the oldies

I've been pretty productive lately. I've gotten 3 songs most of the way recorded in the last week: More to See, Station, and Origami. These are the three oldest songs I'm putting on the album. I'm not all that prolific as a writer, and some of these oldies are really good so I need to get them recorded and out there so I can feel some closure and move on with my new ideas.

More to See is one of the first songs I ever wrote. It was one of those things that just suddenly pours out of you all at once as if it was already fully formed. I'm still not really sure if I actually wrote this song or if I just transcribed it. But it's one of my favorites.

I wrote Station around the time I finished college. It's a slow ode to disillusionment, which was my specialty at the time. I played it with Shannon and Kevin during the post-Stragglers days, but it fell by the wayside when we became Ålushus.

Origami is from the Brooklyn era. I started playing this thing that had a really complex fingering, and then I realized that it would be easier if I just re-tuned my guitar to DADABE. It has a very mystic feel, much different from the rest of the stuff on the album. On both this one and Station I have recorded two rhythm guitar parts and panned one all the way to the right and the other to the left.

After I add some lead guitar parts and backwards magic these songs will probably be finished. It all makes me nostalgic for the confining simplicity of a four-track tape recorder.

couple a newbs

I worked on a couple of new songs today.

One of them was inspired by a friend. We were talking about my music and she said she wanted to hear something that would make her want to get up and go out and do something. Something inspiring. I realized that none of my songs were like that, so I decided to take up the challenge. We'll see whether or not I'm successful.

The other one is kind of about having and not having. I'm writing it like the NYC song, using real experiences that I've had to kind of sketch out a complex issue. I had to get rid of some stuff 'cause it was too damn preachy (the biggest weakness in my songwriting). I've got a few stories laid out and I'm waiting for inspiration to provide the rest, but she's got her own schedule.

Recording Update #1

So I started recording "Beauty's Never Ugly" because I thought it would be pretty easy. That was three weeks ago. For some reason I just can't get anything on that track to sound right. The vocals aren't in time with the guitar, the background vocals are out of tune, and laying down a lead guitar track is proving extremely difficult with my set up.

So I put it on the back burner and started recording "More to See". It's one of the first songs I ever wrote and I've recorded it before, so it's going pretty well. It's also the only collaborative effort that will go on this album. Some of the guitar parts were written by Shannon back in the pre-Straggler days.

I first recorded "More to See" in a hot little walk-in closet in North Carolina, now I'm re-recording it in a sweaty little laundry room in Japan. Listen for me playing the washing machine during the chorus.