Category: Musicology
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Back at the keyboard
Happy Easter to those who celebrate it today! I went to bed late last night and had a momentary diarist’s bout of conscience for not having added anything to the pile here yesterday. And yet I was writing all day. Have been, really, for at least a week now. I’m trying to get a bunch…
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Houston, we have a CD sleeve
Thanks to the amazing artwork of Dave Gray and the tasteful design choices and execution of Rowan Bishop, my group’s forthcoming record No One Does It Solo Only now has a design for the sleeve of the CD! Looks like the song order is on lock now too.
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First impressions
I’m back in the product business. As we get closer to the scheduled June release of No One Does It Solo Only, I have to think about packing, merchandising, distribution, website, and so on. I mean, I like thinking about things like that. I liked it when I was in book publishing, I like it…
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Record store day!
Drove up to Oakland this morning to meet my pals in Rockridge to check out some new vinyl releases for this spring’s record store day at Open Mind Music (and, it turns out, Stranded up the street). After a scare with a lost phone and some very good samaritans we each headed home with our…
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I love it when a plan comes together
I don’t want to jinx anything but it feels like we are on track for a June 11 release date for my album (in digital formats). We’re in the homes stretch now
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New sounds of silence
I’ve recently been following this artist on Soundcloud, Sarah Walker, whose specialty is freely reinterpreting standards of the past (many of them from my own formative years) in what I might say is a more contemporary style, reminiscent of popular singer-songwriters of the moment (think Tay Tay, et al.). The premise seems to be imagine…
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New order (movement)
The listening party was a blast! I don’t think we got any notes on the arrangements (though I have a handful of tweaks in mind for several of the songs), but we had a great discussion about the sequencing, the flow of the songs, the emotional highs and lows, where to start each “side” (even…
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Listening partly
This evening we’re having a listening party at the Rorke place. After some pizza and non-gluten food and mingling, we’ll listen to the 46 minutes or so of my record in the form of twelve preliminary mixes. Many of the core players, who are also, friends, will be there to give their feedback and notes.…
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Maps and legends
The record is starting to exist now in two digital senses, a sort of digital conception as they come together. First, it now has a commercial pointer in the universal pricing code namespace. This currently has no relevant data associated with it, but it soon will. It comes courtesy of the shop that will be…
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Sticking the landing
Hard to believe it’s been three weeks since the great 18F massacree. Hard to believe it’s only been three weeks. Hard to believe this administration has only been at it for eight weeks. Five more weeks to go of administrative leave. We keep meeting and making plans and helping each other stay organized and look…
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A funny thing happened on the way to the charger
Last night I saw a hot damn show up in Sebastopol at a brewpub called the Hopmonk. The main act, Pokey LaFarge (and band), and the opener, Cicada Rhythm, were both a hoot. It felt like a walk through the 20th century, from hot jazz to jump blues to texas swing to jumping jive to…
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Making merry
Ending another long week in the company of friends. This afternoon I took advantage of my administrative leave to drive up to Sebastopol through several rain squalls and traffic jams to have dinner at the Goldfinch (mostly seafood — I had champagne with my oyster) and then see a show at the Hopmonk brewpub. Still…
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So much for the preliminaries
Got back down to Goody Sound Studio today and we wrapped up the preliminary mixes on all twelve songs for my record! Today we tuned up “Giving Zoo Wolves Lessons in Music” and David Gans added some ethereal backing vocals. This track also has David on guitar, Robert Wade on bass, Javier Navarrette on congas…
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Songs for a new day
Making a record of original songs has been a dream come true. Every step of the way (and we’re not there yet) has been a joy. At the same time, this relentless focus on polishing the first twelve songs I wrote has inadvertently slowed down my pace of finishing songs to nearly a dead stop,…
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Pharaoh made Ra angry
Spent most of the day in the studio at Goody Sound, mixing two more songs from the record. I posted them both to Soundcloud last night and the first one has nine listens so far and the second has 137. Go figure. Moses Took Us to the Water “Moses Took Us to the Water” (I…
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Balm in Gilead
Presidents’ Day is a federal holiday and for me this means I am back in the studio with my producers (David and Jeremy), working right now on the preliminary mix for “Moses Took Us to the Water.”
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amanaplanacana
I hope to release my record, No One Does It Solo Only, later this year, maybe a little sooner if I suddenly have a lot of unstructured time on my hands, and anyhow true to the title of the record, the process of releasing it will be a team effort just as the songwriting, arranging,…
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What a lot of people forget about the 80s
For nearly a year there smack in the middle of that decade of excess nobody was permitted to mess with anybody’s toot-toot. Jello remembered, thirty years later…
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I wonder why I wonder
We managed to squeeze in a second mixing session last month (January 13, 2025). I wasn’t able to get to Oakland for this session, so I “phoned it in” (well, zoomed it in, I guess) and that seemed to work out just fine. (Produced by David Gans and Jeremy Goody. Recorded, engineered, and mixed by…
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It’s time to close
Almost caught up now. We managed two mixing sessions last month (produced by David Gans and recording and mixing engineer Jeremy Goody at Goody Sound Studio). The first was on Saturday, January 4, 2025. Dirty Ol’ Sunshine We revisited the rough mix of “Dirty Ol’ Sunshine” which we last touched in June of 2023 (!),…
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Ain’t so sure that I could tell you when
We managed to schedule one more studio date last year, on December 6, to mix down tracks for No One Does It Solo Only. I had my knee replacement in November. Did I mention that? Maybe that’s worth a blog post too at some point, but anyhow it wasn’t really possible for me to get…