Coming soon
My new album, with 14 original songs.
In times of strife, let's make room for love. These are heartfelt love songs—nothing cynical, nothing synthethetic. They feature acoustic instruments and a wide range of genres—folk ballads, country songs with swing, up-tempo bluegrass, and a blend of country and R&B reminiscent of Muscle Shoals.
Our team in the studio
I played guitar and sang lead on all of the songs, but I had backing from superb session musicians. The album was recorded and mixed in the fall of 2025 at Rubber Room Recording Studio in Chapel Hill. The studio, operated by Gerald Brown, has recorded Doc Watson, Rhiannon Giddens, The Carolina Chocolate Drops, Lucinda Williams, Brandford Marsallis, Lou Reed, Jerry Douglas, Sam Bush, Mandolin Orange, Steep Canyon Rangers, and many other well-known artists.
Robbie Link has performed in symphony orchestras, chamber ensembles, big bands, and jazz ensembles, and with rock, Latin, and folk groups in the U.S. and abroad. He has done hundreds of recording sessions and has taught double bass at East Carolina University, UNC Chapel Hill, and Duke University. Currently, he teaches bass, cello, and viola da gamba at his home near Chapel Hill.
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Sarah Drye is a gifted and versatile musician whose talents span across guitar, fiddle, mandolin, piano, and just about any instrument she picks up. Sarah performs with the New Direction Bluegrass quartet and with her husband, Dylan, in a trio, Carolina Calls. On “Love Is What We’ll Make Today,” Sarah played fiddle and mandolin and sang harmony.
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Joe MacPhail is a brilliant keyboard player and drummer who performs with four touring bands, Diali Cissokho & Kaira Ba, Chatham Rabbits, The Back Pocket, and Turnabout Players. Joe has worked as a session musician on over 1000 songs across all genres. He has performed on the Stephen Colbert show and twice on the PBS Music at the Museum Series. On “Love Is What We’ll Make Today,” he played the piano parts and a vintage Hammond B3 organ on the song “Ball o’ Twine.”
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Rick LaFleur is a session musician who has played banjo with the Grass Cats band. He is also an engineer with a Ph.D. in chemical physics. He played banjo on four songs.
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Neil Caudle is a science writer, novelist, editor, guitarist, and songwriter. Recently, he was the guitarist and front man for Pickard Mountain, a bluegrass band. In college, he performed as a singer-songwriter in the Winston-Salem area and with a square-dance band. “Love Is What We’ll Make Today,” is his first album. He sang lead vocals and played all of the guitar parts.
Meghan Gambling is a producer, screenwriter and award-winning playwright who has also performed as a singer with Identity Crush. She sang backup vocals on three of the songs on this album.
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Alex Bingham is a versatile jazz bassist who performs with bands and orchestras in North Carolina. On this album, he played banjo on "What Kept You, Darling?"
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Gerald Brown, owner of the Rubber Room Recoding Studio, is also a musician and songwriter who has performed with several touring bands.
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Guitars on the album
For most of the rhythm-guitar tracks and solo work, and for the fingerpicking on "If That's All Right," I played a 2022 Boucher PS-BG-252-M, made in Quebec. It has Brazilian rosewood back and sides and an Adirondack spruce top. I used medium-gauge Elixir 80-20 strings on this guitar.
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For the solos on "Tenderly" and "What She's Seeing in Me," I played a 1930s-vintage Kalamazoo archtop owned by Gerald Brown at the Rubber Room Recording Studio. Both songs needed a bluesy, Muscle Shoals kind of sound, and we got the results we wanted from this guitar. Jerry didn't know what kind of strings were on this guitar, or how old they were. For the sound we wanted, old, dead strings were ideal.
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I played Jerry's old twelve-string guitar (brand unknown) on the rhythm track of "While I Can" and his vintage Gibson flattop for a "slap chop" on "What She's Seeing in Me." The chop involved whacking my fingernails against the strings on the off-beat, adding texture on top of the basic rhythm-guitar backing.
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About my music
I took up the guitar when I was twelve years old, playing an old Harmony with finger-wrecking action. I worked all summer of my thirteenth year to buy my first electric guitar and the next summer to buy my first amp. I played with a boy band at parties and school talent shows in Galax, Virginia, where I also saw my first fiddler's convention and fell in love with bluegrass.
Through high school, I played a Yamaha FG-180 acoustic guitar, writing songs and trying them out on small crowds around a bonfire at the campground in Tanglewood Park, where I worked as a lifeguard at the swimming pool. In college at Wake Forest, I performed as a singer-songwriter in coffee houses on campus and in downtown Winston-Salem, played guitar in a square-dance band, and worked part-time in a music store. In 1974, I scraped together all of my savings and bought a Gallagher G70 guitar, my first pro-quality instrument. I will never part with it.
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After college, I drifted away from music to raise children, pursue a career, and write fiction. I returned to the guitar in 2019 when a neighbor dared me to get it out of the closet and pick some tunes with him. It was fun, and we still pick together about once a week. During the pandemic, I began relearning the guitar, focusing on bluegrass. I took some private lessons and attended several bluegrass camps—three times at Augusta in West Virginia, once at Ashoken in New York State, and three times at Bryan Sutton's Blue Ridge Guitar Camp. At the same time, I took up the fiddle, taking lessons online and at Augusta.
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In 2022, I joined the Pickard Mountain bluegrass band, playing guitar and fronting the band for more than two years at various performances, including the North Carolina State Fair in 2024. I left the band in the spring of 2025 to focus on songwriting and to work on an album. In the summer and fall of 2025, I recorded 14 original songs at the Rubber Room Recording Studio in Chapel Hill. The album is "Love Is What We'll Make Today."
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Along the way, I've acquired some great guitars, including a Collings D2HA, a Martin D-18, and two Bouchers. For most of the songs on my album, I played a Boucher PS-BG-252-M, the best guitar I own. I also played a 1930s-era Gibson archtop and an old twelve-string, both owned by Gerald Brown.
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My influences? In bluegrass, Tony Rice, Doc Watson, Bryan Sutton, David Greer, and Jack Lawrence. In songwriting, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Jimmy Martin, Hank Williams, and Bill Monroe.
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I'm playing my Yamaha in a jam session in Winston-Salem, October 1973.
Back to where I started, playing with fire.
Live performances and recording
Neil performing an original song, "What Kept You, Darling," at Ashokan.
Neil performing "Hold Whacha Got" with a jam band at the Ashokan Bluegrass Camp, 2023.
Performing with Pickard Mountain on the radio at the Historic Earle Theater in Mount Airy, 2023.
Performing with Pickard Mountain at Wildside Farm, 2024.
In April of 2024, Pickard Mountain recorded four songs in a studio run by John Rees, a Nashville veteran. One of the songs was my original, "What Kept You, Darling?"