Because the other band geeks' involvement has changed over the last 30 years (as they continue on in real trad. careers) and more & more I’ve been doing the albums and stuff (most of the 4 years making the meadowlands & then business stuff the years immediately after), I’ve stopped using the pronoun “we” and just relaxed into an easier & more accurate “I” just reflecting what things had evolved to. But now, with this next record, that’s become again, as it was a long time ago, no longer accurate - I’d like you to welcome (back) our newest productively recording band member, Kevin! (ha)…
I’m doing a solo set of some of the songs from this finally-now-done album today, Wed., January 8th around 6:30pm at the Kate Werble Gallery (83 Vandam St., NYC), as part of the closing party for the artist Beth Campbell's own solo show…So a bit about my dumb art ideas, how I got to know Beth, originals vs copies, and our still-coming-together plan to collaborate related to this new album…:
If you wanna hear some of this now-done 10-year recording, I’m gonna be doing a solo set of some of the songs this Wed., January 8th around 6:30pm.
What makes this esp. nifty is that it’s for the closing party for the artist Beth Campbell's (an actual genius and just my favorite) own solo show, How Do You Know I Am Not A Liar, at the Kate Werble Gallery (83 Vandam St., NYC (Beth’s show runs through this Friday, 1/10/20)…
...for me at least though, the last ten years have been a funny almost holding-pattern, at least as far as music goes. Or maybe how time passed was just way different this last decade than it had been, partly due the never-ending album chore but also partly due the weird things raising children does to one’s perception of time. And from me, re: time, that’s really saying something…
Sometimes, when trying to explain why this recording’s taken so long, even compared to the four years of the meadowlands, or saying that I've worked on this pretty much daily etc. etc., it all seems bonkers (and it is) or at least doesn’t make logical sense…
Being in a band, besides being comic past a certain point, is akin to running a very small family business, like say a hardware store (if you actually made your own hardware, weren’t actually family, were expected to tour after the new hammer came out, etc. [analogy collapses]. Ok, it’s not about the hardware, it’s about the ‘family' part)…
I hesitate to say, partially because it hardly matters in the bigger picture, especially the current political one, but...of the last batch of songs that needed more re-re-re-etc.-re-work after going to mastering last fall, I finished the last one & sent it off yesterday.
Mornin',
Just a brief & less-brief note w/r/t the Esopus project...first the brief.
The launch party for the ltd. ed. Esopus Foundation/Magazine project I did w/ the bonkers-ly amazing artist Beth Campbell has been re-scheduled for Monday, Dec. 14th, 7:00-9:00 at Beth's studio in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. And I'll be playing a short-ish solo set including the song Three Types of Reading Ambiguity from the upcoming album, which was the focus of the project w/ Beth...[READ ON]
Yesterday got the mastered&sequenced version of the album back from the mastering guru (haven't gotten to listen to it yet partially because I'm sick of & hate
it but also because the at-home dad's child-bosses do not honor a traditional workday).
Sad-lariously enough, only just realized that it was also exactly 5 years ago yesterday, that recording officially started .
Holy hell. Wasting life in half-decade increments.
Since 1989.
Yeah, Yeah...
Realizing that it's the killer-combo of being not only unimportant in the real goings-on of the world but also, in the ever-going back&forth of "it's almost done, this part is done" etc., both hard to keep up track of and in those details especially, really pretty boring...
but in my dumb mission to post updates on some tiny portion of the everyday work on the record (and believe me, although arguably it shouldn't be, it really is every damned day), Sunday morning I finished & sent off the final-of-many versions of the last song to mastering. Which means that...[READ ON]
I hope your Thanksgivings...
...were great. At my end, well you know how I'm always prattling & whining on about how difficult the record's been to make, how little sleep for 4+ years now, etc. etc.? Of course you do. Yield-wise, it's more my stock-in-trade than releasing actual albums. And while true, even I'm pretty tired of hearing me go on about it.
But all those art-for-crap's-sake life choices came to a head at Thanksgiving. Driving up to Massachusetts that Wednesday, got sicker & sicker, fever, vomiting. Thursday morning felt worse, with a weird & unwelcome Rice Crispie effect to each breath, a cough output I'll only describe as 'cranberry'...[READ ON]
So Friday morning...
...for the first time in I don't even know how long (years at this point!), we all four got together. The occasion? Well, I realize it's not big news in any sense except to us, but after 25 years as a band and for the first time in 20, we, as they say, have inked a deal. Pens were handed out presidentially. Morning beers were clinked together. The devil wrung his hands in delight & vanished in a smoke puff, laughing...[READ ON]
Posted a very belated 2010-in-review last month here which mostly covered the start of (finally) recording. As promised, here’s a slightly less-belated overview of what we got done in 2011. And it’s shorter...[READ ON]
Tues.: drop kids at school, inexplicably overdub even more guitars in living room in effort to finish recording before more due children are born
Wed.: proselytize on keeping other cities weird
Thurs: use phrase ‘day party’ a lot; eat sensible dinner at our respective homes (NJ, Penna., B’klyn).
Fri.: enjoy commemorative breakfast taco, read up on Austin. Email other band geeks to discuss reforming
Sat.: reflect how everything’s bigger in Texas, especially buzzes
Sun.: feel the burn…of a week like any other. Reflect on what we’ve learned. Look ahead to 2014 when we actually go.
An itemized invoice I sent Kevin, billing him for work done on one of his songs (ok no, not seriously billing him. Althooooough if he cut me a check, I’d probably cash it. For his is a generous personhood, while I am a small grabby man). Greg’s reply to all this: you need to increase your rates....[READ ON]
2010, that is…
Yeah, 2010…actually not a typo. For years we’ve posted a year-end wrap-up of what we’d been up to the previous twelve months (you can pour over a few of those here). They’ve tended to be drawn-out semi-comedic affairs that were long on “we bought a computer” sort of news and short of any announcement of real recording (not counting a band-ful of false starts, laughably optimistically documented here or here, both from four years ago now, for ex.)...
Anyway, the Schumann PLL, that great white whale among guitar pedal enthusiasts is sold. And to Jack Black, no less....
You play guitar for three-plus decades, you tend to accumulate a few pedals along the way, maybe enough to earn the dumb infantile nickname ‘pedalboy’.
I've been putting off cleaning musical-equipment house for maybe oh...two-and-a-half of those three decades now. But finally starting with this, for some tiny sub-strata of musicianly geeks, the jewel in the crown that is my collection - the Schumann PLL, now for sale. If you have to ask what it is, probably no reason to read on. And definitely no reason to ask how much, since that’ll make us both feel weird. Trust me...
Directly from our Betterlatethannever Dept., which is to say, directly from our Everythingwedo Dept., here’s a link to a piece we wrote that recently ran in MAGNET extolling the virtues of a song by Steve Koester (now Two Dark Birds) and a band you never heard of unless you grew up in the same 1980s south Jersey we did, the Magnets...
Finding ourselves with a few spare hours, a bag of nails, and some lumber that was in the yard, we’ve hammered together a new web store. And to commemorate so auspicious an occasion, we’ve got a lovely new shirt to hang in the window as well, all very coincidentally in time for some ritual holiday consumer action...
