – and, well, here I am in July 2011 putting the finishing touches on “December.”

I’m pleased to bring it to completion and present you with the final version of A Decade Begins. To commemorate, I’ve jotted down a few thoughts about each track on the download page.  A Decade Begins is completely free with the purchase of Communion Bread, or by joining the email list.

You can now add prattle on, rick. and the tracks from COMMUNION BREAD to your stations on Pandora.com.  View the artist page here.

A recording I recently made with my Noble Three pal Tres Crow is being featured on the blog The Beatles Complete on Ukelele.  Tres was a fan of the site and came up with the idea of doing a tune earlier this year.  So I demoed a laid-back arrangement of Paperback Writer and emailed it to Tres. 

It turned into quite the cross-country digital collaboration - Tres came to Nashville from Atlanta to do the recording, which we emailed to TBCOU blogger David Barratt in New York City, who re-arranged the tracks a bit and procured the services of another master ukeist in Ann Arbor, MI.  Add a cello in NYC and the final product is something I’m very proud to be a part of.  Take a listen – and read Mr. Barratt’s reflection on the original recording – here.

Nashville’s brilliant independent radio station, Lightning 100, is featuring “Lift Up” every day this week.  I couldn’t have asked for a better radio station to give prattle on, rick. its radio debut.

Since the beginning of the year I’ve been privileged to play piano in a band called Neulore, whose debut EP has just been released online. It’s called Apples & Eve, a gorgeous collection of love letters from Adam to Eve. Stream the full EP here.