Apropos of nothing, I’ve started a Tumblr blog to hold everything else in my brain that isn’t a song-in-progress. Join me there for all the stuff that used to be here but isn’t anymore.
My bud and occasional gigging partner Jerin Falkner (aka J-Frazz, aka Jer-Fizzle) has started recording her new record, and it looks like she’s veering away from the folksy stuff and experimenting with a more electronic-y sound. Yeah!
To raise funds for the studio, she’s launched a pre-order program, similar to the one we used to get my last album off the ground. Jerin’s taking it a step further by offering access to a behind-the-scenes blog with videos and audio. You can see the first video here, where she talks about voting songs off the island.
Jerin is one of the most prolific and talented songwriters I’ve met, so I’m mad curious about her new direction. Preorder her new record here, then come back and hear Jerin sing with me on “You Are Loved” here.
(FYI: I joined the band Explone last year as their new bassist.)
Some really great and unexpected news: the new Explone tune “St. Yesterday” will be the KEXP Song Of The Day on Friday 1/23. Go here to subscribe to KEXP’s Song Of The Day podcast, and/or go here to stream or download “St. Yesterday” from the KEXP homepage on Friday.
We’ve also got three more new songs up on the Explone MySpace page for your enjoyment. This is the first batch of tunes we recorded last June, and the first to feature yours truly on the four-string Riddle Of Steel. That’s me in the photo, at Studio Litho last year.
Album news? Yup’m, the new Explone full-length will be called Dreamers and should be ready to go by early summer. We’ve got another recording session slated for March, then it’s all mixing, mastering and production stuff.
And me? I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve myself for 2009…
New year, new tune. This song began life in 2007 as an acoustic demo; this is a new “electric” arrangement.
Years ago I thought I was in a serious relationship with someone who didn’t see it the same way. She was right, and I was too immature to know better. As I slogged through the requisite depression and squished self-esteem, I became weirded out by the idea that the city we lived in was big enough to swallow us whole. We could live within a few miles of each other, maybe even live out whole lives here, and never cross paths again, as if we’d suddenly been thrust into parallel dimensions the moment we ended it.
Despite the sad-sack lyrics the music itself was a lot of fun to record, and incorporates a lot of my early musical influences. Extra points if you can name the famous singer guy I’m aping at the end of the second verse :)
The lo-fi MP3 is free when you log in. The high-quality MP3 is one thin dollar and also includes an instrumental version, the acoustic version (also high-quality) and artwork. Lyrics are after the jump. Enjoy, and happy 2009!
2008 is at an end. As always, thanks for reading and listening, and for your support both online and off. Man, this has been a nutty year of ups-and-downs for me. Some really cool stuff has happened. I put out a record, threw a CD release show which went over awesomely, started playing bass with a really cool band and managed to record a bunch of new tunes. I also made a bunch of new friends, reconnected with some old ones (no, not Great Old Ones, but thanks), taught myself a little Tuvan throat-singing and was promptly banned from doing it in the house. Overall, a good year personally and creatively.
This past August I made an effort to ease up on the incessant blogging here. I only post a few times a month now, and I try to limit it to when I have something new for you to listen to. Best idea EVER. I’ve weaned myself off the need to post something just to post something, and instead I’ve been focusing on writing and recording more songs — which is the whole reason why I’m here, and hopefully why you’re here, too.
As a result, I’ve released a ton of new music this year and plan to continue this through 2009. So if I go quiet for a few weeks, know that it’s likely because I’m working on something new I hope you’ll think is awesome and worth your time.
That’s my only resolution and motto for the new year: Worth Your Time In 2009.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to find out that both U2 and Sarah Brightman are releasing covers of “I Believe In Father Christmas,” the very same song I myself covered last year. As I’ve mentioned before, cruel, cruel fate has decided that any song I cover will soon be covered by someone way more famous than me. Dave Matthews recently claimed “Sledgehammer” so I see no evidence that this is not a universal law or giant conspiracy planned years before my birth.
November kind of slipped past me and out the side door, music-wise. However, I am pleased to offer you this all-instrumental version of Save You From Yourself. Suitable for podcasts, video and other projects where the presence of my warbling throat-noises are not required.
This one’s free to everyone, no login required, and I’m releasing it under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 license. It’s a giant ZIP file so I hope you brought a fast connection and a lunch. The original album is still available here, in exchange for money. Enjoy.
File under PURE AWESOME: the first Explone record, Crooks, is finally available on iTunes, Amazon and other digital stores.
I was a fan of this album long before I joined as the bass player. Now you too can be drawn into the massive oceanic guitars of “The Highest Time,” just like I was. I must’ve air-guitared the bass line to that tune a hundred times before I got up the nerve to audition.
Not that it matters now, but a few weeks back I donated a few tunes to Local Voices For Obama, a series of short video interviews with swing-state voters on why they’re voting for (now President-Elect) Obama.
I’m not sure when or where they aired, but I just found them all on YouTube and they came out pretty nice. Here’s one that uses At The Airport in the background:
The hard drive on my recording computer is nearly full. I didn’t think this was possible, but here we are. I recall my first “real” PC came with a 40MB (that’s megabyte) hard drive. Surely I’d never need more storage than that, oh ho ho!
These days, 40MB is about the average size of Gravel Road Requiem in WAV format. Also, I have JPGs that are bigger than the Zork trilogy combined.
I am still playing bass with Explone, although we are still firmly in NDA mode after taking most of the summer off, the departure of one drummer and the return of another. We have recorded a few songs. They rock. You’ll see.
In the end we did not prevail in the Ourstage competition, but thank you for voting all the same.
In more awesome news, listener Suichi used Holding Back in this Hokkaido motorcycle tour video. Pretty sweet:
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(FYI: I joined the band 
November kind of slipped past me and out the side door, music-wise. However, I am pleased to offer you this all-instrumental version of Save You From Yourself. Suitable for podcasts, video and other projects where the presence of my warbling throat-noises are not required. 
