Teja Gerken and Doug Young are excited to be releasing their second album as a duo, The Water is Wide. Having released their first joint album, DUETS in the spring of 2020, is was right before the world shut down due to the COVID pandemic. The praise the album received from the press (Acoustic Guitar said it offered “Modern fingerstyle guitar at the highest level”), fans, and peers was bitter-sweet, as the duo was unable to perform the album’s material live for almost a year after its release. However, not long after the initial adjustment to the reality that was 2020, Teja and Doug began discussing new pieces to arrange, working via video calls and recordings in their respective home studios to start adding to their repertoire. Several of the tunes on this album got their start during this time, while others were worked out in real time and road-tested at the gigs that eventually returned. All the tunes on this album continue Teja and Doug’s approach of creating interlocking guitar arrangements that take advantage of the sonic possibilities offered by pairing different types of guitars, tunings, and capo positions. The repertoire on The Water is Wide represents new interpretations of some old favorites, standards from the folk/Celtic tune book, some pop tunes, a bit of classical, a piece written by a dear friend, and more. In other words, the album is not unlike a typical Teja and Doug concert, which is bound to be more about presenting a varied program of tunes that the duo enjoys playing than about any particular genre.