WEQX will be playing Blue Skies Black, the first single and title track from my upcoming solo album on Tuesday, 1/17, at 11am sharp! Tune in!
You don’t need to be anywhere in particular, or even in the Northeast. From anywhere in the world, go to www.weqx.com and click “Listen Live” and tune in to hear my song’s debut on the radio.
The moment has arrived! I’ve gotten the first single and title track from my upcoming solo album “Blue Skies Black” ready for your listening pleasure. Give it a listen – I’d love to hear any feedback!
Drums on this song were performed by the incredible Michael Maenza (from The X’s, among other great bands). There are some other awesome guest musicians on this record I’ll be introducing in due time.
I’ve also finally got the album cover from the amazing artist Vince DePorter (who just happens to be the same genius behind the cover for “Station” by The Velmas):
I always wanted to be a cartoon superhero!
I’m tidying up some loose ends with the mastering of the full album and getting the rest of the artwork in place, but it finally looks now like there is an actual release date in sight. Nothing in stone yet, but maybe February 2012?
It’s been a busy year. I’ve been involved in a few new musical projects, as well as still playing with The VeLMAs. Here’s what’s new.
First off, I’m playing in a new band called Above The Flood. ATF is a 4-piece hard rock band that’s me (lead guitar/vocals), Matt Shufelt (lead vox/guitar) and Rick Little (drums) from Split 2nd Alibi, as well as Steve Rajter (bass) from Hygeer. I’ve always enjoyed S2A; Matt’s got a killer voice and I’m psyched to be singing harmonies with him in this band. We’re currently working on a bunch of really great originals as well as some fun covers to fill out the live shows. We played our first show this past Saturday and we’re booking more for the winter and spring now. We’re working on getting a website up, but for now, our Facebook page is the place to go for info.
I’m also pretty psyched about this little collaboration project I’m involved with here. Trebor Lloyd, from City Canyons Records, asked me a while back if I’d be interested in contributing some guitar tracks to a song called “Crowded Desert” written by Annie Husick for a project called “The Painted Caravan”. Peter Ulrich (from Dead Can Dance) will be providing the percussion tracks from “across the pond,” as they say. There are some really cool Indian instruments being added to this – Carnatic Indian violin, Carnatic cello and an oboe/Indian flute combo. We like to think George Harrison would have dug this. I really don’t know exactly where this will wind up when it’s all said and done, but I do know that it will be awesome based on what I’ve heard so far! It’s really exciting to hear the song come together as various musicians from around the world are adding pieces to it.
Of course, I’m also still working on releasing Blue Skies Black, my latest solo album. It’s actually been completely mixed since early July(!), but little things like having a baby and starting a new band will cause delays. I’m currently finding a mastering house to give it the final polish it needs for the release and working with the super-talented Vince DePorter (he did the amazing artwork for The VeLMAs album “Station”) on the album artwork. I’m also trying to plan a music video to promote the lead single, the title track “Blue Skies Black”.
Stay tuned!
Looking at my last post from almost a year ago here, it seemed like I was just about done with this album then. And maybe I was. But in the meantime, I decided I wasn’t happy with the mixes and brought in some fresh ears (and gear) to help take these songs up a few levels. I’ve been working with Tim Lynch over at the Recording Company remixing these songs nearly from scratch and they definitely sound better for the experience. Bigger, fatter, and just all-around more betterer. We’re down to one last session to do some last-minute tweaks and then it’s off to the races. Or, you know, mastering.
I’m putting together some artwork ideas and also preparing to shoot the first music video for this album.
I’ve also found a few great musicians who will be helping me re-create these songs live and I’ll be booking some CD release parties for later this summer, or more realistically, this fall.
I still don’t have a name for this band. But the album will be called Blue Skies Black.
So I’ve been sitting on the mixes for my new album for two weeks or so now, listening for things that still bother me, and getting feedback from some friends. So far, the feedback has been good!
Of course, it would figure that now would be when Avid/Digidesign finally releases a version of Pro Tools (8.0.4) that officially supports 64-bit Windows 7! I’d been dual-booting back and forth, depending on the song, between the version (3.0.1) that was stable in 32-bit XP (which worked quite well, save for the songs with so many plugins that I would run out of RAM and Windows would crash), and the version (3.0.3 with beta 3.0.4 hardware drivers) that “mostly” worked okay in Win7x64, but would randomly freeze up on me, requiring a reboot. Either option was a compromise at some level: limited RAM vs. instability. I’ve only done a couple of hours of work so far in the new version, but I’ve had no problems with it yet! That’s a very good sign. It looks like Windows is still an important platform to Avid after all.
But the good news is that it’s looking more and more like this album is approaching “done”, and whatever changes I have left to make, I’ll be able to do them with far less drama (read: crashes) than before. This album would probably have been done months ago if the 64-bit Win7 support were out much sooner.
I found out this morning that Peter Steele – the singer, songwriter, and bass player – for what was probably my favorite living band, Type O Negative, died last night. He was just 48. There’s one less musical genius on Earth now.
I got a chance to meet Pete and the guys several years ago at Saratoga Winners when a friend of mine brought me along when he was working as a roadie. I think it was for the World Coming Down tour, maybe 1999. I remember Pete carrying in some pumpkins for the stage, 2 large ones, one in each hand, in front of his chest. As he walked in, he said something to the effect of “Ya like my new implants?”
A few years ago, I recorded an acoustic version of one of my favorite Type O Negative songs, “Die With Me”. Give it a listen:
RIP, Pete. And thanks for all the music.
So, the album is coming together nicely. All of the vocals are sung, and I’ve been working on comping them and picking out the best parts. I found a great horn player, Bill Scholl, and we got together a while ago and recorded some ideas for the song “Drive Me”. After listening to the parts we laid down, we decided they might work a little better played less staccato than they were, so we’re getting back together soon to try that out. They sound awesome so far though! I’ll also be visiting Chris Fisher’s studio again to re-amp all the electric guitar tracks. I recorded them all direct using amp emulators (Amplitube 2 and Eleven), and while they sound pretty good, they’re not quite as good as I’d like. So I’ll run each guitar part that I’ve already recorded out from the computer into a real amp, throw a mic in front of a real speaker cabinet, and record that back in. It’ll be awesome, if not tedious for 12 songs, each of which has between 6 and 20 or so tracks… I also added some tambourines to a few songs, and still might throw some more on a few others. They have a way of taking a song up a level and giving it a nice rhythmic groove. Once all that is finished, I’ll focus on getting good drum sounds and putting together the final mixes, or maybe even bringing in someone to help at that point. But really, it’s starting to sound like an album for real now. I can’t wait to be done and get this out for the world to hear it!
Now I just need to come up with a name. Two actually – one for the album and maybe even one for the “band”… Any ideas?
In other news, I’m looking forward to upgrading to the latest version of Pro Tools that includes actual support for Windows 7 (maybe it’ll run without crashing every 20 minutes!), but that’s gonna have to wait ’til I finish this album since it also drops support for my MBox! Not cool. The preamps in that thing sound pretty good and I’m not happy about the prospect of an otherwise perfectly good piece of hardware becoming obsolete just like that. But I suppose that’s how things work in this world, unfortunately.
I was making good progress, recording at a (relatively) good pace through the end of the summer. Vocals are done for 7 of the 12 songs, and that’s more than half. But then it went and got cooler outside and I went and caught a cold. I don’t think it was the pig flu or anything, but it knocked me for a loop for a few days and I’m still coughing now, almost two weeks later. So recording vocals is on the back burner.
I looked at this as a setback for a few days, wallowing in self-pity about how I’ll never finish this album at this rate, blah blah blah, but then I realized this was a good opportunity. Since I started in earnest on this album of mine just about a year ago (eek), I’ve been neglecting writing and working on new songs for the most part. (I wrote a few tunes on vacations, but that’s not as much as I’d like.) So I started working on some demos for songs I wrote over the summer, and on Sunday I even wrote a new one. With my computer out of commission from some driver issues (again), I busted out my trusty iPhone and the 4-Track app and laid down some ideas. That’s one of the most useful apps I’ve ever downloaded (if only the metronome would work from anywhere but the beginning of the song…), and with an iTunes gift card I had lying around, I still haven’t paid a single cent for an app for my phone. I imported the tracks into Pro Tools and whipped up a quick drum part in BFD and added some bass and electric guitar and now I’ve got a shiny new demo to listen to and try to come up with lyrics for. Good times.
I also came to the decision that, while the samples I’m using for a few horn parts in some of the songs (Garritan Personal Orchestra) sound decent, they’re not as good as I’d like. So I set out to find a good horn player to play them for me. I’ve got a few leads, but if anyone out there knows someone who can play trumpet, and maybe trombone and french horn as well, hit me up. If you’re gonna do something, do it right, right?
I just put together this Michael Jackson tribute. It’s an acoustic cover of Thriller, with some self-recorded backing vocals:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyA-80k9lAQ&fmt=18
Check it out and let me know what you think! RIP, MJ!
Quick update. I’ve found myself using Twitter (which in turn updates my Facebook page) a whole lot lately, as it’s easier to write a 140-character “what I’m working on now” update than to write a full blog entry. And more people tend to read Twitter and Facebook than my blog here. But to recap, for those not on Twitter or whatever, I’m still working on this solo album! I’ve got guitars recorded for just about 10 of the 12 songs now, and then it’s on to vocals from there. Still hoping to get this thing done and released before the end of ’09.
For the computer/recording geeks, I wound up setting up a dual-boot system on my PC, since Pro Tools is just not stable enough yet on 64-bit Windows 7. I couldn’t handle the instability and the pops and clicks. So I’m now using 32-bit XP for Pro Tools again and 64-bit Win7 for everything else, and it’s working out pretty good for me. Only issue I’m having with XP is that it doesn’t seem to recognize more than 2.99GB of the 9GB of RAM installed now, and I use that up pretty quickly in some of these sessions with lots of plug-ins. But for tracking, I just disable some of them and get by. I haven’t even come close to maxing out the processing power, which is great. Official 64-bit PT support can’t come soon enough!