As most of us know, Russ is a long-time performer. What most of us don't know is what he does in his real job!
Russ is in the marketing business. As a part of that he produces backing tracks for commercials, tv spots and other promotions.
Most of the work he does he cannot play for us, because the finished product belongs to the company who paid him to do it for them.
When Russ is doing one of these projects, I understand that he first does all the music on keyboard, playing the guitar parts, strings, brass, etc. himself on keyboards.
After he gets the arrangement right, he goes back and does it with real, live instruments (not the keyboard).
I am posting an example of his work. It is from the stage where he has done it all on keyboard, but not yet done any live instruments. So it is in a "rough" stage.
It's the only one he could get permission to share with us.
Anyway, it's quite long, over 8 minutes, but WELL worth the time to listen. He really gets to jamming as you get into it.
Remember this is a commercial "bed", not a consumer song.
I am highly impressed with his work!
Here's the link:
www.donmasonmusic.com/Russ Lay.mp3
DonM