ABOUT THE CD:
"PLAYERS, FOOLS & THIEVES," Bill Holland's recent "songbook" album, is the well-received, award-winning collection of his pop, r&b and jazz tunes on which he shares the spotlight with D.C. Area music scene friends.
Upon its release in the fall of 1994, the album immediately got extensive airplay on all jazz and progressive rock stations in Washington and Baltimore, such as WDCU and WRNR. It also garnered terrific spotlight reviews in The Washington Post, the Baltimore and Washington City Paper and a bunch of other publications.
Bill and the album were nominated for five 1995 Washington Area Music Awards--including Songwriter of the Year. Bill won the Best Jazz Vocalist Award.
The nationally circulated Performing Songwriter Magazine finally reviewed it, and not only raved, but voted it one of its "Top 11 Indie Releases."
Some of the local artists taking the lead on the album's tunes are already nationally known, such as Milestone Records tenor sax player ( and Sonny Rollins protegee) Ron Holloway and Vanguard Records singer/songwriter John Jennings best known as Mary Chapin Carpenter's producer and guitarist.
Incidentally, Jennings' version of Bill's atmospheric tune,"A State of Bliss," was his first released vocal performance, presaging his own well-received 1997 debut album, "Buddy."
Other guest stars are about-to-break-out, award-winning local heroes: folk rocker and songwriter Bill Baker, first-call tenor sax favorite Bruce Swaim, soul 'n blues singer Tommy Lepson and r&b diva Mary Ann Redmond.
The sidemen buddies Bill worked with in the studio weren't exactly chopped liver either, and biographical details on all of them can be viewed in the Liner Notes that follow this page. Special thanks, however, must go to bass player and session vet Mac Cridlin,who took on the role of studio strawboss for the sessions in the middle of a vacation to his his old hometown.
The CD, except for Jennings' contribution, was recorded by Gantt Kushner (who also played guitar on the album) at Gizmo Studio in Wheaton, Md. John was unable to make the sessions, so he produced his amazing track in his Nashville apartment studio. It was mixed by Bob Dawson at Bias Studio, and mastered by David Glasser at Airshow, both in Springfield, Va.
It's no wonder the Washington City Paper called Holland's album "an appealingly recorded multicourse meal," and The Washington Post concluded its rave by adding that "it's no wonder Bill Holland's stock continues to rise." The Scene, with perhaps a smidgin of delightful, if arguable, hyperbole, said that the "whole fine collection is like a soundtrack for the story of your life."
Why the unorthodox mix of guest artists and multi-genre roadhouse rock, pop, ballads and jazz? Bill says the choice came because in the era of the hour-long CD, "you've got to offer something distinctive. It's a different approach that hasn't been tried too often. I always write in a wide variety of styles anyway. The feedback has been great--people say it's like listening to a set on a free-form radio station. They like the variety. That's what I was trying to do."
Bill's new CD project, what he calls a "more of a jazz album with some vocals, some instrumentals," is tentatively titled "No Use Blaming Love," and is due for release in Fall 2001.
