RCA
2004
Montana - A Love Story
About This Album
A love letter to his home state, Montana is George Winston's most varied album since 1999's Plains and probably his most personal album, ever. His last album -- 2002's Night Divides the Day -- focused on his first musical inspiration, the Doors. Montana goes deeper into his heart, back to childhood memories of his family's house, lullabies, and first encounters with songs that would later hold great personal meaning. It's this kind of genuine wonder of it all that makes Montana so great. Winston is freer than usual on some of the tracks, playing like France's most precious dreamer, Erik Satie, must have; sometimes with great care and sometimes open-ended. On "Valse Frontenac," Winston stops on what seems like the second-to-last note, a cliffhanger move Satie might have pulled on you in anything-goes-Paris, 1900 or so. Like so many other moments on the album, it's fragile, but purposeful enough to not be maudlin. Surrounding these peculiar twists with popular nostalgia like "Goodnight Irene" and that song to which you first danced with a girl -- in Winston's case it's Sam Cooke's "You Send Me" -- are more common moments with no less sincerity, and it keeps Montana from being an album only Winston understands.
Track List (try tracks 1,4,5,6,8,10,11,15 and 16)

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