Howdy,
So I had tweeted about the ‘good story I have for you later’ which has continued to unfold up through even the last few weeks, even days. I know that’s dumbly cryptic but I just can’t get specific at the moment and, the more time that goes by, I ultimately may not even. But in reply to someone about that, I sorta gave a micro-update, so thought I’d throw a more real one out there - partially ‘cause I really haven’t this past year (for reasons below), and partially to cap off the year itself, but also partially to cap off what may be twitter, or whatever Twitter, Class of ’23 devolves to. And partially ‘cause the release of this record’s finally getting underway in January (! more below) and I continue to be ever grateful (and surprised) that anyone’s following along here, awaiting muzak.
With everything that transpired last year in what may be the dumbest public-y culmination of a protracted three-year band implosion ever; along w/ how that story was framed...
...and w/ all of that coming right on the heels of just about 10 years straight work on this dumb record itself, the related mental health..um, challenges with all that, the myeloma/cancer stuff etc.;..
…and I guess that that’s also, crucially for me & in the biggest picture, after having been in bands for over 40 years, always putting music first, first above everything, for most of that time, as many of us do with work or school, things we feel we have to do or don’t have options not to...
...and after working for over 30 of those years within/as the wrens - really, culminating in this dumb record - towards this very goal of releasing an album on a super great & super well-known record label (that ‘well-known’ part counting for a lot in the non-corporate non-salary/promotion/raise/corner office/work-for-a-company-your-parents-recognize way that is life for most musicians)...
…after all that, by this time last year, I had finally lost any last momentum and was just thinking - finally! - of walking away, both from this record & from music altogether (also finally!). I did end up muddling through having the drums on the record, the one thing on my songs I hadn’t played, replaced by various friends last fall&winter (that muddling was at my end only, at their end each of those friends knocked their takes out of parks, and I can’t wait to go into more detail after the new year & give out the record-saving drumming credits that are so well-deserved here).
Anyway, by last winter I had sorta stopped working on it, or at least productively in any way, which was a first, and honestly, maybe surprisingly, pretty wonderful. This past summer was the best in I-don’t-know-how-long. I now play soccer again for the first time since Reagan was newly in office.
What’s changed now is that, while it’s not worth diving too deeply into my own personal whatever here, or not yet, in the last month or two, I've found myself starting to thaw out of that, out of the music/band depression I guess, and to think that maybe I AM gonna/will be/should be working on music one way or another after all. Part of that is just practically, what else am I going to do, begin climbing a corporate ladder at an age when most people are climbing off one (ha)? And part of that is no doubt, just the positive & healing effects of the passage of time itself.
Either way, last month I found myself going back to final-mix the re-drummed remaining ‘bigger’ songs of the album (some of the smaller ones are still mixed from years ago) and it suddenly seeming, I don’t know…fun? Happy-ifying? It’s honestly going great. Around the domestic schedules, I’m averaging about one per week or two (most of them are incredibly, stupidly complicated). So one was done over thanksgiving, the outro to one last week or so, working on another now, prob. into Christmas etc. And again, I just can’t say enough how GREAT the re-done drums came out on all of these, in some cases turning songs I’d merely tolerated for years (ha) into favorites.
But all this is also attributable to a few things that have come up in the past few months and others that have changed over this last year-and-a-half (and longer). And one of those long-term changes is that I’ve also come to re-think & question how & especially why I’d even be bothering to do this at this point. And I’ve come to think that maybe what it is that I’m throwing the towel in on, after all this time (also finally), is not making music per se but just the idea of ‘making it’, in a music-industry sense, whatever that even means anymore. And honestly, turning 59 next month, that just sorta sits right.
Relatedly, I was also waiting to hear back on a couple of record-release things from Sub Pop, which I happily did Saturday, and so I’m now, again sorta newly, not just super re-psyched about music in general but about this album & the release-plans themselves (and a quick hat tip to the folks there who have been years-patient and ultimately & very understanding in all of this.
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UPDATE: LATER TODAY: To clarify, only ‘cause it’s come up - I’m actually *not* going to be releasing my songs for this next wrens album with Sub Pop, who we had originally signed with low those many years ago.
After mulling it over (..and over, while also sorta hiding from it all) this past year or so, in the end, because of how everything went down, I just didn’t feel comfortable remaining on Sub Pop with the other former-wrens, and so asked Sub Pop to be let out of my contract, and very graciously this past weekend, they agreed. For which I am very appreciative.
So in the wrap-up above, I wanted to give them that appreciative ‘thank you’ outside the context of some big (read: dramatic) ‘hey, I’m leaving Sub Pop’ announcement, mostly because I didn’t want it to read as being strained or insincere or just diplomatic or something. I really am very grateful.
And I wanted to do that also without getting all into what’s next label/release-wise, about which I’m super excited & which we’ll announce after the new year. Ok, back to the original post…
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I’ll be able to shout more about the particulars after the new year. So yeah, while it’s still my songs from the same long-pending wrens album etc. etc., that’s particulars like, oh…a new project name, new social media acct’s/website/etc., album name, some really exciting (ok, possibly to me only) release plans, oh yeah..A RELEASE DATE (not a typo, thank you) etc., that sorta thing, which I’ve been looking forward to & working towards for..heck, decades.
But that’s for later, after the new year. I guess for now all this is just to say that the world is confounding, for all of us, life can be surprising and surprisingly difficult. Just at my end, with all that in mind and a good bit of that behind me, I’m newly excited about music in general, about making music, and about releasing this music in particular, again, for the first time in a looooong time. Not that music, or at least mine, is the most important thing but I figure it’s why you’re reading this. Heck, I'm sorta newly excited about life (ha). I hope things seem similarly positive with you there...
Please have a great & safe end-o'-the-year & holidays and now, by popular demand, back to the dad jokes...
charles