Press

Craig Bickhardt - Outpourings - Liner Notes
OUTPOURINGS: AN IMPRESSION
When you carry your guitar from gig to gig you are bound to bow your head a little – not from the wind and rain, but from the weight of all those stories aching to break open, all those rags of melody unheard and unravelling. You feel responsible for the tale gone untold, and it starts to tell on you when you sing them under your breath instead of taking the spotlight and striking the opening chord. But then you straighten up as if there’s something beckoning you on, even if it is just the door of a cellar club ajar or an empty chair on a coffee house stage. The guitar begins to speak, the voice rises, and the burden turns to joy.
Craig Bickhardt’s musical vagabondage has taken him from defiance to acceptance, infused him with wanderlust and blessed him with reconnection. His career has been a dialogue with his six-string, a dialectic with his dreams, a reckoning with memory. The journey has been one of eternal return, with unexpected detours and strange rambles before the arrival home. Outpourings captures these turning points and shocks of recognition – it’s less a summing-up than a conversation between the artist’s selves and personas. A thread runs through these disparate tunes, one that binds together the emotions and eras woven into the music. Learning to love is a big part of it; embracing hard truths without surrendering ideals is also very much present. More than anything, the songs here are a celebration of an artist’s freedom to walk the narrow path of a finely wrought lyric line or balance on a thin wire of an unbreakable tune. As Craig sings, he lives for this.
Taken as testimonies, confessions and old-fashioned yarns, the songs on Outpourings are vividly human portraits painted with a sense of wonder and clear-eyed grace. These songs are superbly rendered miniature studies of scenes and characters that achieve a deeper resonance with sharp-drawn images and indelible hooks. Craig is both a masterful narrator and intimate participant, veering from snapshots of war-torn lovers (“England or Me”) to working-class anthems (“If Holes Were Coins”), from ballads of exalted longing, to hymns, to elusive desire. There’s a visionary sensibility that harkens back to classic late ‘60s/early ‘70s folk- rock in evocative tracks like “Emerald Eyes” and “Ha’penny Standup.” A sense of compassion and a demand for justice runs through “Fire of the Spirit” and “Hills of Geronimo.” Though unashamedly introspective, Craig looks outward with compassionate insight through the eyes of others, as “She Won’t Be Yours Alone” shows.
In the end, these disparate yet unified songs lead the listener back to the artist himself, a true believer who hasn’t lost the awe and delight he felt when he first embraced the craft of making music. Outpourings hums with a sustained intensity that reflects a lifelong thrall to a Muse that sometimes teases but never turns away. An undercurrent of gratitude is evident even in the album’s most bittersweet moments.
“In dreams begin responsibility,” W.B. Yeats said. Few things can be more joyful than living up to a high calling. Outpourings is one artist’s expression of what this means over a lifetime. The tales are herein told as only Craig Bickhardt can tell them. And if he bows his head, it is in honor of the Muse. -- Barry Alfonso


Craig Bickhardt - Outpourings
“Outpourings” by Craig Bickhardt is the work of an artist who has lived enough and dreamed enough to know the weight of a simple lyric line and the power of a melody to summon angels and keep demons at bay. There’s a wealth of experience in this music, tapping into years of writing and performing before crowds and in quiet solitary hours. But more than that, there’s a sense of unrestrained wonder that Craig has never lost since he first picked up his guitar. As he sings, he “lives for this” and he can’t keep what it stirs in him to himself. Defiance… acceptance… wanderlust… reconnection. These themes resonate within “Outpourings”. The journey is one of eternal return, with a thousand detours and surprises. Let Craig show you what he’s seen.