December of '07 marks the return of Meredith Bragg, this time as a solo artist, with his masterful musical document named after the studio is was conceived in, Silver Sonya. The Terminals are still here, and will be working on a follow up to the EP in 2008.

Meredith explains how the solo record, Silver Sonya, came about -

In 2005 my wife and I moved our belongings into storage, left our jobs and spent a year traveling around the world. Taking only what would fit in our backpacks or in the trunk of our car, we set out with no purpose other than shaking up our lives.

Along the way we reconnected with the freedom that comes from living with limited possessions. We also began to enjoy the act of traveling just as much as the places we were traveling to. With no fixed itinerary, destinations became secondary as the process became the goal. For a year we allowed accidental discoveries and random recommendations to shape what we would do that evening, what city we would go to or even what countries we would visit.

When we eventually returned home, I wanted to record another album. During the previous year I had written a number of songs and fragments. Since many of these songs dealt directly with our trip, I felt I needed to extend the ideas that were born from the experience. I wanted to make a record that limited my resources in a way that would force me to experiment with other options. I wanted an album that allowed the process to guide the outcome.

Late in 2006 I met with Chad Clark (Beauty Pill, Smart Went Crazy) and T.J. Lipple (Aloha) at their studio, Silver Sonya, to discuss my plan. I had worked with them both on The Departures EP, and consider them friends as well as skilled producers. If anyone would be willing to jump off this bridge with me, I hoped it would be them.

I laid out my idea, which consisted of two rules --

Rule #1: Only the sounds I could get from my acoustic guitar or voice
could be used.
Rule #2: Once recorded, there were no restrictions on how they could
be manipulated.

After recording the basic tracks, these sounds were pulled, filtered, shifted, butchered, looped, broken, and mended. Some songs stayed relatively whole, while others were radically changed.

So while you listen to songs about Roman statues, volcanoes, middle eastern scientists, or forgotten road-side attractions, remember that every sound and every word are outcomes of a process shaped through limited resources that opened up otherwise hidden options.

www.meredithbragg.com