Sunday, January 27, 2008
The New Album, Day One
Yesterday was the first tracking session for my upcoming CD, Every Day's a Holiday. After several years of songwriting and planning, it's finally happening! And I think it's going to be pretty good.
We assembled at Laughing Tiger Studio in San Rafael for a day's worth of good music. The crew included: Stephen Hart, my producer, formerly chief engineer at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley; Brad Dollar, his assistant; John Cross, guitarist; Eric McCann, bass player, and Jeff Myer on drums. Each of them has worked with many "name" artists over the years - Jeff was the original drummer for Charlie Daniels, and I'm guessing that Stephen's worked with anyone who ever used Fantasy Studios. And everyone's experience was obvious, and we created some very nice stuff together.
We managed to track eight songs - everything we needed Jeff for. The result so far really feels like what I was hoping to get - somewhat of a mix of my first album, which was almost all me, and my second album, which was all studio players plus my vocals. I haven't listened to all of the rough mixes yet, but what I heard in the studio sounded excellent.
We still have three more songs to track without a drummer, though one or two of those will use congas. We'll also overdub congas on a number of other songs, and add some other instruments - pan (steel drum), piano, and sax from a Special Guest Performer to be named soon. :) Monday, in fact, if you listen to my interview on WBWC-FM Cleveland (www.wbwc.com) starting around 7:30 PM PST.
And, of course, I'll need to overdub more vocals and guitar, to fix the stuff I didn't do right the first time. :) But that's the joy of ProTools.
I'm aiming for a release somewhere around May, and I hope to remember to blog a bit more about how it's going between now and then. Or get onto my mailing list - the form is on my home page - and you'll get regular updates that way.
We assembled at Laughing Tiger Studio in San Rafael for a day's worth of good music. The crew included: Stephen Hart, my producer, formerly chief engineer at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley; Brad Dollar, his assistant; John Cross, guitarist; Eric McCann, bass player, and Jeff Myer on drums. Each of them has worked with many "name" artists over the years - Jeff was the original drummer for Charlie Daniels, and I'm guessing that Stephen's worked with anyone who ever used Fantasy Studios. And everyone's experience was obvious, and we created some very nice stuff together.
We managed to track eight songs - everything we needed Jeff for. The result so far really feels like what I was hoping to get - somewhat of a mix of my first album, which was almost all me, and my second album, which was all studio players plus my vocals. I haven't listened to all of the rough mixes yet, but what I heard in the studio sounded excellent.
We still have three more songs to track without a drummer, though one or two of those will use congas. We'll also overdub congas on a number of other songs, and add some other instruments - pan (steel drum), piano, and sax from a Special Guest Performer to be named soon. :) Monday, in fact, if you listen to my interview on WBWC-FM Cleveland (www.wbwc.com) starting around 7:30 PM PST.
And, of course, I'll need to overdub more vocals and guitar, to fix the stuff I didn't do right the first time. :) But that's the joy of ProTools.
I'm aiming for a release somewhere around May, and I hope to remember to blog a bit more about how it's going between now and then. Or get onto my mailing list - the form is on my home page - and you'll get regular updates that way.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Space Truckin!
It looks like Virgin Galactic might finally be getting closer to their goal of private passenger space flight. More power to them! Yes, seats to suborbit are still expensive as heck at $200K, but if I were to suddenly be burdened with more cash than I knew what to do with, this would be high on the list of things I'd sign up for.
As for safety issues, it's probably safer than my daily commute - one individual from the shallow end of the gene pool almost caused a wreck this morning by speeding his way into the normal slowdown on 880 south past Auto Mall Parkway, and had to weave around several cars and onto the median to avoid an accident. And then he and his buddy were laughing about it, like, "Wow, wasn't that fun?" I really have to wonder whether they were stoned or just stupid. The shallow end of the gene pool could use a bit of chlorine, if you ask me.
As for safety issues, it's probably safer than my daily commute - one individual from the shallow end of the gene pool almost caused a wreck this morning by speeding his way into the normal slowdown on 880 south past Auto Mall Parkway, and had to weave around several cars and onto the median to avoid an accident. And then he and his buddy were laughing about it, like, "Wow, wasn't that fun?" I really have to wonder whether they were stoned or just stupid. The shallow end of the gene pool could use a bit of chlorine, if you ask me.
Labels: safety, space travel, stupidity, traffic, Virgin Galactic
