Benevento / Russo Duo Darts CD

I spent the better part of two years traveling in Latin America and Eastern Europe with a thrown-together band, learning to write songs while watching the world go by through the windows of trains and airplanes. I eventually moved back to Texas, and for 2 more years, I hit the Dallas scene with a band called Stories Of London. I learned how to record, how to play my instruments, how to fall in love, and how to write a love song. I suppose those are all necessary tools...Eventually, the band broke up, as all bands do. I also split with my girlfriend of two years. I learned that a broken heart is not all my 19-year-old songwriter self of years ago thought it was cracked up to be. Two break-ups in a month taught me to feel broken. I learned devastation. I also learned writer's block and burn-out, and as a result I learned what it felt like to work a real job. . I learned how to walk into work and keep from showing that I had been listening to mewithoutYou and crying for no apparent reason on the drive there... again. I waited tables until I couldn't handle one more chicken parmigiana, and then I followed my dreams to England. I re-learned to write songs. I remembered how to be an artist. I remembered how ...

Why?Who knows! There's no point in trying to understand what motivates Moes Haven. Lots of people wondered why the boys felt the need to force themselves to record so much music in 2006. They offered no explanation on than that they thought it seemed like a fun project. Was it fun?"Yeah," says Matt Farley. "It was lots of fun. And it forced us to write probably 100 more good songs than we would have otherwise recorded this year. Besides that, there are more than 1000 terrible songs that we also wouldn't have recorded. But those songs are funny too...not that I'd want to let anyone listen to any of them."With DECEMBER, Moes Haven goes out with a bang. You'd think they would have phoned in the last release of the year. But this album finds the boys continuing to challenge themselves. It's very difficult to fathom. If ...

As the liner notes explain, much of the music on the CD is grounded on a single theme: newly composed melodies based upon the harmony of well known standard songs. The term 'contrafact,' used to describe such a jazz composition, is borrowed from the Latin term 'contrafactum,' which describes the historical process of text substitution in medieval chant ...