Tommy Jordan

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String Theory - All Wound Up
Released January 1, 2010

String Theory – All Wound Up
Great Big Taters in a Sandy Land
Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss (4:40)
Elzik’s Farewell (2:10)
Working on a Building (3:44)
 Johnny Don’t Get Drunk (2:22)
Sail Away Ladies (3:44)
Half Past Four (3:06)
Green Corn > Crockett’s Honeymoon (4:22)
Pretty Polly (3:17)
Winter’s Come and Gone > Little Rabbit (5:38)
Waterbound (3:40)

Digital Download and tune samples available from DigStation:  http://www.digstation.com/StringTheory2
Copies available from www.AthensMusic.net or directly from Tommy for $12 per copy (shipping via USPS included).  Paypal accepted to tombob@uga.edu

For information and CDs, please contact:
Tommy Jordan
295 Lenox Road
Athens, GA 30606
Cell: 706-338-3111
tombob@uga.edu

Available from:  DigStation Amazon.com  CDBaby  iTunes  AthensMusic.net

Liner Notes for All Wound Up (download the PDF)

About the CD:

This CD was made possible Christmas 2008 when Tommy’s wife, Mary Mayes, gave him one day at Full Moon Studio (Watkinsville, GA) as a gift.  After months of procrastinating, scheduling issues and careful consideration about what direction the CD should take, a recording date was finally set for Sunday in August 9, 2009.  It helped that Antoon Speters was leaving for four months in the Netherlands the next day and this was the last possible chance for recording if we wanted the CDs by Christmas 2009.   All the recording was done live on that one day - all 11 tunes – six musicians sitting in a circle of microphones and wires.  We did no overdubs and no more than three takes on any of the tunes.  The resulting CD is fresh and energetic, and like a photograph, truly reflects a moment in time.  All the musical interactions are captured and kept, rather than edited out.    

Collectively, we bring a scary number of years of playing to this CD and enough genres and preferences that it is a wonder we can play together at all.  In the end though, we have a common love of this music and are addicted to the feeling of the shared energy generated when we play and perform.   

In alphabetical order, we are

Dick Daniels (make that Dr. Richard F. Daniels, professor at the Warnell School of Forestry, UGA) is an incredible musician who has at one time or another played with virtually every bluegrass and old time band in this town and several others.  He has the uncanny ability take his bass onto a stage with virtually anyone, anytime, and intuitively pick up their music - making them sound ten times better.   He has been an integral part of String Theory since he came he came to Athens in the late 1990s.  On All Wound Up he is playing mandolin, bass and singing, although he also could just as easily have been playing guitar.

Ben Jordan was born with the music already installed.  Not yet twenty, he plays electric and acoustic guitar, electric and upright bass, bluegrass banjo and drums with the skill, ability, and musicality of many much more experienced than he.  He brings drive, energy and rock solid rhythm to String Theory’s music. In his other life, he is an aspiring glass artist.

Tommy Jordan (Dr. Thomas R. Jordan, associate director of the Center for the Remote Sensing and Mapping Science at the University of Georgia) is a former music major, waiter, and rock musician, turned scientist and folk musician.  Since moving to Athens in 1976, he has been an active part of the Athens music scene and is proud of it.  Tommy is known as a keeper of songs and can, more or less instantly, recall the chords and melody of an amazing library of folk, rock, and old time tunes.  A founding member and often front man for String Theory, Tommy plays guitar, old time banjo, and octave mandolin and sings on All Wound Up.

Antoon Speters brings many years of professional musical experience to String Theory, of which he was a founding member as the mandolin player in 1992 and then officially rejoined the band on banjo a few years ago.   He also plays with the North Georgia Bluegrass Band and two Irish bands, Green Flag and Short Road Home.  Though Antoon seemingly can pick up and play anything with strings, on All Wound Up he confines himself to banjo and singing. Antoon is an accomplished painter with an art degree from UGA.

Susan Staley wears many musical hats, including being one of the three Solstice Sisters, a popular vocal group based in Athens.  The newest member of String Theory, she plays a strong rhythm guitar, drums on the beat box and sings her heart out on lead and harmony vocals. Susan is active in the local folk music scene, organizing a monthly folk music concert called the Hoot for the Athens Folk Music and Dance Society.   By trade, Susan is a stained glass artist, making treasure boxes and jewelry that she sells through her business, Glass Treasures.

Dale Wechsler is a recovering classical violinist who saw the light and learned old-time and Irish fiddle.  She plays with a pulse that makes the audience want to get up and move. Dale finds time after her day job with the University System Board of Regents to play in several local bands in addition to String Theory, including the Garnet River Gals and Short Road Home.  She and her husband, Todd Lister, own Veribest Farms, an organic produce and flower business.

About the Cover:

Mary Mayes’s ancestors ran a small general store in rural North Georgia from the early 1900s to the mid 1980s.  A long time ago, packages that were shipped were stitched closed at the top with string.  If you undid the end of said string just so, you could unravel it, and save it for later.  After all, you never knew when you might need a bit of string.  Over the years, the string that came into the store was wound up, bit by bit, into a ball.  Hence the ball shown on the cover of All Wound Up.  You can come up with the appropriate metaphors all by yourself.  For the photo, this heirloom ball of string was placed upon an old tongue-and- groove meal box (from the same rural Georgia family homeplace) kept because of the precious memories it evokes, much like the old time music on this CD. 

Top Ten Reasons why these liner notes do not appear inside your CD where they belong:

1. The puppy ate them.
2. We lost the assignment AND we accidentally left our books in our locker.
3. We were busy at our day jobs.
4. We were busy playing music.
5. Antoon was out of town and we couldn’t do it without him.
6. We were busy planning the North Georgia Folk Festival which occurs every year in early October and which you should all attend.
7. We procrastinated.
8. The type would have been so small you’d have had to have a magnifying glass to read them
9. We didn’t get around to it before we had to send the CD off to get printed.
10. We hadn’t thought ‘em up or written ‘em down yet. (In fact, we just wrote them today!)