Live takes were recorded at Soona Songs, Inc., in Jonesborough, Tennessee, over a 3-day period, with Marilyn Duncan at the Faders, and Graham Duncan on Cloud-Control and Kindly Mix-Downs. Mastered by John Scripp, of Massive Mastering. A talented and prolific songwriter, Bruce Balmer is also an exceptional guitarist. It has been said his.. “spirited guitar work owes as much to Django Reinhardt as it does to Mississippi John Hurt.” Wanting to capture the feel of busking on the street, Get Outta Park was recorded straight through in the new Soona Songs facility in Jonesborough TN, which Bruce, in his other incarnation as skilled carpenter, helped to build. BRUCE BALMER was born a guitar player in Margaretville, NY, from a musical family. After music at Marlboro college, he played lead guitar for rock, jazz, and country bands and toured extensively as a sideman for the late Jack Hardy. He began his singer/songwriter career in NYC, but has called Dallas Texas home for a while. Married to singer/songwriter/jazz vocalist, Lisa Markley, he signed with Soona Songs in 2008 prior to the release of their album, Markley & Balmer. Although his third album, Get Outta Park is Bruce’s first solo release for Soona Songs. A Review - The New and Long Awaited Bruce Balmer Album If you’ve seen Bruce Balmer perform, you know he is already one of your favorite musicians, and his new album, Get Outta Park, shows why. Using only guitar and vocals allows Bruce’s special gifts to shine through. An adventurous guitar player with a quirky ear, he punctuates his compositions with surprising musical choices that turn out to be essential and inevitable. Listen as Bruce switches from minor to major keys at the refrain in Water Over the Dam and how the softening of the sound reengages your ear and prepares you to better hear the next verse. That’s just one example of how Bruce uses his large and nuanced musical vocabulary to decorate the album with beautiful and subtle fireworks. And for the lyric driven listener, Bruce never lets the introspective text wander into abstraction. Instead he packs each song with a slap-you-in-the-face juxtaposition of offbeat images. While at first glance, the disparate images may feel only superficially connected, they work together to communicate themes or invoke the relevant emotional responses. In The End of Times Bruce crams together images of a sleeping Mountain God, the Roman senate, a mastodon, scarecrow, and foggy Ireland in a way that reveals both the melancholy and necessity of ending one journey before you can fully embrace the new life that is waiting. So much more than a collection of excellent songs, Get Out of Park is a unified work of art. With a strong narrative arc, the album is organized with virtual A and B sides like the vinyl that Bruce loves so much. The first 6 cuts, from title track to End of Time, reflect on a Catskill Yankee’s journey away from familial roots to a new, distant home and from an easy mundane routine to the restless yet contented enmeshment of new love. The B side meditates on new found love and attendant domesticity. It begins with the Goddess of Calibration “listening for the changes” and proceeds to a more mature contentment and acceptance of Water Over the Dam. And sides are interwoven with subtle presaging like the way “water under the bridge” in the title track flows over the dam in the final track. Additionally, Get Out of Park bears up under repeated listening. I’ve kept it in my car’s CD player for over 3 weeks, and after a dozen or so times through, I am still entertained by the performances and engaged in unwrapping the layers literal and emotional meaning. This album will remain on my (and your) frequently played list for a long, long time. -- Alan Gann --- Review of Bruce Balmer's "Get Outa Park" There’s this strange and dangerous territory between jazz and folk, complexity and simplicity, poetry and raw, honest truth that very few people are willing to enter. Bruce Balmer lives there. I admit it – I have a prejudice. I consider “safe folk songs” a contradiction in terms, something the world we live in just doesn’t have time for. The fact that Bruce takes risks with every one of these tracks is (actually and metaphorically) music to my ears. In this tour de force one man show, he manages to let his guitar hero chops support the songs instead of burying them, a feat few have mastered. The songs, a series of quirky little one act plays, bounce off the music in unpredictable ways, take “Violette” or “When it’s too Wet to Plow” – two variations on the eternal theme – the war game between men and women, but played with real bullets. And concluding a song called “If I Were a Better Man” with “…I wouldn’t change a thing” would no doubt bring a posthumous smile to the face of the notorious Mr. Hardy, whose touch is obvious throughout. Finally, after my first listen to “Get Outa Park”, I paid Bruce the highest tribute one songwriter can give another. I stole one of his lines. You see, there was this a song I was stuck on... couldn’t get it outa park if you know what I mean. Anyway, thanks, Bruce. Keep it coming. Charles Nolan --- "Listen to Bruce Balmer's Get Outta Park for the cool, eclectic guitar playing and the lyrical, gleam-in-the-eye rhymeplay and wordplay." - Tom Geddie, Buddy Magazine