Tangerine Tamborine

So I'm pretty deep into this project to just start blogging of it now, but it's been a great expereince and I wanted in one way or another to document. So, I'm working on a children's album. The brainchild of the musical genius of Jeff Sharp (Whitey Herzogs, Tim Tucker and the Uh-Huhs, Girlfriend Voice). Most of you who have known me a while will know my long time music playing partner Josh Lovvourn whose name I've never spelled correctly. He has a nice studio setup and had been playing with Jeff a while when they started working on this project and asked me to be involved. I've always liked working with Josh and have always wanted to work with Jeff so it was a pretty great opportunity for me.

So far we have a lot of songs...some finished, some almost finished, some not even close. But we've been pulling in people from all over to come out and help us out. We've had guys in playing trombone, drums, percussion, etc. We had Tasha Jones (Tim Tucker & The Uh-Huhs, The Tasha Jones Band, Ben Trussell) come in the other day and put some vocals on a couple of songs. They turned out really great. She is an amazing singer and really fun and relaxing to be around.

The education I'm getting from just recording with these guys and learning their knowledge sets, from Josh's ability to place a microphone, to Jeff's ability to hit an instantly recognizable but still original melody every time he picks up an instrument is inspiring to be around. I get nervous and fumble around when I have to play or sing in the studio. Things I can just throw out with ease under normal circumstances, and a little less ease on stage, I just wilt when it's time to record it. 4 simple notes, and I sound like that rock monster from "Never Ending Story" trying to play piano.

Josh is truly an engineer. He moves around this stuff like he was made for it. Jeff Sharp is truly a producer. He'll do the most bizarre shit I've ever seen. He'll make Josh record something completely stupid that he knows we're not going to keep. And when you see him do it you realize the brilliance behind doing it. You're doing "something." And those things inspire other things. You brainstorm. A bad idea is no reason not to go forth with it until you have a good one. Good lessons for me to learn in the studio and as a writer as well.

I'm so excited about all of these songs. We still have a good ways to go, and I'll continue to update this blog about it.

Superdave and Jeff Sharp rehearsing a part:

















Josh and Jeff not working:

So...I guess I'll continue this blog

Instead of making a new one. That seems so wasteful. My album in a month album is complete. I'm having a hard time deciding whether or not to re-record lots of these pieces through some proper gear and with people more knowledgeable than myself and release it as its own record as well as re-recording some old songs of mine in order to have an "EP" of sorts or whether or not I'll just make one album of blended material. If I did that it would be a long ass record. But a track listing that would look something like this:

1. Whisper Room
2. Dimly
3. Out of Sunshine
4. Out of Sunshine pt. II
5. Jerry
6. High Top Girl
7. She Sure Was Strange
8. Umberella
9. Play My Guitar
10. Said it Yesterday
11. What makes the world go 'round
12. Shell

See? It needs some paring down I think. Either way I'm going to get to recording them before too long. But in the meantime I'll be working on another record, which is what I decided to open this blog back up about. ::See next post::

Pencils down please.

I stayed up....very late. I made a mad dash to the post office after getting enough sleep to function. So the CD is off. I will post it tomorrow right here if you'd like to listen but I burned a CD and listened to it and some of the stuff got truncated. So I'll make a couple of adjustments to make sure the songs are on there in full. That was my fault.

I'm kinda glad it's over and kinda sad. One thing I realized I can do is work and make music and write words and music that I can be proud of. What I realize I'm not very good at is mixing, and EQing and other such technical things I need to work on. I'm also not good at doing every single thing in the world myself. I would love to hear this record one day with real musicans playing on it. I had my friend J come over the other evening and lay down some piano on top of mine for the song "Dimly" as well as adding some mega ELO string sections on it. It was nice just being able to get that. My friend Ian had been providing bass for me and his recording rig broke in the last week so I had to play some of the bass myself. Also not conducive for good music. And all of the flat and sour notes throughout the process? As I listened I was going to go back and repair them but I got a MASSIVE cold this week! I could barely talk much less sing.

Don't get me wrong I'm not whining or making excuses for my music, I'm quite pleased with what I've accomplished, even if it brings out (as you can tell from past posts) some neurosis in me. I'm just thinking I'd like to hear some of these songs...hell all of them, executed in a manner that's more fitting than the constraints of time and ability. But I did it. I was supposed to have 35 minutes. I stretched to have 31, but I have 11 original songs, and the rule was 35 minutes or 10 songs.

Some songs are 5 and 6 minutes. Some are 1 and 2 minutes. I decided to quit letting things hang me up on what is and what isn't a song. If I have a verse and a chorus of a song and that's all the lyrics I need to say what I'm saying then why not just move on and call it a song?

I have some powerpop, southern rock, metal, some trip hop, country, jazz, yacht rock, pop,....not because I'm trying to be eclectic. Because those things are all at least a small part of what I am. Nothing was overly contrived in terms of the styles of the music, in fact quite the opposite, as I get frustrated by not knowing who I am or what it is I do musically.

So my track listing....as I started the project off with the ambition of 5 songs...some are there some aren't. But there's a lot more.

1. Calling Blue
2. Dimly
3. Dorian Grace
4. I feel Much Better
5. Out of Sunshine
6. Shell
7. While You Stare
8. Out of Sunshine part II
9. Whisper Room
10. Evil in June
11. What Makes The World Go 'Round

I will post a mediafire link for everyone tonight or in the morning.

It occurs to me that I make pretty music.

And often hate myself because of it. Half of the time I spend trying to make music is to come up with something pretty. The other half is spent despising the prettiness of it. Sometimes to the point of trying to make it ugly. I make fun of ugly music a lot. Because I can't really make it I suppose. The Ramones, The Velvet Underground, AC/DC, Nirvana, their music wasn't pretty right? On the other hand Brian Wilson's, Paul McCartney's, The Davies Bros.....their music is. I'm not sure where I fit in there. I guess all in all, all music has all shades. I mean let's face it is there anything more beautiful than "Candy Says?" And Wilson can descend into unlistenable chaos at time. But I always feel like I'm straddling that line. Does it even matter? I don't know but it's something I obsess over to the point of it being unhealthy. Who has it perfect? Who balances all of it...making music that's sometimes so beautiful it's transcendent and sometimes so ugly it's uncomfortable to listen to but at the exact same time? David Bowie for me is the first to come to mind. So am I feeling like a failure and wanting to jump off of bridges because my music isn't as awesome as David Bowie's? WTF?

Speaking of awesome music, my friend Sean has finished his RPM record. It's better than anything I've ever done and in my opinion quite brilliant.
here's his blog
http://leatherbackbulletin.blogspot.com/

and here's a mediafire for anyone interested in listening
http://www.mediafire.com/?dm3gvt2zw4n

So another problem that has me severely down...I think one of the Jagger/Richards team said once about how music is an organic experience. I make these records. I make them myself. And in some weird way I get absolutely nothing out of them. Even when I get fantastic musicians I admire to play on them it's usually all but done and I'm like "here, here's how it goes." There's no interaction with other humans. While I'd like to say it doesn't have an effect on the music...and maybe it doesn't, but I think it does, and more importantly it has an extremely profound effect on the attitude I take towards making music. I think we probably need people to share it with. But maybe it's just me. And maybe after a little sharing I'd get pissy and take my ball and go home anyways.

I'm sick. I'm going to bed. I'm going to try to post a song tomorrow called "Me and the Devil" Yes, obviously lift from Robert Johnson and I'm sure I'll change it. Geez.

People who can't play jazz

have something in common with me.

Here's my new song. It's called "What makes the world go 'round." But that's kind of a shit title as well as being a mouthful so if you can think of something more clever drop me a line or add a comment.

It was based on an exercise which was to write a song whose first line is a question, whose last line is the answer to that question, and the lines in between are how you went about finding that answer.

It doesn't really fit in with the 'album' So maybe I'll put it last after my doom metal outro and it will be like "Her Majesty" on abbey road.

Anyways..here it is.

What Makes The World Go 'Round

Out of Sunshine

Hi folks. I have a sample up. It's for a song called "Out of Sunshine" A pretty new song and not originally slated for the record, my friend Ian Miller had played bass for me on the song "Shell" and being that Ian defines everything that is rock and roll, punk, and metal all rolled up into one, I decided to write something a little more shaking for him to play on. So the original idea was to write a Westerberg style garge rocker. To me it wound up sounding like the Stones. To Ian it sounded like Tom Petty. I know I compare everything I do and everything everyone else does to everything else. I can't really help it though. Just how I was made.

Right now the song clocks in at about 5 minutes which is good for time slots getting RPM done in time but bad for the fact that I wouldn't normally sit through a 5 minute pop song without being bored. So I'm probably going to pare it down a tad.

Here's first sample.

Out of Sunshine

Wasting time.

I haven't blogged much because I went out of town last week and have been pretty busy in general. Also frustrated with the creative process. Although those are the times I guess I should be blogging. But this is my first time doing so, so I forget. I worked on a song...I had it all in my head. The lyrics finally started to take shape. I got the perfect drums for them. Everything clicked. Then I woke up....listened to my beats and played the song. And realized I thought it was shit. So I started over. Lots of wasted time there. I probably should have moved on. I guess I'm incapable of 'moving on' when something is bothering me like that though. I have a new version of my new song in the works though. Tomorrow I will see if I can't have a rough recorded. It is called "Out of Sunshine." At that point I will probably move onto the song "Out of Sunshine part II." Which incidentally has very little to do with part I. And I'm not smoking. Which means I've gained weight. Which means I'm pissed off, which means I'm tired from exercise and hungry from starving myself. How was your week?

So...the good part in all of this is that while I'm way behind on material...material is COMING. Like it really hasn't before. I can sit down and stare at half filled in stanzas on paper and words and rhymes and sentences, and cohesive thoughts don't seem to have as much trouble finding their way from my mind to the paper. This has always been the worst part of songwriting to me. I mean lyrics are weird y'know? Everyone gets something different out of music and I get that. But I have people that come to me and say "a song is only as good as its lyrics." I understand people feel that way. I just think they're wrong. The story of Pet Sounds is not told in the lyrics. He could be reading the ingredients to Cheeze Its and I'm pretty sure the emotional impact on me would be identical. I'm neither the musical master Mr. Wilson is nor the lyrical master Mr. Dylan is or any bizarre combo of those two from Pete Townsend to Tom Waits. But I DO have the goal to make my lyrics not embarrassingly bad enough to take away from being able to enjoy the song as a whole. I spend an awful lot of time making sure that doesn't happen and yet I still don't think of myself as a songwriter.

Am I? I write songs? I have no idea. Songwriters to me are people with these things to say that can't stay in their head that must find their way to the paper. Poets with burning souls. Or maybe (maybe not) more superficially, geniuses like Diane Warren or a host of Nashville penners that can knock back #1 hits in their sleep. I don't know what a songwriter is. And I don't know why I write songs and am convinced that whatever the answer is, I'm not one. Which becomes bizarre in thinking "what am I"? My guitar playing went to shit years ago. I was only told I had a decent voice by someone a couple of years ago so I'm still not completely comfortable there. My piano playing definitely won't win any awards. I can't properly mix a song with more than 3 instruments. But in the end, I somehow overcome odds and make music that I'm really proud of.

Is that weird?