The Harder They Strum: My First Solo Album

Cover art by Earthman Maxwell, design by Brett Yancy Collins for Counterspace

Available Formats/Purchase Information

My critically acclaimed first solo album, “The Harder They Strum,” is  available in CD/digital/vinyl/eight track/cassette formats. You can buy CDs directly from me (see below). You can also buy the CD/vinyl/eight track directly from me if you see me live. If you want me to autograph your CD, or write a special message, just ask.

US orders for CDs are $15.00 through PayPal, including shipping. Make sure to include your mailing address when you order! PayPal doesn’t automatically generate them. If you don’t like using PayPal, contact me here. We’ll work out an alternative method of payment. Yes, I’ll take a check! I’m not set up for credit cards though.

To buy the CD and/or digital files with a credit card, go to my page at CD Baby. Overseas orders for CDs are $15.00 plus the cost of shipping by First Class Mail International.  Canadian CD orders are $25 including shipping. But contact me first through the website before you buy. I’ll figure out the shipping and give you the price.

The album is also available on iTunes, Amazon Music, and all other digital platforms that pay artists for their music here.

If you want the album in .wav or .flac format (higher audio quality than buying it online), I’ll send it to you via WeTransfer for $10.00.

To purchase “The Harder They Strum” on vinyl/eight track/cassette, contact my friends at Jump Up Records in Chicago. Without their help, I wouldn’t be able to offer my music in these formats, so we both appreciate your support. Although I do have vinyl here, I recommend that my international friends order through Jump Up, they ship overseas all the time.

The vinyl version has several differences from the CD/digital version, at Chuck Wren of Jump Up Records’ suggestion. Record geeks love this stuff, and I am definitely a geek, though not a record geek. I thought it was a great idea and I had some stuff in the can ready to go.

First, the original free jazz intro on “You Can Get It If You Really Want” has been restored. My thinking when I conceived the album was that it would tell the listener from the first note to leave his or her preconceptions behind, and would be an incredible segue into a ska track. Roland Alphanso of the Skatalites loved free jazz and that was another connection. Plus, I loved free jazz when I was young and wanted to pay tribute to a movement that has largely been forgotten. With all the great horn players on the session it was a no-brainer, and they really got into it.

However, when we were assembling the album and I was thinking about marketing the record, I realized that starting off with a blast of anarchy might make the reggae DJs think that the whole record was free jazz and they might not listen past the intro. Gordon Williams (who mixed most of the album and acted as advisor/father confessor/artist babysitter throughout the project) agreed with me, though he really liked the idea musically. So we reluctantly cut the intro for the initial release. When Chuck asked if I had anything we hadn’t used on the CD, I told him the story and he said, “Oh, let’s put the intro back in! It’s quirky! Vinyl people love stuff like that!” I do too, so the intro is back.

Second, the original single solo acoustic guitar version of “Rivers Of Babylon” (a different take than the one on the CD) replaces the longer CD version with horns. When I was putting the album together, I really agonized over which take to use, as I liked both of them. Now you can hear both of them if you’re so inclined.

Third, “Stop That Train/Draw Your Brakes” is a new mix with the full lead vocal by Stephen Suckarie of New Kingston (left off the CD version) included. Stephen really killed it, he was in a Dennis Brown frame of mind that day, and it was a tough decision to leave it off. But we eventually decided that the focus of the track should be on the instrumental interplay between Monty Alexander and me. The vocal got in the way of hearing that, as good as it was.

Another possibility I considered was asking New Kingston if we could release it as a single under both our names. (They all sing on it, and all of them except Steve played on it). But while we were mixing my album, I was also working on music with them for their next record, and they were heading in a different direction. So I had this great vocal version, and nothing to do with it…until now!

Of course, all the tracks except for “Pressure Drop” have been shortened to fit on one 12″ LP.

The Harder They Strum Reviews

The Harder They Strum Media Archive/Podcasts

The Harder They Strum Radio Play

The Story Of An Album

OK, the cat is out of the bag. My interview with Tom Guerra in the April issue of Vintage Guitar Magazine has hit the streets. So it’s time to fill out the details. Many of you have been following the halting progress of my solo album over the past couple of years. It’s finally finished and available for purchase (see above) so I thought I’d tell you about it.

The album is a song by song remake of the famous soundtrack to the movie “The Harder They Come.” I recast all the songs, which were originally vocal tracks, as guitar instrumentals. My idea was to pay homage the original versions while allowing me to improvise and elaborate on them. The album is called “The Harder They Strum,” which is both a reference to the original album and a little nod to my father, my greatest supporter, who loved plays on words.

Like many Americans, “The Harder They Come” was my first real exposure to the world of Jamaican music. Seeing the movie, and buying the soundtrack, set me on a journey that continues to this day. So it seemed natural to revisit it now after over forty years of recording and performing with the best musicians and singers from Jamaica.

When I was planning the record, I wanted to create something that would appeal to the first audience that really accepted me, the roots Jamaicans I recorded with and performed for when I lived there in the 80s. While I was recording it, I always had those people in mind. Would what I was doing make sense to them? Would they sing along with it? Would they dance to it? I didn’t try to recreate the originals, but when I rearranged something, I did it in a style that I know  that Jamaican audiences enjoy. This decision gave the project focus. But I also wanted to do something that I enjoyed, and something that the non-Jamaicans who loved the original record as much as I did could enjoy as well.

There are lots of reasons to make a record. I’ve played on thousands of them, including my own 45 back in the day, and in most cases the motivation was that someone paid me to do it. That’s a perfectly good motivation, and I’m fine with it. But “The Harder They Strum” wasn’t done with that in mind, necessarily.

I’ve been a working musician since the age of 15. That was a very long time ago. I’m at an age where many of my colleagues, heroes, and mentors have passed on. In baseball terms, I’m probably in the seventh inning, though I’m hoping that I can tie the game in the bottom of the ninth and go a few more innings afterwards.

This may be the only full-length album I get to make. So I wanted it to reflect my personal and musical values all the way through, from start to finish. Every musician and singer who worked on the project (with one exception, who simply refused to accept any money for his participation, much to Local 802’s consternation) was paid according to AFM and/or SAG/AFTRA rates and regulations. The other professionals were paid what they asked for as well.

I also wanted to document the musical relationships and friendships I’ve developed over my career. So almost everybody who sings or plays on the record, as well as the people who recorded, mixed, and mastered it, is a friend and/or colleague of long standing. I didn’t bring in any big names just for marketing purposes, though some of the people on the record are reasonably well known.

Of the ten songs, six were recorded completely live in the studio. “Rivers Of Babylon” consists of two complete live performances recorded at different times and edited together during mixing. “Stop That Train (Draw Your Brakes)” and “Johnny Too Bad” were also recorded live in the studio except for New Kingston’s background vocals, which were added later. Nobody punched in or fixed anything, though we did a bit of cleanup during the mixes. What you hear is pretty much what everybody played at that moment in time. We didn’t use click tracks either, except on one song where the studio monitor system was overloaded by the amount of people singing and playing through it. I didn’t even know that click tracks existed until I left Jamaica and we did just fine without them back then. So I figured we’d do just fine without them now.

“007 (Shanty Town)” is the only song with guitar overdubs. It’s a tribute to my mentor Lynn Taitt, who played on the original recording, and who was gracious enough to show me a lot of his voicings and concepts when we toured together with Toots and the Maytals. It’s also a nod to the 60s instrumental recordings credited to “The 50 Guitars of Tommy Garrett.” I heard these on my parents’ AM radio station growing up in rural Connecticut, long before I played the guitar myself. I remembered thinking “Wow! Who would ever have a band with fifty guitarists in it? What a crazy idea!” Now, thanks to technology, I have my own 50 Guitars song. Since one of the things I do when I work for other people is track lots of interlocking guitar parts, I thought it would be fun to do it on my own record.

I’ve been recording now for over forty years. One of the many things I’ve learned over that time is that the process you use to make a record has a tremendous amount to do with the outcome. If you record a song one instrument at a time, you gain precision, perfectibility, and clarity, at the expense of human interaction. There’s nothing wrong with this if that’s what you want. Most of the records you hear over the past twenty years were made this way, to a greater or lesser extent. I do this all the time for other people. But I didn’t want to do it myself.

I started my session career recording as part of a seven piece rhythm section onto four track analog tape: drums and percussion on one track, bass on one track, guitars and keyboards on one track, no fixes allowed. If we spent as much as a half hour on a song, it was a bad day. You were expected to find a part fast and commit it to tape. It was a lot more fun than most of what I do now. I still love playing in the studio, but now it’s more like doing crossword puzzles than dancing, which is what it felt like before.

What I enjoy about the process of making music is human interaction, which is maximized when you play live. Plus if I’m going to spend a whole bunch of my own money, I’d rather pay musicians and singers than studio owners. So that’s what I did: I hired a whole lot of my friends, crammed them into the studio, and recorded them all at once, quickly. It was nerve-wracking. But the fun factor was off the charts, and I think that everybody else involved felt the same way. You’ll hear that in the music.

The Harder They Strum Track List

1) You Can Get It If You Really Want
Andy Bassford

2) Stop That Train (Draw Your Brakes)
Andy Bassford with Monty Alexander and New Kingston

3) Rivers Of Babylon
Andy Bassford

4) Many Rivers To Cross
Andy Bassford

5) Sweet And Dandy
Andy Bassford with Soul Sisters Six

6) The Harder They Come
Andy Bassford with George Naha and The Blue People

7) Johnny Too Bad
Andy Bassford with New Kingston and The Blue People

8) 007 (Shanty Town)
The 50 Guitars of Andy Bassford

9) Pressure Drop
Andy Bassford with Soul Sisters Six

10) Sitting In Limbo
Andy Bassford with Monty Alexander and New Kingston