Recorded in Wellington and with its stories driven by years of playing music in New Zealand's high country, TWELVE DREAMS OF THE RIVER explores themes of life, age and transition, re-imagined as a trip down three iconic rivers - the Manuherikia in the South Island, the Waikato in the North Island, and the Kelvin in McNeill's native Scotland. Poignant, celebratory and unflinching, with McNeill playing all the instruments himself, and mostly composed of first takes, it's McNeill's most intimate work to date, with some of his most beautiful songs.
Recorded in Wellington, New Zealand @ Aro6
Mastered in Dunedin, New Zealand by Mike Moroney
In 2019, Bob McNeill toured Nova Scotia, New England and Oregon in a 5-week, four thousand-mile odyssey. Tired but happy, he left Portland with the notes, photos and demo recordings that, years later, became Lost Stars.
He first worked the songs up in his home studio when New Zealand went into lockdown in 2020, revisiting the project in 2024, re-recording most of the songs and adding new material, alternate takes and re-masters.
Lost Stars tells unheard stories in unfamiliar landscapes; the relationship that can’t survive crossing the California / Oregon state line; the islander slowly captured by big-city life; a solider who doesn’t make it home to rural Vermont; the stranger leaving the love of his life in central France; lives lived in a failed boom town in the Mojave desert. It also visits an eclectic group of characters - Robert Louis Stevenson, plodding through the mountains of southern France, among the ghosts of the Camisards; Amelia Earhart, running out of fuel over the Pacific; Russian sailors, ending up among the missions of early San Francisco; and, in the title track, Carl Sagan.
Special guests:
Em Griffiths: BV on Oregon & Itasca
Rob Henderson: Bass on Jesusita & Where you can’t see the border
Mike Moroney: Mandolin on Jesusita
Emily Roughton: Violin on Anna’s dream & Where you can’t see the border
Recorded in Wellington, New Zealand
Mastered by Mike Moroney, Dunedin New Zealand
April 2024