Cricket Songs by Ward/Ylvisaker

Cricket Songs is the debut release by Ward featuring multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Ylvisaker. It is a collection of tunes about autumn, working in a foundry, and being alone.

The first one came on an August night with the heavy, soporific sound of a legion of crickets singing. It started raining and the drops were bouncing off the windowsill into my basement apartment on Blaisdell. I wrote "Memories of the Dead" as It gently thundered, each peal of thunder seeming to take forever to unroll. I still have the demo cassette with the thunder and rain in the background.

I took them to Jeremy Ylvisaker, whose insightful, intuitive playing and production values brought them to fuller life. These were recorded ten years ago and have never been heard before.