Music
The best kept secret in music
Press
"This is a great romantic gift for someone who loves musical nostalgia. Whether it was yesterday, or just feels like yesterday, Love Letters will awaken the memories of those first romantic emotions and the music that accompanied, or perhaps, fueled them.
The MacVitties is a father and son team. Honing the basics of great harmony, their renditions drip with wonderful vocals and professionalism. They have magically and uniquely sealed familiar harmony sounds into their own package of “Love Letter” mailings. Over this base of romantic songs, the guitar and mandolin work of Frank Carillo is featured, adding musical variety.
Their songs showcase a variety of lovers in these twelve originals: a demanding strong man who won’t leave without getting back her love (“Without You”), a complimentary man (“Beautiful Girl”), a man yearning for guidance (“In The Middle”), a sensitive man who wants to take it slowly (“Theodorabee”), a sorrowful lover begging for understanding (“Anna”), and a man in the heat of passion (“Inside Out”).
The MacVitties release creates the feel of entering a musical time capsule. For those of us who grew up on ‘60s radio, it is like experiencing it all over again, for the first time."
- AP
"Love Letters" Five Stars:
This father and son team work in complete harmony as they sing with complete harmony performing the songs they have written.
This is one of the best Folk releases we have heard in quite a while. A wonderful mixture of lyrics and melodies.
Chris and Fred MacVittie have a winning folk album released. FOLK RADIO HEADS UP !
- Roots Music
Do you sing along with 60s Oldies in the car? Are you currently in love? If so, then the MacVitties have made a lovely album for you. From Connecticut, The MacVitties are father and son, Fred and Chris. As the story goes, 25 year old Chris grew up listening to all the great recordings of the Beatles, Byrds, and Buffalo Springfield. Then, living alone in the Australian Outback, he was inspired to take up the guitar and learn to sing and play. Now he sings harmony duos with his dad, who also grew up with this music, backed by a little acousticish band.
All the songs on Love Letters are about love, and since, like those old Beatle songs, they are usually not very specific, you can adapt almost any of the lyrics to your own situation. If you neither have, nor long for, a suitable romantic situation, then you are stuck either imagining a situation, or if uncreative, thinking of the lyrics as part of the music itself like in a Huun Huur Tu song. But still there are some cute rhymes:
"I'm no Shakespeare, I'm no Blake,
I'm just a man with a heart that aches."
The arrangements here are a big part of Love Letters and run the small rainbow from acoustic pop, folk-pop, country-folk pop, to American-style folk-rock. Most of the songs are gently upbeat and optimistic, despite some low emotional spots. The sound is in fact more influenced by than based on the oldies, building with a finer sound based on modern pop and folk. The band plays well together and features all the popular instruments from acoustic and electric guitar to drums to keyboards, with quite a bit of tambourine.
My favorite of the songs is "Inside Out" with some wicked exotic guitar playing, perhaps Spanish. Here is the exception that proves the rule, "With the thunder of the moment from the lighting in your eyes showing me what to do...." As with Herman's Hermits' "Jezebel," pop arrangements change to fit the situation. Another interesting song is "By My Side" which takes an instrumental slip into alternative sensibilities.
For the most part, though, the harmonies are pleasant, the bands good, and Love Letters is an ideal album for mellow optimistic people in love.
- Judith Gennett
Discography
Love Letters
Right Rooster Records
May 2002 (several tracks have received national air play)
Produced by: Frank Carillo, Paul Orofino & MacVitties
Recorded: Millbrook Sound, Millbrook, NY
"Not What You Think"
Right Rooster Records/BMI
May 1999
Produced by David Pichadzw & Chris Mac Vittie
Recorded at Blue Jay Records, Carisle, MA
Photos
Feeling a bit camera shy
Bio
Meet the MacVitties: Fred and Chris,. Father and son. Although twenty-nine years lie between them, nothing comes between their harmonies.
Chris MacVittie has been the catalyst for the duo, though he would say it was his father’s record collection that set this duo’s career on its path. The Incredible String Band, Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills & Nash and of course, the Beatles all enticed the young MacVittie, who took every opportunity to listen to the music that shaped one generation and has taken hold of another. Now it resurfaces in the rich texture of lyric and music that Chris discovered when he was living alone in a shack in Australia.
After a brief college career, Chris followed his inner need to spread his wings with the decision to learn from the wide-open spaces of a small farming town outside of Brisbane, Australia. There he worked as a volunteer for a land conservation organization and spent most of his working days alone mending fences and nights wrangling meals over a campfire.
In Australia, where some aboriginal tribes follow the songlines of their nomadic lives across the desolate terrain, Chris found his own songlines.
When he returned to the States, Chris continued to play taking the occasional lesson and finding any opportunity to perform. When asked to sing at an open mike competition, he had the sudden inspiration to ask his father, Fred, to join him.
A former Marine who did a tour in Vietnam, Fred MacVittie loved his music and harbored a secret desire to sing. However, he chose the path of family responsibility and built a career as an environmental and safety consultant, reserving his musical ambition for family sing-ins on long car rides.
Chris didn’t think twice about asking his father to sing with him, it was simply the next logical move to make. In no time father and son reached deep into their shared love of music blending their rich voices and close harmonies within each of their original songs. “We’ve come a long way from the days of singing along to “The Beatles A to Z” in the car,” Chris says. Today when Fred and Chris MacVittie join voices, it is to their own music and something magical happens -- something at once profound and effortless. That something has had a powerful effect on audiences throughout New England for the past several years.
The MacVitties have been on the road playing everywhere from the Faneuil Hall Marketplace in Boston, Club Passim in Cambridge, and the Acoustic Café and Ives Concert Park, in Connecticut and the Triad Theater in Manhattan and The Towne Crier in Pawling, New York.
The MacVitties first CD, “Not What You Think” received Boston Sound Check Magazine Reviews’ highest rating of 4 Stars. Their latest recording, “Love Letters”, produced by Frank Carillo and Paul Orofino, is already garnering attention. Singout Maginzine “The MacVitties release creates the feel of entering a musical time capsule. ... it's like experiencing 60s radio all over again - for the first time".
Chris and Fred MacVittie are setting a new standard for fathers and sons and for anyone who has ever harbored the desire to follow their secret dreams. With deeply felt songs of love and loss, of hope and triumph, they mix their voices and hearts to mend fences and instill a deep sense that all is well. Their music reflects the MacVitties’ deeply held belief that life is a gift -- pure and simple.
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