Simply a typo on my part, due to me having a bit much on my mind just now. I am referring to the instrument he is plucking at the beginning. I assume it is an Irish bouzouki or an octave mando. By the way, the whistle in that song is a bit strong, to my ear. Again, it appears that a studio would have improved this from a good showing to a great showing.

Another area that a good producer/studio will help you with is song selection, and arrangement. I understand that this is a collection of ballads, but a good producer would have had a bit to say about the song selection, probably encouraging you to try to pick it up a bit through song selection and arrangement. Even the very comical song about dancing around in the wife's undergarments was sung as a slow ballad. I just might play around with that one meself.

Look, Jim, this is a very good effort. Nothing in these comments by me is intended to take away from that. I envy you your voice, and clearly you have paid attention to some great performers over the years. I don't even begrudge anyone the idea that self production allows many, whom otherwise would not be able to be heard, to get their music out there. But any contention that self production is "good enough for folk" just rings discordantly to me. I have heard some pretty good ones, but I have never heard a home studio job that I would compare to the great jobs done by the producers I know and have listened to. I may use my own Sonar software to record reference tracks to send to the wonderful producer I will be using on my own solo project, but I will leave the recording, mixing, etc. to him. And we will have long conversations during the planning and implementation phases.

Mick