Music with no barriers
SARATOGA SPRINGS – Two-time Grammy-nominated guitarist, vocalist, and mouth trumpetist Raul Midon released his 13th studio album, ‘Lost & Found’ Friday, April 26 and to commemorate its release, Midon performed songs from the folk, roots, jazz, and soul album at Caffe Lena Sunday, April 28.
The Embudo, N.M. performer, who was born blind alongside his twin brother, Marco, began playing the guitar at six-years-old. Now 58, Midon has taken his marvelous talents from the historic Caffe Lena and Carnegie Hall in New York City to as far away as Switzerland, Beijing, Toronto, Ontario and to the Budo-kan in Tokyo, Japan.
Recently, Midon took his ‘Lost & Found’ tour to Buffalo, various venues in California, and Cedar Rapids, MI. Caffe Lena was the final stop of the tour and Raul said he was looking forward to “going home.” he told TheSpot518.
Midon enjoyed performing at Caffe Lena and found his audience to be wonderful.
“It (Caffe Lena) sounds great.” Midon said. “The audience is an absolutely listening, beautiful audience. It was a lot of fun.”
Midon spoke to concert attendees after the show and, guided by his assistant, signed copies of his two albums, ‘Lost & Found’ and ‘Eclectic Adventurist’, stickers, and a tote bag.
‘Lost & Found’ was mixed by Michael O’Reilly, and mastered by Alan Silverman, with the art and design of the album art by James Petroff and Effie Samios and is under the ReKondrite ReKords label. Midon wrote all songs on the album with the exception of “Next Time” (co-written by Mike Errico) and “A Condition of Love” (co-written by W. Wondwossen).
Two days after the release of ‘Lost & Found’, Midon performed several tracks off the new album to a packed Caffe Lena including ‘Lost & Found’, ‘Keep On Keeping On’, ‘Going Away’, ‘Condition of Love’, ‘Next Time’ and the encore song was ‘When We Remember’.
Midon gains inspiration from his life’s travels. He remains open to new ideas and records inspirations for song ideas on the voice memos app on his phone, Midon said.
“If I come up with an idea or the voice memos on the phone, (don’t) just say, okay that could be a song and then you go home and you write and some of them come out good and some of them don’t.”
Some examples of his past song inspirations come from something as simple as reading the poem, “The Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie” which Bob Dylan recited on a cassette tape, telling the tale of what it’s like to be traveling all over the world playing music in the business (‘Pedal to the Metal’), and his most telling song, ‘Waited All My Life’ about how to take his relationship with his girlfriend, now his wife, to the next level.
Midon is proud of his sessions singing for Shakira and Julio Iglesias and playing a song with his idol Stevie Wonder, for his debut album, State of Mind, and his production work.
“And in every interview, they would always ask me, ‘What’s it like to work with Stevie Wonder?’
It was great, it was wonderful, it was a dream come true.” Midon said to the Lena audience. “But after hundreds of times, I wanted to talk about the fact that I’ve learned how to engineer and produce my own music without a mouse, or using the keyboard to do all the audio editing.”
Although Midon wasn’t planning on being an engineer, he became fascinated by music engineering and mastered the skills.
In his high school years, Midon learned how to play the guitar in an educational program at a school for the blind and later at Santa Fe Preparatory School until 1984. He later attended the University of Miami where he graduated in 1990 studying Jazz.
Other accomplishments include a Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Vocal album in 2017 for his Bad Ass and Blind album and in 2018, and a second Grammy nomination for Best Vocal Jazz album, If You Really Want, made with the Metropole Orkest and conductor Vince Mendoza.
Playing bongos and the mouth trumpet on songs as his lead instruments, and playing the acoustic guitar with such prowess, it is no wonder why Midon achieved the level of success that he has reached in his career.
Finding love with his now wife, instead of feeling self-pity for his disability, he realized that he needed to focus on the things that he could do rather than not, Midon reflected.
Midon, through his multitude of talents, found a way to make his talents shine on the Caffe Lena stage with minimal assistance from his stage assistant who guided him from various spots on the stage to help Midon gear up to perform 16 songs in total.
The audience was mesmerized and captivated by Midon’s performances, even taking a bit of a call and response clapping bit in his song, “Pedal to The Metal”.
Midon, overall, was impressed with his show and enjoyed his experience at Caffe Lena.
“It’s a really nice place.” Midon concluded. “It sounds great and everyone is musically involved.”
