Reviews: Horse Thief

Jeff Berlin

Contrary to what L.L.Bean might have you believe, rural life is not all horse-drawn sleighs, crackling fires and double-knit sweater vests. Especially for those who purposefully live in the most remote nether regions of the state, the idyllic splendor and serene isolation of the Green Mountains comes at a terrific cost. It's a hardscrabble existence marked as much by backbreaking labor and frostbitten fingers as by beauty and solitude.” - Dan Bolles, Seven Days

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What feels like a million years ago, but was in fact 2005, I had this crazy idea to record a CD of stories. I had no idea how to do it and wanted to do it right. I asked a few friends, some of whom said: 'do it yourself, you can do that', but I wanted to set the bar high and have no regrets about what I put out as my first foray into the retail world of CDs – while it lasts! A friend of mine, Rick Barrows told me about Kristina Stykos who going digital and was a recording engineer. I got in contact with her and the rest, as they say, is history. ” - Simon Brooks, story teller

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The fifth solo album by Chelsea singer-songwriter Kristina Stykos shows a mature artist expanding her musical palette and sound while continuing themes she has explored in her previous work. Stykos has been a favorite of this writer for the decade since she released “In the Earth's Fading Light” and won a Times Argus-Rutland Herald Tammie Award for Best Album of the year 2005. At that time she was just beginning to self-record her work using a home studio, playing wonderful guitars built by her husband Michael Millard of Froggy Bottom Guitars, and fixing her life’s GPS in the music she was writing. Back then Stykos’ music was folk and Celtic-based. Her voice, a mixture of smoky sensuality, ragged edge weariness and growing maturity while never pretty, was engaging because it had substance and style.” - Art Edelstein, Times Argus

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