The recent passing of my former esteemed violinist and musical partner (1985-88) Christine Mandell on the 4th of November 2023 requires some sort of public statement, and gracious acknowledgement from me... While for the past two months I have been getting the logistics and preparations done to re-release our 1987 cassette only album "Home Delivery- Elmtree Street" as a CD, I only learned of her passing several days ago, two months to the day practically just as I am putting the master CD into production... ASAP, which was what it was meant to be, anyway, but it hurts terrifically I'm not able to get her own copy in time...
Chris and I met in spring 1985 thru a notice she posted at the Haight-Ashbury Music Center looking for a guitarist she could partner with, to work on an arrangement of Bob Dylan's All Along the Watchtower, and whatever else we could come up with. We turned out to be quite musically compatible, having both spent time busking, myself in the SF Bay Area and Santa Cruz CA and herself in Amsterdam,& Copenhagen. She even spent a night in jail in Copenhagen, which shows both her own dedication to the art as well as the occasional ignorance of the unmusical public. That aside, we found we had a particularly common interest in rocking up classical music some... myself with my own compositions for chamber orchestra I was concurrently working on, and the band I already had embryonically started with my San Francisco musician friend Derek Williams, and a former girlfriend.
We played several places in Berkeley generally as open mic incidents- the Freight and Salvage, Starry Plough, and Larry Blake's, as a guitar and violin duo. We started working on some folk idiom based things, culturally working on ideas of Eastern Europe, Ireland, Scotland and Spain. We brought a recent acquaintance Larry Marshall in to play drums on the initial recording sessions and Larry worked our one actual gig as a four-piece with us, at the Ansonia Residence Club for an art party.
We got the Elmtree Street album together by that Halloween, people compared us to Camper Van Beethoven -who were contemporary but a bit younger, mainly merely because both bands had a violin.
I got some attention from some LA producers , but, after meeting them and discovering what they really wanted was a take of my publishing, I wisely backed out of that. Chris (and her later replacement) didn't care for the contributions of my ex-wife, and I had to agree with them. Larry went back to the reggae band he'd come from the Reggae All-Stars, and Derek and I decided to continue our songwriting partnership, as well as performing live in a duo structure, for the next 15 years.
Chris was a musician's musician, one thing I loved about her was she was not into it for the money, for while I would have preferred more to have come my way myself for it, I wasn't actually either. It's a life if not a living. She contributed to paying for the sessions and didn't want anything of the potential profits, but I was able to get something to both Derek and Larry, and that was as ought have been as well. We made music that was from the heart and meant for ears, so it makes me happy to finally be putting out a CD version of Elmtree Street (in a limited edition) I am super sad that I managed to get to it just a bit to o late to reach her. And that's the way it goes I suppose, life was built to break our hearts. I never had another more gifted and spirited collaborator again, but I think the world will be lucky and happy to hear what we managed to get together, for what it was. I am planning to have the CD available by Jan 31.
In fond loving memory, and may she be ever in that angel band. We'll play together again, up there.
Christine Mandell 10-30-1958 11-4-2023
