The release of this material is a tribute to Jim Miller, an outstanding musician from Portland, Oregon, a bassist with a unique touch and unconventional approach to the instrument and the blues. As a bass player in the Portland blues community, Jim has contributed to more live sessions and recordings, and collaborated with more artists than is conceivable to mention here, but Bill Rhoades, Jim Mesi and Paul Delay first come to mind. His credentials even include a stint with the Nelson Riddle orchestra! Jim placed the music and the song first, an extremely
rare quality among contemporary musicians, and didn’t hesitate to play the most minimal, least demonstrative bass part if that’s what made the song work best. His wicked sense of humor never failed to come through in his playing; and while eminently literate in numerous music
genres, Jim never seemed to allow his imagination to be thwarted by conventions.

This album consists of tracks that Jim Miller and I recorded three years ago at Jim's long time friend Terry Amato's home studio in Lake Oswego, Oregon. It was Jim's idea that we cut a few of the tunes that we'd been playing live, for the purpose of arming ourselves with a quality demo that would help us book our little duo, "Frank E. Gee & Jimmy Meunier" (Jim was a devout francophile, and he got a kick out of the name I made up for him, “meunier” being the French word for “miller”). After a couple of sessions, Jim and I realized that we might very well end up with more than merely a demo, but possibly something good enough to release. We made a few more trips to Terry's place whenever our schedules permitted, and in no time we had enough
material to constitute a whole album. Unfortunately, life being what it is, time got away from us and the album was never released.

Jim's completely unexpected passing on December 23 came as a real shock and an utter blow to everyone in the Portland music community. I had just been in Portland playing with him a week earlier! Reaching for comfort in the face of this grievous news, I pulled out our CD and
listened to it for the first time in quite a while. I was deeply moved to hear again what we had created together. That was some good shit! Our approach to these blues standards struck me as vibrant, and if unorthodox, quite refreshing. The bottom line is that we always had a great
time playing together, and this seemed to come through in these recordings. Jim always
played exactly what I wanted to hear! While we began playing together as a duo (as opposed to a larger band) because of economical considerations, we discovered that the barebones approach of the “just-guitar-and-bass” format allowed us great freedom and spontaneity; I knew I could at any moment throw an unexpected change at him and he’d be right there, or yell "You got it,Jim!", and he would unabashedly launch into a ferocious, no holds barred solo with no other support than his own foot-tapping! We really had a ball!

The title "Social Moments" came from Jim in reference to one of the instrumentals. It becamean inside joke between us, the lameness and utter absurdity of the phrase always getting the two of us cracking up.

From one gig to the next, things were never quite the same --- I doubt that we ever played a song the same way twice! You never know exactly what‘s going to happen, it’s all about being in the moment, and letting spontaneity be the guide. That’s pretty much the rule we applied to these recordings, and we both felt that we had succeeded in capturing what “Frank E. Gee & Jimmy Meunier” was all about.

Although I will never be able to recreate what Jim and I had in “Frank E. Gee & Jimmy Meunier”, I am grateful to have crossed paths with this truly unique and original musician, genuine gem of the Portland music scene.

Thank you, Jim, for the friendship and the wild musical rides!

Franck Goldwasser
December 28, 2013