I still sorta can’t believe I’m writing this but…here we are.
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)…
Back at the end of November, On Record Store Day, our first album, Silver, was (re-re-)rereleased, and for the first time on vinyl (I think, who knows?). A number of folks had very sweetly tweeted etc. about it and although I usually try to acknowledge social media posts (out of a feeling of true appreciation that people’d still bother) with a quick reply (typically rife w/ dad jokes) or at least an easy ‘like’, I didn’t this time, for any of them, in part ‘cause I was sorta conflicted on the whole thing…
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…
Started a “here’s what I did in the last 10 years” post but almost everything that came to mind initially was from the previous decade. So typically hilariously late, here’s my 2000-2010 nutshell:
I had my first non-teaching-music office job - and so, my first health insurance!, regular payroll check, etc. - which was awesome…
As you probably know, my friend & favorite musician person, Will of Okkervil River, has been doing a subscription series of live albums spanning the Okkervil career so far (also available individually) and that he’s just released Vol. 6, A Wren Among the Pornographers. You may not know that that wren is me - I was the Okkervil guitar-for-hire spring/summer of ’08, and chiefly for that tour, opening up for the the New Pornographers…
Years ago, apparently almost 6 years ago, Kevin told me a story that if I remember correctly, he attributed to Brian Wilson (I couldn’t find it online but I’m no private investigator), wherein Wilson, on being asked for the whatevereth time when the record, presumably Pet Sounds, was gonna be done, would just hit the button on a tape recorder he had, cueing his pre-recorded, and I guess exhausted reply.
While organizing project files etc. as I’ve been finishing up, I re-found this the other day and so posting now, six years later, mostly ‘cause I’m running out of time for my own old-man joke:
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…
This year (2019, depending when you see this), and July specifically, are wrenniversary-intensive. I’ll keep it brief, in the style of the bullets...
30 years ago, in 1989…this band started…
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.
As of last week, by a very wide margin, the most expensive thing I've ever owned is a bottle of pills I'll eat in 21 days. Although covered by insurance (at least luckily for now) they're just north of a cool ten grand. Impressive…
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]
...probably nothing he knows.
For 10 years I taught guitar in a music store in NJ (hi, Woodside Music in Park Ridge), to mostly high schoolers w/ some adults & younger children thrown in. And in those hundreds of students there would always be a few that were better (either more talented or more accomplished, I have yet to crack that one) usually in a "hey, another perfect Led Zep solo down pat" way, which is great and as the cliche` goes, taught me a lot. But there were always a few that seemed further ahead...aesthetically, for lack of a better word, who might end up doing something really cool in the future, either artistically or just more broadly, in life etc., even if it wasn't quite clear (at least clear to me) what that might be.
Luke Wyatt was one of those young'uns...[READ ON]