Cloud Forest was supposed to be our sophomore album until we decided Barn Owls Live! needed to be heard first. Most of Cloud Forest (originally released in 2006) is home studio recordings, but we've thrown in a few live tracks from our 2004 concert, as well, after realizing they'd fit nicely in the mix. Collectively, it's a superb tribute to the tunesmiths in the band, with the title track being penned by Mike Bell.

Here's Merle's commentary on the album, written in 2006:

7:45 pm July 6th, 2003. It’s been a long, hot day and I’m heading east on State Highway 30, after the Owls play a gig in Vail, Iowa. We were well provided for with a shaded trailer stage, plenty of ice-cold water, and a chicken dinner. (What more could one ask for?) Jon has just given me the latest pre-release of our new CD. I ponder whether to drive without a sound and simply enjoy the silence. Entering the small town of Westside I consider taking a different route home and head south on County Road E35. Aspinwall is at the other end and I can take Highway 141 home. At a stop sign, I decide to slip in the CD. As I roll out of town up over the hill and then down, the sun is sinking lower the shadows lengthen. One man on a bicycle and a woman, maybe his wife, walking someways behind. The corn at this time of year is wonderfully green and waving like it does no other season but now, just before the sweet corn is starting to get picked. The Iowa scenery, combined with the tune that’s now playing, sends chills through me. I want to stop and absorb it all, not let it pass, soak it all in. Sometimes the beauty of the music is where the value of life is. That tune was Closing the Cottage, written by Mike Bell.

Mike joined the band in 1994. He is a prolific composer and, when the Owls are presented with a newly penned tune, we often drop whatever else we were working on to play it through at least once or twice. Cloud Forest is one of those fine tunes that we performed on Garrison Keillor‘s A Prairie Home Companion in 2002, when the show was in Ames. I don’t normally play on waltzes and jigs — I tell the band I can’t, that the timing is all wrong for claw hammer banjo, but the real reason is that they do such a wonderful job that I don’t have anything to add (it’s my opinion that, if one has nothing to add, one should simply stand back and let others do what they do best) – and that evening was no exception. I stayed off stage that night and listened to a stunningly beautiful performance, one that inspired us to make it at the title track of this CD.
Mike is not the only composer in the group, though. Jon Duvick, our guitarist, has a fine ear for the songwriter’s craft, as in his Arc of Life. Brad Johnson‘s mandolin is constantly speaking tunes to him. The Tuscan Suite is an infectious example of his playful rhythms and harmonies. Others in the group write from time to time too, keeping the “a(d)dition” in tradition. That’s what traditional music is all about: adding to what’s gone before, and passing it on to others. That’s what we try to do on this album, even on the numbers written by folks whose names are now forgotten, and rewritten along the way by players who carry these tunes on forward to know.

Bands are sometimes like that too. As we enter our 15th year, we carry on from players who have since moved away, including three that appear on this album. Jason Huntley, who is on mistakable fiddle drives much of this album sound has since moved on. The musical polymath Ehler Orngard — a genuine prodigy on fiddle, mandolin, whistle, drum, and several other instruments — has graduated from high school and gone onto a college away from Central Iowa. And prolific tune write Mike Bell has moved to Madison, Wisconsin. But once an Owl always an Owl. We miss playing with them and will always consider it a treat to do so again when we can. Until then, thanks for all the tunes, Ehler, Jason and Mike. It’s been a hoot. – Merle Hall, 2006.