State of Mind :: Raul Midon

Whilst having a lovely practice with Decorah based guitar-wonder James Lieder yesterday, I was introduced to the musical miracle of Raul Midon. The first time I saw this video, I was sure that this man is a Stevie Wonder fan - not because he too was born blind, but because his voice, his amazing instrumental chops, and sweetum songwriting skills actually make him worthy of being Stevie's progeny (to me, anyway) and that right there says a lot!

So then I downloaded the song and was quite refreshed to find that the studio recording is just as fabulous as the live version and that doesn't seem to happen much these days. So this dude's excellence extends into collaboration and production too. Coo.


Fave Lyrics are in the chorus: "I wanna be rich. I wanna be happy. And live inside a love that shines bright enough to last a lifetime."

THEN I rushed over to google to find Midon's bio and was even more impressed with him after reading it. Among the quotable gems I found were the following:

[Of Paul Simon, Bill Withers, Stevie Wonder, etc.] "These are mainstream artists who were on the charts and making art...There isn't that much originality in pop these days, because everybody is trying to sound like what they think might fit into the narrow formats on radio. But the best pop is as important as much as any music. I mean, I love Paul Simon or James Taylor or Prince as much as I love Miles."

"I've always felt at a disadvantage as someone who has never seen in that writing is very visual and image-driven. People really relate to images, and I've never seen images. So what I realized is that you have to write from what you know, and because people also hear, touch and feel, hopefully, they'll be able to relate to these songs. So [this] is me starting to get into another way of writing-it's very much about my experience, and not trying to describe a sunset that I've never seen."

So then I found this vid of him explaining how the hell he does that guitar doodaddling of his and I giggled at the feat he's attempting by trying to explain it in words:


Oh yeah. And then I saw this duet between him and India Arie and that was just it for me. It's official. I'm a Raul Midon fan. Honk if you are too.