More from the heart and soul of Listen to Your Friends month. My roommate, Chris Vogt, just started a kickstarter for his new EP. Go help him out. I’m going to be playing and singing on it in some capacity, so I’ve heard some of the early mixes. The songs are pretty great. Worth a few bucks to get it out there.
Lately I’ve been way more interested in drinking craft beer than finishing the song for this blog. Stay tuned…
In the spirit of Listen to Your Friends month, I wanted to let everyone know that my friend Bruce Kline released an EP a few days ago. It’s fun! Check it out!
So, I wrote this. Check it out, and don’t forget to listen local throughout the month of May!
Another local music app for iPhone is cannon.fm. It was released a little over a year ago around the same time as ColumbusLocalMusic.com. The thing I like about it is that there isn’t a ton of overlap, so both are valid and relevant. Cannon.fm was developed by Columbus-folk, but is also serving other markets as well. So, if you’re somewhere other than Cowtown, this might be a good option for you.
I’m going to share a couple of links that can help you keep kosher, yet still have options, during Listen to Your Friends month. ColumbusLocalMusi.com is a great streaming radio site that features local musicians. I know the guys that are behind this site. They’re good guys and this is a great and necessary service that they have established. I have a profile on there as most of my favorite Columbus bands and friends. They also have a really good smart phone app so you can stream it in thhe car and on the go. Check it out!
My friend Ron Freeman has declared May Listen to Your Friends Music month. The challenge is, for the month of May, to only listen to music made by local musicians. i plan to try to adhere to this and contribute to the blog at least once. Another song for this blog is still in works (things are busy this week), but, until then, listen to your friends, and read the blog. There is some great music being made at the grassroots level. Show some love! :)
There is progress on another song for this blog. However, not tonight. I just wasn’t feelin’ singing tonight. However, I did spend some time enjoying this, which came in the mail today.
So, probably no one cares if I post another song here ever, but for what it’s worth, I haven’t been up to nothing. Since Saturday, I’ve had it in my mind to record this older song called “Goodnight.” Circumstances surrounding who is using my guitar when have derailed that process over the last week. I live in unpredictable ebbs and flows with my creative will, and this has been most troubling that I couldn’t act when I had the will.
In the meantime, I have done some reading that I’m hoping will be insightful as I try to be more consistent about the creative process (recording, especially). The first link is to an article about the many paradoxical traits of creative people. The second is an ongoing creative process blog being kept by musical friend of all of ours Branden Barnett (of Ghost Shirt fame) who also just so happens to have a degree in psycho therapy and practices it as his day job. I am going to try to implement some of his insights to see if, after years, I can get in a more consistent creative place.
Hopefully I’ll have another song for you soon…
After the Show: The Many Faces of a Performer by Scott Barry Kaufman, Ph.D.
The Artistic Treatment: Be More Creative… A blog by Branden Barnett.
What I did last night instead try to record the next song for the blog since it was raining on the roof of the studio. Tonight, my roommate took my guitar for his gig in the morning. One of these days I’ll actually track this thing.
I fell off the wagon this week with the blog. Plenty of music was made, but none of it was recording. Honestly, I’m trying to decide what to pull out and record next. I was thinking maybe a cover. Any suggestions?
Friends of Old, Friends of New
One of my inspirations for this blog was Andrew Francis’ Music Vomit song of the day blog. Occasionally, he’ll share records he’s spinning. He usually shares vintage records. Since I’m not recording this week, I decided to wax poetic about friends and history and music. The album cover I’ve shared is from the forthcoming Lost Orchards record, a fantastically rockin’ ep that looks back at the music of The Deaf Kids, an early incarnation of the music of Ron Freeman almost a decade ago in Erie, PA.
Music is about art and friendship. The best music is made with people you care about and with whom you share a deep connection. There’s something about shared experience and familiarity that cannot be replicated with virtuoso musicianship and slick production. It’s the intangible bond that develops from going into battle night in and night out and fighting it out in rehearsal spaces over a long period of time, and all of the hang outs, conversations, and life events that are endured together. If you’re fortunate enough to make it to the other end intact, everyone is better off because of it, and the art benefits as we all learn and grow together.
Whenever a record is released, it is time for celebration of successful completion and reflection on the process. The Deaf Kids EP is the first Ron Freeman record on which I didn’t have at least a passing roll. As a result, I can appreciate Ron’s songs and the work of his cast of musicians instead of being so emotionally invested in it. The nature of the record, more of a looking back than a capturing of the present, causes reflection for those of us who have been around these songs for a while.
I intended this post to be more general, so I’m going to expand out to the point. The last few years have seen the fruition of many of our decades old visions. Personally, I’ve played, on a regular basis, all the venues in town that I always wanted to play. The quality, in songwriting and production, is at the level I always wanted to get to. My bands, and those of my friends of old, are recording in real studios now. These days almost no one records everything in a studio. We all have, or have ready access to, quality home studio setups. We have all experienced some form of touring, festivals, “big” shows, etc. We all have friends, old and new, that are touring nationally and internationally, some of which are in the bands of, or opening for, some of the top artists in their genres. These were dreams. They are now less far-fetched and more in the realm of reality. Very few of us make our living as full time musicians. No one has “arrived.” We all continue to be thirsty for more. I speak for myself in these things. Ambition these days looks a lot less vain and a lot more sincere. Art and friends are what it’s about. Staying focused on the people and the music is where the success lays. In this there is significant meaning that is larger than the shows and the recordings and the experiences along the way.
So, there is pride and satisfaction in this post. You see, we all remember twenty years back when we were all snotty-nosed adolescents who couldn’t play our instruments, wrote horribly awful songs we thought were amazing, and thought we could change the world. We had three chords and the truth, but we weren’t Jimi Hendrix, Keith Richards, or any of the handful of early country songwriters who are credited with originating that phrase. We started where most musicians start. We felt it so deeply, and were moved by it on such a profound level, that words have never been able to truly describe it. I got hooked on the chase and the rush of seeking out the warm and profound in sonic form, experiencing the feeling of fulfillment in those moments, and then constantly searching to find, and create, more of that. It’s what still drives me through the hassles of most sound checks and late night load outs and through the tedium of editing take after take in the studio. I’ve learned, sometimes the hard way, to be professional and methodical, but the inner desire has never left my body. When it does, I’ll hang it up and never look back because in the last few years I’ve, artistically, gotten to where I want to be. I want to stay here as long as I can and make progressively more and better music, but at this point in music, generally speaking, I have very few regrets. At times, it’s come at great personal cost, but I’ve never been able to say that in any area of a life. I’ll take it when I can.
So, that’s all. That’s my grandiose pontification for the week. Friends and artists, you are what makes this real. Keep doing what we do with the people with whom you do it. We love it, and we love you. I’m proud to be a part of the community of friends and musicians, both old and new.
I’ve decided to take the week off from the “song of the week.” I’ll come back with something next week for sure. It’s my spring break. and I’ll need something to distract me from the online courses I intend to work on over the break.
For entertainment sake, I’ve posted this picture with this post. At the time, this seemed like some kind of awesome. Don’t ask me. It was outside of the Avalon Bar in Lima, OH, a couple of weeks ago. I hadn’t even started drinking yet, so who knows what I was thinking.
See you next week!
As promised, this week’s song of the week. It’s an oldie, but a goodie called “Slurred Apology.” This one has seen the light of day before. I think it’s one of the best songs I’ve ever written. Not-quite-finiished versions of it have been floating around the social sites as examples of my work for years, but never an official release. Consider this that.
This is another song that began as a demo. I used it, and one other song I was working on at the time, to test out my new Rode NT5 small diaphragm condensor mics back in 2007. However, once the vibe of the outro happened, I ditched the idea of a re-record and built on top of the existing guitar track. It’s relatively straight-forward in its arrangement. There are a few interesting instruments making an appearance here, though. Foremost is Bill Pratt on steal guitar and banjo. I know him through Ron Freeman, who knows him through Bill Mallonee. He’s played on their records for a while now. I had the pleasure to mix his work on two of Ron’s records, so I knew the quality of his tone and performances. Very little tweaking necessary. I almost always just dropped it in the mix, set levels, applied reverb, and then just let it be amazing. This song seemed like a good one on which to get him involved in my music. The banjo was a little extra he added without my asking. I love it. To me, it totally makes the outro. It was exactly what the song needed.
One other guest on this project was Matt Texter on harmonica. Again, the song needed something to give it more character, so I asked him and he provided me with something. I love it.
The other highly interesting (to me) element is the 1960s Magnus reed organ that takes the lead in the outro. I bought that for $10 back then, used it only on this song, and finally got around to selling it last week for $20. I put heavy tremolo on it to make it sound like an old Leslie speaker. I also had to pitch correct it heavily as those old wheeze-boxes aren’t exacly known for their intonation. Tracking it was interesting.
The drums were part of the first session with Joel at Zollinger Road.
This is one of the brighter mixes I’ve produced. I had great diffiulty bringing the warmth out of this song, especially the vocal track. It just doesn’t feel like it has enough body and is even a little thin. More than anything it shows the wall of my own mixing abilities. The song could really benefit from a good mastering engineer doing his thing. It’d make it sparkle, bring out the warmth, and be just what it needs.
The story behind this song is exactly how it sounds. It’s pretty autobiographical. This a song that was written on a precipice in my journey; literally right before I fell off the cliff and plunged to the rocks below. The summer of 2007 saw the breakdown of any remaining confidence I had in organized religion. I was in a spiritual downward spiral. I was troubled within and was getting no help from the people around me even though I was ademently asking for it and even though it’s what the church claimed to be all about. This song, however, is a balad of self-encouragement. There’s the requisite reference to God’s grace. There’s the Bill Mallonee “Blister Soul” reference. The slurred apology line, and thus the title of the song, was contributed by Ron. I needed just one or two more lines to finish off the song, and we started spit-balling and settled on this.
The chorus, with the stumbling and the bar scene, was a literal reference to an early evening by myself at a local establishment for some dinner. I felt very lonely and alienated, even from my wife at the time. I wasn’t stumbling drunk, or even buzzed, but I just imagined my future self frequently sitting alone in a dark bar anxiously wondering what happened to my life while those around me seem to have plenty of people and things to give their life meaning. On that evening I was able to pull myself back home to my life (marriage and religion), but in the months after that I was less and less able to muster even that small sense of encouragement and resolve until things finally just crumbled beneath me and the spiritual, emotional, and marital free-fall was full-on. I’ve since come to terms with some of the events and people of that time period and have settled on a few elements of profound meaning in my life. However, I still catch myself often pondering that same question. What happened to my life? When will I ever get to a place that truly makes sense to me? I guess, on some level, we are all perpetually asking that question.
Too deep for this early in the morning. I hope everyone has a wonderfully fun and exciting weekend. I’ll catch up with you again next week! :)
I’m not sure how to announce this one. Maybe here’s this week and a half’s “song of the week.” It took a little longer because life got busy, I got exhausted, and then my ears started doing weird things again, but, without further ado, here’s “November Moon,” a re-record of a b-side from my 2005 full length 4-track record called the long silence <the home recordings>. You can hear the original recording here.
The guiding ethic behind the long silence was to keep things stripped down and rough and let the strength of the songs and performances do the talking. The production was modeled after Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 Nebraska album. The songs and conditions of recording on that record really inspired me. It was quite a unique situation, and I tried to recreate it (go here for more description of the recording process for Nebraska). The truth is no one can replicate Nebraska because of its unique circumstances (ex. it was mixed down to a fishing boombox that was thought to be non-operational after falling to the bottom of a pond, then magically came back to life after months of sitting on his front porch). However, I did follow the method as best as I could. I used only a Tascam 4-track tape recorder for tracking through a Shure 545SD (vintage SM57) microphone. Where I ventured was on the back end. I used an ART TubeMP mic preamp during the tracking, and then I dumped each individual track into n-Track (the first recording software I ever used…you can still get it here). Then, as the first step of editing, I manually synced every track of every song to the rest of the song. You see, tape never plays the same speed twice. Therefore, in order to sync between different pieces of equipment to bounce down in the way I did, you have to have one piece of equipment thats only job is to create and communicate the time code to all the other machines. This has been done by MIDI for years. Well, i didn’t have one of those machines (nor did I even know they existed, or how necessary they were, at the time), so I did what I did. I even learned how to splice in and crossfade tape hiss where necessary to bridge the gaps. All in all, it’s not as choppy as it could have been considering that this wasn’t the only ghetto-ass method I used when it came to achieving time consistency on that record. I dialed in some decent sounds, threw on copious amounts of reverb, and the record was done. I’m not sure that I achieved the ethic I set out for. I can’t say that the performances were all that strong. However, the songs are some of the best I’ve written in my life, so it wasn’t a complete failure.
“November Moon” didn’t make it onto the album. It just never seemed to fit with the rest of the songs. the long silence is a description of a complicated and troubled dating relationship. It fits thematically, but it’s told in story form (something I mentioned last week that I have difficulty with and rarely do at all, much less well) from the perspective of a rambler who leaves a girl in the blue collar town where he grew up. It’s both nostalgic and longing. It’s kind of a countrified waltz. I was working with a lot of random images in this song. The title comes from an evening in November 2002 when I looked up at the moon and thought it was saying something to me (figuratively speaking). At the time, my ex-wife and I were dating. Things were always rocky between us, and we may or may not have been broken up at that time (I can’t remember). I was trying to navigate that while also being unemployed with no car as I had just wrecked it. Not good times! I was reading John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany, so that’s where that reference comes in. The blue collar, pastoral, mill town references are from that book as well as Springsteen’s record that I was falling in love with during that period. The driving motif is directly from Springsteen’s record as it’s a theme throughout his songs on there.
I talked about the ethic concerning the original recording. Let’s now talk about the approach to the re-recording. My goals with the songs on this blog are to keep it simple and not obsess while still producing something enjoyable and listenable. With that in mind, this should have been an easy project. Heck, the final track count for the re-record was seven tracks, the exact number of tracks possible if you used a 4-track tape recorder’s bouncing, or “ping-ponging,” capabilities to its fullest. However, there is another guiding ethic at play when I record simple recordings. I like to experiment with new recording techniques and new gear. I actually double mic-ed all of the vocals and the acoustic guitar using that same vintage 57 from the original recording and a ribbon mic that I own called a Cascade FATHEAD that I hadn’t gotten to work with until now. I did some interesting things with the figure eight pattern of the ribbon mic on the guitar. However, in the end, I used the ribbon mic for the lead vocal and guitar and the 57 for the background vocals. All of the ambient guitar swells were created through Logic amp and pedal plug-ins. I pretty much took my standard approach to editing and mixing. I always try to serve the vibe of the song, pick the most appropriate performances therein, and make things sound really good (without obsessing, of course :). However, after dialing things in, I went a step further on this one. One thing I used to do way back in the day was actually master with this plug-in called iZotope Vinyl. I still have it to this day in my Logic software. It’s really silly, but it actually boosts the signal and gives tracks character better than some basic mastering software I’ve used. So, I dialed in some subtle turntable noise with a ’70s 78 rpm sound and then boosted the output to bring it up to a very listenable -3dB (don’t get me started on the loudness wars of the ’90s). It’s not going to be competing with anything for radio airplay, but, then again, it’s not supposed to.
I think this recording turned out really well. It’s almost exactly what I was imagining in my mind. Barring drums and a full band, there’s a good chance that this is what the long silence <the home recordings> would sound like if I were to re-record the whole record in 2013 with this gear. The fun part was the ambience. I’ve never tried to construct that sound before. I’m not sure it’s perfect, but not bad for the first time. it gets the point across which, again, is what I’m trying to accomplish here. To me, it’s a critical part of the vibe of the song. I’ve always imagined lines like, “Somewhere on the horizon my baby starts to dream,” and, “I sit and stare at the stars tonight, and, Abby, she’s moved on,” to take place around a traveler’s campfire somewhere in the American Southwest. The driving scenes I always picture at night on a long dark highway in the headlights of a car somewhere in the middle of nowhere (kind of like the front cover of Nebraska). When I recorded the original back in 2004/5, Ron Freeman heard the nearly complete song and handed me that chorus idea that he’d had kicking around for a while. I already had a driving motif in mind, so I tweaked it a little and ran with it. I think it was a good call and I’m glad he let me use it.
Alright, then, it’s come to that time in the post where it’s time to say goodbye. I’m heading to the Toledo/Bowling Green area this weekend for Coal Fired Bicycle’s first mini-tour. Four performances in two days, and then the clocks get moved forward and we all lose an hour of sleep. After I recover I plan to quickly pull something off of the old “pretty much already finished” pile to share with you next week. It’s less work for me and will help me regroup. If I can pull it together, maybe I’ll have something else by the end of the week and be all caught up. Probably not, but it’s worth thinking about anyways. Goodnight!
