I’ve just had great fun with ccMixter’s Beach blanket secret mixter project. Participants were invited to produce something with a summer theme in secret collaboration with another artist somewhere on the planet. I was fortuitously allocated Clarence Simpson (I think he’s from Arkansas.) I chose his beautiful but simple guitar arpeggio C minor and wrote a memoir of my Australian summers of childhood at West Beach then blended them with coastal sound FX and a basic chorus. I was pretty pleased with the result – and judging by the feedback a lot of other people appreciated it. I was concerned that a US audience might not “get” the Aussie idioms & references but no one’s complained. I guess it’s like poetry – if you’re honest and very specific it often touches a universal chord…