Once upon a coffeehouse I took the stage and sang a song about a couple of shady characters: a woman with a “magic fancy-ass” glass guitar and a man with “a little bit of werewolf in his family tree.” The song was Stardust County Line, and it was just a bit of C&W fun, but as time went by more of my friends and audiences asked what happened next. Did Nimue and Nigel, my two star-crossed lovers, ever get back together? Did they ever settle things with the formidable Queen of Clubs and Diamonds? So I wrote a second song, and a third, slowly Scheherazading my way across the county each time the Phoenix Filk Circle got together to share music. At twenty songs long, my story was complete!
The complete Stardust County was first performed in 1999, as a one-woman show, at LepreCon 25 in Scottsdale, Arizona. Although there were a few more solo performances at various venues, I had always envisioned it performed as a “filk opera”, with various singers playing the characters. In June 2001, the full-cast version premiered to an SRO crowd at Fiddler’s Dream in Phoenix. Other performances followed at TusCon 28 in Tucson, LepreCon 28, and again at Fidd’s. I really wanted to release a live album, but Murphy prevented us from ever having a perfect recording, and the shifting cast from one show to the next nixed stitching multiple performances.
So in March 2006, under the auspices of Jeff Bohnhoff’s Mystic Fig Productions, recording for the Stardust County album began. Most of the talented international cast are veterans of the show, and the all-new arrangements are based on the live performances. The two-disc, enhanced CD set was released July 30, 2007.