caught up  in the Civil War... rootsy, blues-flavored tales of the Mississippi Delta delivered in a conversational language of the heart. A master tune-smith, Bob is rounding out his 4th decade as a songwriting troubadour. About his songs he says, "I don't know if these stories are true, but they happened to me". ..

Bob Cheevers has earned a place in the landscape now called Americana Music having charted Top 20 in that genre with his last two CDs. Bob grew up in Memphis and got a soul full of music not only from the icons of his youth such as Elvis, Jerry Lee and Johnny Cash but also from his Mother, who was a radio star during the Great Depression performing with the Big Bands of that era. A hundred year old photo of his Grandmother graces the cover of his Gettysburg To Graceland CD. From an early age, Bob's creative feet were firmly planted in Mississippi Delta mud, and his songs began to feature characters whose lives reflected the life style along the rivers of the South over the past hundred years.

After starting his first band during college, Bob and his musical direction migrated west following a dream that took him from the pop field in Hollywood to country and roots music in Nashville with stops in-between to gather the tools and trophies of his career. Among his statues and certificates of accomplishment is an Emmy for the song "Big City Gambler" which was voted Best Musical Composition of 1986 by NARAS. Several decades as a writer have seen over a thousand songs born.

Using his organizational skills in the late 1980's,The Bob Cheevers Sacramento Songwriter Songwriter Showcase ran for two years featuring high profile regional and national hit writers and served as Bob's springboard to Nashville. After moving to Nashville and in addition to pursuing his own musical career, Bob organized and produced a yearly benefit series of shows at The Bluebird Cafe for Nashville's Alive Hospice Oganization featuring Nashville's most famous writers, artists and performers. Now in its ninth year, its still The Bluebird's most popular series. As a producer, publisher, singer, songwriter and seasoned performer, Bob has found his own voice spinning rootsy, blues-flavored tales of the Delta in a conversational language of the heart.

You may not have heard the name before but Bob Cheevers isn't exactly an unknown, having won eight Emmys for his music videos. The man's voice has a strong Willie Nelson twang to it but his work is much folkier, with Celtic backgrounds, a style he's dubbed "Delta-Celtic", an ancient air that's traveled the Mississippi mud while retaining its shamrock. Fiona's World is based on a woman who sketched his face in a Southampton bar (UK) and became friends with the troubadour through her artwork, also appearing in a singing cameo in Pictures of Strangers (good voice!).

Thus, we have an emotionally interconnected storyline punctuated by three instrumental interludes as abstract chaptering devices. Cheevers plays acoustic guitar, a little percussion, and sings but has a partner who wields a very interesting electric axe, understated and aeolian but haunting, as are the violin and...well, either I'm hearing things or there's also a cello (bowed bass perhaps?), uncredited, beside non-pianistic keyboards, equally unmentioned. All, however, achieve a moody synthesis that's deeply affecting. The side players, in fact, share an intimate kindredness for the lamentive atmospheres that pervade Fiona's World. Even the happy songs—New Forest Rain for instance—have an achy backscatter to them, trotting out country elements strongly.

Don't disinclude the folk element here, which is extremely strong, as the opening What I've Done for Love illustrates, and sets Cheevers squarely in with the greats, as catchy and evocative as what Lightfoot, Chapin, Neill, or any of a bevy of writers have given us. With a release as appealing as this one, we can only imagine what the next will be like.