The Slippersons' Story

Somewhere around 2012, out in the middle of nowhere on Hawaii Island, Richard Russell (a.k.a. Ricardo) and Peter Weinstock started collaborating to write new songs in a jazz style. Peter grew up in New York and made a living playing music his entire life, while Ricardo is a dedicated amateur who at that point had produced seven albums of obscure original music since 1995. They conspired to create world-class new music for interested ears – i.e., real jazz for these times. Actually, they had no big goals in mind other than to collaborate and write (hopefully excellent) music together. After working on a variety of material over a couple of years – by which time they'd written and arranged a dozen or more songs – they wanted to hear the new material played live, and thus the Slippersons were born. The name comes from the fact that all of us live on Hawaii Island and wear slippers (a.k.a. flip-flops)!

Mahalos to the remarkable group of talented individuals who have been willing to work on this project. Besides Richard and Peter, the other musicians in the group are Robin Jensen, Jesse Snyder, Brian McCree, and Joe Gargiulo. In addition, we've been very lucky to have Joey Bradley mixing our sound whenever we've played, as well as engineering the recording that became our new album. Thanks to Charles Brotman for recording the few overdubs, and a special thanks to Tom Rothrock, who did a wonderful job mixing the album, along with his assistant Mike Tarantino. Big thanks to Don Tyler for a superb job mastering and to Anna Pacheco, who took all the wonderful photographs.

A special mahalo to all the others who have supported us and contributed to the project along the path of developing this material, including our intrepid partners, our visible and invisible allies, as well as

Bruce David, Ronnie Atwater and Michael Suprenant.

We hope you enjoy this music. If you do, please tell your friends, and encourage them to spread the word for us. We are farmers, technicians, cab drivers, writers and musicians – not marketeers – and we need your help finding all the ears that will find this music entertaining or somehow worthy of their precious time.

The album is now available for purchase or download – Check it out on iTunes or Spotify or best of all at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/theslippersons#.

You can also find eight more albums there that Richard has produced since 1995, mostly quirky original Americana music under the name of Ricardo,

a name that his grandfather called him as a child.

It is easiest to find if you search for a specific title, such as

"Slippersons Boundaries" or "Ricardo Irony," for example.

Thanks for being wih us on this adventure. We have loved the experience of making this music happen together, creating our particular sound. We hope it inspires you to find and support more fresh music in your everyday life. Take lessons and play for yourself!  You are the key to the future of music, and you the audience will make the difference in what happens next…

NOTE FYI – For  variety of real life reasons, this exact band is no more,

though variations continue. Health considerations have intervened, and everything is in service to our creative life processes.

Stay tuned and we'll let you know what's next.

May the healing continue…

"Bear with us. We're trying stuff. Our goal is never to play a song quite the same way twice…

so far, so good."

Keep thinking, and enjoy…

EACH OTHER!