Charles Jenkins writes songs. Other guys dig ditches, climb mountains, rope
cattle, send business to the wall...it's all the same.

It's when other people get involved, other musicians, multi-instrumentalists, producers, conductors, 16 piece string sections, specialist string engineers, that the songwriter can claim any kind of higher ground. When those people don't flatten out the song, but instead highlight and accentuate its idiosyncrasies, that is when the achievements become greater, it is when the work becomes bolder and more daring, and the pay off in scaling such heights, justifiably more satisfying.

Blue Atlas is the result of this process. It is an album that travels the globe, bringing the listener to locations and characters near and far, from the Trees of Brisbane to Rolling Into Houston; from Across the Nullarbor to Caravaggio, My Wife and I; from Maria Van Diemen to Shelley Winters.Keyboardist Matty Vehl took the basic recordings away with him to write the string parts and returned with arrangements full of class, from top to toe. A fancy studio, a conductor, a 16 piece string section, and a specialist string sound engineer were hired. And after months of planning, more than half the entire album budget went in three hours. And it was glorious. Money superbly spent.

Charles Jenkins and The Zhivagos (for they are doctors, they are poets, real medicine men, who deserve a place in the record collection of your heart - in between Zappa and Zorn!) are proud to present the Blue Atlas.