As I said in the liner notes to this album, Welcome to the latest stage of my Great Blindfolded Vision Quest as I blunder sideways ever sideways towards wherever the hell I think I’m going. Which tends to be some other place then I thought it was. For which I remain constantly grateful.

The premise of this album was that when three fiddles play at once, the harmonics sort of hook up, producing a bumble bee buzz. I discussed this with violinist Jenny Scheinman, who I met when she was playing with Bill Frisell, and she said, yes, it takes at least three, and it sounds like a Swarm! Of bees! Exactly! Thank you, Jenny! Swarm! Bees! Yes!

But when push, as is its tendency, came to shove, as it tends to do, a bunch of mandolins bumrushed the recording session, via the Holy Spirit, which tends to be behind musical bumrushes, and has (Holy Spirit) a tendency to surprise me. For which I remain constantly grateful.

Fear not however though! The Swarm shall manifest not here (where it’s two or three-ish on a scale of ten), nor on the subsequent album, Peter Stampfel and the Atomic Meta Pagans, The Cambrian Explosion, which is being mixed in Louisiana by Mark Bingham as we speak (September ’16), but on the one after that, Peter Stampfel and the Atomic Meta Pagans, The Ordovician Era. Upcoming liner notes will provide more clarity. That’s where you’ll hear the goddamn swarm, dammit! In the one after the next one! Don Giovanni said, record whatever you want as often as you want, and we’ll put it out, to which we say, Yessir! Our albums will be coming atcha at warp speed. All but two tracks here were recorded in about three hours, total. And our band-skill-set is about in third or fourth grade. Our crazy dance has barely begun. Just you wait.

Hopefully, Tony Millionaire will be doing ongoing covers, as he has for the last two, for my ongoing releases on the Don Giovanni (straight out of New Jersey) label. The prospect of him drawing critters from ongoing ancient geological time periods has me quivering. The plan is for the AMPs and geological eras to march on, era after era, album after album, hand in hand. Y’all come!

I’ll go ongoing about my learning curve, which keeps getting more perpendicular, for which I remain constantly grateful. Specifically, each album I make has a ton of mistakes and wrong turns in general, which I tend not to repeat, but I always find new wrong turns, somehow. I fear the day I make no more wrong turns, because if that day comes, surely, my ass will fall off.

Meanwhilst, don activity-appropriate garb and join us, in a Holiday For Strings.