SongVault Artist Profile

Kevin Carlson is a born and raised Pacific Northwest fellow but his family immigrated from Uddevalla in the early 1900's.He started his first bands in grade school and has been at it ever since. He found his way to San Francisco at an early age for a little bit, playing with and meeting people who influenced his style and then hitched a ride to NYC and spent some time playing in the coffee houses of Greenwich Village . Over the years he formed many Northwest bands. A few years back we lost his best friend and one of the greatest bass players ever, Scot Vandervelde, from a drunk driver one night when Scot was leaving the studio. The bass track on the song “ Jeannie” is the last track he ever laid down that night which is why we will always keep it up on the play ists. The songs on this play list are the rough mixes from the old studio and Kevin is going back and replacing each track one at a time now that we have a good studio space and gear again. Like he says “ I’m a story teller that paints a picture with sound instead of a brush & canvas. So laying down all these tracks by myself takes a bit of work using tonality instead of colours… I’ve never considered myself some great guitar player or singer.. I write about the things I see around me. ”. So he is in the studio re-doing all the tracks, playing all the parts, doing his own engineering and producing, trying to juggle mic stands ,wires, setting sliders & EQ’s on mixing boards , guitars, base, drums , conga's, keyboards , vocal duties, turning knobs on all the rack gear while grabbing an instrument and playing the track and hitting the record button in a 48 track analog tape environment. at the same time. Multitasking in the Space/Time continuum . Even though we have all the latest Pro Tools and god knows how much digital recording software he still likes the old analog sound better. He likes to laugh about the Zen of living in ten different dimensions at the same time “ I once had a girl say to me after about the second time we went out ‘ Your brain must be a very spooky place.. I told her...’No, ‘we’ are actually quite cozy up here, just a tad bit cluttered and you have to be a little careful where you step so you don’t trip over any wires’… ..funny… …I never heard from her again…..anyway, it was for the best - otherwise I would have never met my wife & best friend Sammye Lynn"... ps from Kevin: Hopefully the CD should be released by late summer, early fall. Well, as you can see , I never know when the hell to shut up and just ramble on forever about nothing given the chance so I’ll leave you with one bit of trivia. There is a word out there. It was found on clay tablets from before 3000bc. There is no known word that corresponds to it in any language today. The word is ~Izzat~ (pronounced “Is-Zot”). Loosely translated it means “ Walk in Peace and Honor among all living things “, so Izzat to all , Kevin ..written by Douglas Holmes.

Thanks for stopping by my little world. Hope you like what you hear. I’m working on a ton more songs and re-doing the tracks to a lot of the ones posted. I get my ideas from the things that happen to me and what I see going on around me in the world. Most are things I’ve done or seen with my own two eyes. Not all of it good. . Take a few minutes to read the liner notes on some of the stories behind these. I also love to hear from people about things they do and see. It gives me a bit different perspective and outlook on things. So if you have a story to tell, drop me a line. peace, Kevin