NEW FIND!!! "Alter Ego Limited Edition CD"
The remaining copies are at: "DHC Limited Editions" Page

14 years later, deep in the basement, 18 copies of this signed, numbered first Edition surfaced. The 2nd edition, one of my most popular independent releases, is completely different than this intimate, solo 1st Edition. Read on to find out how.

I interviewed myself to help me tell the story of this CD:

WHAT is this? This is a signed and numbered copy of “Alter Ego,” which was the first version of one of my biggest-selling independent albums, “AlterED Ego.” This was one of the first projects I did after I left GRP records, where I was recording “Contemporary Jazz” instrumentals.

WHEN was this created? Recorded/released in 1996

WHERE was it created? I recorded and mixed “Alter Ego” in my own studio, “Crisis Island Studio,” which was in a periodically-flooded basement in Davis Square, Somerville (Massachusetts)

WHO was involved? I co-produced this album with Bob Kroeger, who had produced my pre-GRP release “Round the Corner.” The executive producer was my then-assistant Stephanie Maillet. This entire album is harp & vocals, except for the last cut, which is voice & synth, so this is a very intimate and personal production - just me in my studio.

The ARTWORK and the RECORDING Sessions:
The front cover is one of my favorite pictures of me [I'll try to get the original to show you what photo it came from]

The back is a great laughing photo (in my estimation) wearing a wacky pair of glasses (or are they swimming goggles? I can’t remember) [I'll try to get that up here, too]. I really liked the laughing photo until someone (probably my brother) said, “Wow, you let people see your old fillings?” I didn't know I should be be embarrassed about that. Since when are fillings a fashion faux pas (sigh) … In any case, I changed it in the 2nd edition. It was less expensive than going back to get white-colored fillings.

The right side of the cover is from a glorious day for me, when I found an entire junkyard of rusted train cars. I’ve always loved rust, always loved trains, so this little bit of cracking paint is very meaningful to me.

Inside are a few pictures of me that I really love. Inside the cover is a transparency of me dancing in a big striped shirt, my hair in braids. You can barely see what it is, but I love the swirl of the shirt and the shape of the image. Then there’s a picture of me on my 5th birthday, just about to topple my cake, and a wonderful picture I stumbled on, of me at 7, my arms wide, just before I hit my awkward-age, which started at 8 and lasted 'til next year.

I just opened one of these jewel-cases and realized each one includes a little note-card explaining it’s one of the first 2000 printed and numbered copies, and asking for feedback. But don’t write back to that address – I moved 10 years ago!

The Story Behind Each Cut on the Album:

The starred pieces below were changed, or removed for the 2nd Edition of “Altered Ego,” which is one of my most popular CDs. A few of the cuts remained exactly the same.

*Dance the Way You Dance (3:10)
Words & Music by Deborah Henson-Conant
Deborah Henson-Conant, harp & vocals
I removed this from the 2nd Edition, and then re-recorded in a much more enlarged production-version on “Artist’s Proof” a few years later. This is a stripped-down version with just harp and voice, but I love the purity of it. This song falls into the category of "Songs I Sing to Move Me through a Bad Funk About Myself" -- I long to make a music-video of this song, in a re-recorded version, with people of every size, shape and ability I can find dancing in a hundred different ways.

*Beck’s Blues (3:59)
by Deborah Henson-Conant
Deborah Henson-Conant, harp
I was totally inspired by Jeff Beck, and wanted to write a Blues about it. In the 2nd Edition, I wanted to experiment with distorted harp sound, so I re-recorded it (at least I think I rerecorded it) and added mild distortion. distortion. This tune eventually became the foundation for the song “Make the Best of What You Got,” which I have yet to record, but which I often perform live.

Belinda (4:37)
Words & Music by Deborah Henson-Conant
Deborah Henson-Conant, harp & vocals

I re-recorded this song for the second edition, “Altered Ego,” and then listened back and decided I liked this original version better, so ended up using this version on both editions. Here’s a link to the story of this beloved tree, which is no more -- here's a link to the wonderful YouTube video by Mike Chvaney of me singing to Belinda with the whole Arlington High School Choir one week before she was cut down -- and here’s a link to my favorite photo blog of pictures of Belinda.

All I can say is that this is a true story, and that a few days after I was told the name of this tree, I was walking down the bikepath, looked up at the tree and within 20 yards, I had begun to sing the melody. The rest of the song was simply a matter of saying exactly what else happened and how I fell in love with this beautiful giant that is no more.

As a postscript, after I'd sung this song for years, a man came up to me after a show and said, "You know that tree you sing about, Belinda? Yeah ... well, I know that tree. I know it well. But it's not called Belinda. It's called .... Bertha."

Well, the next time I saw the tree, I looked up, and thought, "Hunh, Belinda by day, Bertha by night ..." and the next thing I knew I was singing a new song about the tree's alter ego "Birth a' Bertha."

(I later discovered she was also called "Tim" ... but I'm sticking with Belinda and Bertha).

Wild Mountain Thyme/Summertime (4:49)
Traditional / Gershwin
Deborah Henson-Conant, harp & vocals
I started putting these two tunes together when I was on tour in Germany, very struck by how the Bluesiness of “Summertime” begins to infuse the pretty Scottish tune “Wild Mountain Thyme” and give it a completely different flavor.

996 (5:11)
by Deborah Henson-Conant
Deborah Henson-Conant, harp

This is the original solo harp version of the piece that became a centerpiece of my 2006 project “Invention & Alchemy” (DVD & CD) – if you know the version from that project, this will sound like a whirlwind – I played it so fast! “996” is the story of the 996th night of the 1001 Arabian Nights. As you may know, the significance of the 1001 Arabian Nights is that storyteller Sheherezade was married to a Sultan whose general practice was to behead his brides the morning after their wedding night. To avoid this fate, Sheherezade began a story on her wedding night that came to a cliff-hanger right at dawn. The Sultan was so intrigued by the story that he couldn’t bring himself to kill the storyteller, and so she continued this cliff-hanger-at-dawn approach for 1001 nights, each story dovetailing into the next (kind of like modern-day soap operas).

I always wondered, “Why 1001 nights? What happened around night 996 that brought the stories, 5 nights later, to an end.” I decided it was that on this night, the Sultan himself learned to tell stories, and with this new, real power, he lost the need to compensate for his deep sense of powerlessness.

*Congratulations, You Made it this Far (the Birthday Song) (4:45)
Words & Music by Deborah Henson-Conant
Deborah Henson-Conant, keyboard & vocals
I wrote this song for my own birthday, just to try to get me through the trauma of it. The version on this CD is acoustic and -- although I really love the updated version in the 2nd Edition -- this one is so intimate and personal, I find it very moving.

*Joshua (3:48)
Traditional / arr. Henson-Conant (with extra words by D. Henson-Conant)
Deborah Henson-Conant, harp & vocals

I love this cut – I really don’t know why I removed it from the 2nd edition of the CD. I mean, as I listen to it now I can hear how I might want to record it differently, but I love the idea of this song. Like a lot of other music of mine, it’s a song that refers to the “back-story” of either a well-known story or song. So in this song, I wanted to explore what was going through Joshua’s head when he brought the walls down - and what does that say about music and how it truly can break walls down. So I added words and musical sections to give voice to that part of the story, the human connection part.

*Bring it All Down (4:24)
Words & Music by Deborah Henson-Conant
Deborah Henson-Conant, harp & vocals
Until I re-listened to this a few days ago, I hadn't realized how much I enjoy the sequence from "Joshua" to "Bring it All Down" and what it says about human connection.

This is a completely solo version of this song (no bass, no percussion, no overdubs as in the 2nd Edition). The song itself I wrote after a phone call with my best friend, so thankful for how she can mellow me out and pull me back down to earth again. Another friend once told me that when she first heard this song, she thought it was kind of an ADHD torch song. All I can say is that I’ve never been diagnosed …

Siana’s Dream: The Music Box (5:43)
by Deborah Henson-Conant
Deborah Henson-Conant, harp
This is a simple little Mexican waltz I originally recorded for GRP, but I wanted to record it again because compositionally, there are parts of the song that were left out in the GRP recordings, and I wanted to include them. It’s an instrumental that tells the story of a young Mexican girl living in California. When she goes to bed, she listens to a music box her Grandmother gave her, and dreams that the two dancers who spin on top of the music box are herself and the boy she loves.

*Nobody Half as Strong (5:16)
Words & Music by Deborah Henson-Conant
Deborah Henson-Conant, harp & vocals
I re-recorded this for the 2nd edition, and shortened it by almost a minute
This song is about my mother, and her escape to romantic fantasy that led her to elope with my father. It’s about losing my father – not in reality, but losing the fantasy of who he was supposed to be – to her, a woman and to me, a girl. And it’s about the dream of how strong I might have been if I had had a father to hold me when I was scared at night.

Cindy,Cindy (3:50)
Traditional / arranged by Deborah Henson-Conant
Deborah Henson-Conant, harp & vocals
This is a song that my grandmother sang to me when I was a kid. She’d put me in the wheelbarrow, wheel down to the back garden and sing as we went. This is another case of a quirky love-song that I often heard as a kid, and that began to haunt me in my teens, wanting to know what the ‘back-story’ was – wondering if there was there more to the song, and adding my own words and my own meaning to it. The first verse is traditional, but the other 3 are ones I wrote when I was in my teens.

*There’s a Boat (4:00)
Words & Music by Deborah Henson-Conant
Deborah Henson-Conant, harp & vocals
This is one of my favorite songs, but I’ve never been satisfied with a performance or recording of it, maybe because I originally wrote it for piano and then lost the original accompaniment. This recording is probably the closest I’ve ever gotten to how I want it to sound, but I removed it from the 2nd edition, knowing I can get closer.

Irene, Goodnight (5:07)
Huddie “Led Belly” Ledbetter / Additional words by Deborah Henson-Conant
Deborah Henson-Conant, harp & vocals
This is one of my favorite recordings ever - and this DID make it into the 2nd Edition of this CD. I’ve never performed this piece in concert and, although I’ve wanted to arrange it for string orchestra, I’ve never been able to do it. This was a one-time improvisation that captures for me the back-story of this song. I often wonder what makes someone write a particular song – what’s the context in which it was first sung, where would it fit in a story? "Irene Goodnight" always haunted me. It was often presented as a drinking song -- but when I listen to the words ...

Sometimes I live in the country
Sometimes I live in the town
Sometimes I take a great notion to jump in the river and drown...

...it feels so emotional, so filled with unspoken passion. That's the human story I was looking for when I improvised this piece, and that's what I love about it.