Welcome and Why

Thanks for visiting "The Sultana Project" blog. In the spirit of this format, I will try to document the creative process employed in support of my musical vision as well as share info surrounding this somewhat forgotten event. For those not familiar with the saga, I suggest a quick trip here before venturing much further. The single most common question I am asked when telling folks about this project is, why - why this topic, how did you come up with that? Here's how I started down this trail....
It was fall 2008 and I was fiddling around late one evening in my recording/music studio as I often do. The previous day I had a recording a session with a client who used my '71 Martin D-18 and tuned the darn thing way down. I picked it up and started exploring this alternate tuning and found myself riffing on what sounded somewhat like a sea shanty. The mics were still in place, so I decided to capture the riff as a possible seed for a song. As I recorded it, I also did a some lyrical free association in staying with this feel. The mostly nonsensical babble yielded one phrase that stuck out and fit the riff rather well. "Burn down the wheel, burn down the riverboat" was the phrase. Now where did that come from? Who knows. Anyway,
a few weeks later I went back to the session files (the recording) and gave it a listen. This riff and lyric sparked my interest enough to explore this a bit further. My initial idea was to elaborate on the topic of a riverboat that met an early demise. Since the riff was a bit dark (minor key) I especially wanted this boat to have a history of ill-gotten gains - something with an edge. Upon researching the topic, I stumbled across Riverboat Dave's site. Aah I thought.... the jackpot. I started reading through all the info, looking for something to build on (damned if near every steamboat didn't catch fire at some point). I spent several days looking through the site and searching for something that felt right. Riverboat Dave has them listed alphabetically and it wasn't until I got to 'S' where I stumbled across one called "Sultana" (actually there was more than one). This is where I got my initial introduction to the saga. It's about half way down the page. The more I read, the more I became hooked on this event.