ABOUT
Conifer Blue
This is my solo project. After years of collaboration (mainly in our trio Letterik), I wanted to also explore solitary work, based on simple acoustic guitar and minimal instrumentation. I chose Conifer Blue as a working title for the project to reflect the solitude and human fragility I seek to express.
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Every one of us brings and creates a unique history as we grow through life – sharing with the outside world, and combining ideas internally to fully complete ourselves. Sometimes the smallest details capture our attention and leave their subtle mark. Sometimes large events outside our own lives exert strong influence – including social and deep-rooted norms that we interpret and work through with great passion and some uncertainty. And always, relationships, with our family, our parents, with our lovers, and perfect strangers, have the most profound affect as we try to connect, and sometimes dis-connect, in this extraordinary world. These are the themes I seek to explore, reflect, and learn from in this work, through stories and sounds. I hope you enjoy it.
– Mark Kniffin
Mother and Child
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Mother and Child is my debut solo record. It’s based mainly on solo acoustic guitar tracks I recorded (in various improvisational studio settings) from late 2016 through 2019 – hence the music was written first. I decided in mid-2020 to embark on a solo record, and began writing lyrics for various tracks from this collection. I had a general folk record in mind, and wrote steadily, sitting on a park bench in a rose garden over the next 6 months. I laid out the themes of each track based on small stories they conjured in my head, with titles and key phrases to guide the final compositions. For example, the Mother and Child track was largely written while witnessing mothers playing with their children on swings at the park, while listening to the guitar track and marveling over that special relationship that only mothers have with their children. Recording (for the record project – vocals and various overdubs) began in earnest on 12/26/2020 – with vocals for Mother and Child, the title track -- and was completed on 04/26/2021.