Liner Notes
I composed Tree for Two in G Major around 1999. It was recorded ten years later on a Sony Linear PCM-10 and performed as a single recording in 2019 without editing out any rough spots. It has been lightly modulated using Audacity, open source, cross-platform, audio software. The song is finger-picked on a Gibson SJ-200 acoustic guitar with standard tuning and Martin Acoustic SP Phosphor Bronze (light) strings. The song plays either as a guitar solo, or as a duet for cello and guitar, or piano and guitar.
Tree for Two is named for a very large oak tree that grows in the park a few blocks away. The park used to be under water. About a hundred years ago, the area was known as Wolf Bay. After the construction of the Government Locks that connect Lake Washington to Puget Sound, the water level of Lake Washington fell. The park now lies on fill and land left when the water level fell. To this day, however, the reclaimed land remains slightly boggy. The water table is close to the surface of the parkland. The Lake must feel grumpy at having been dispossessed of its own, so it seems, and you often get the sense that the Lake, sooner or later, will take it back.
The oak tree is majestic and rises sixty to seventy feet tall. The tree has a very broad canopy and its branches are thick. Its trunk is massive. Like many oaks, this one stands by itself. Its roots have created a large, circular island of ground risen up all around its base, about 7 feet high and 75 feet around. All manner of birds fly past: eagles, crows, Steller’s blue jays, harbor gulls, heron, cormorants, geese, hawks. Kids and dogs run past heading for the dock and the swimming beach at the Lake. At night, after the Park is closed, there are coyote.
There is plenty of room for two or three or more sitting beneath the oak tree. You can watch from there. You can play songs. You can see the Lake and Mount Rainier and the Cascade Mountains. For me, it's primarily a tree for two. It's a space apart from everything else.