In Lieu of a Blog (Reposted from FB)

I know that Reverb Nation is constantly encouraging me to create a Blog, and as someone with an English degree and experience writing for others, I shouldn't have any issue with that directive. However, finding the time to faithfully create a Blog (Should Blog be capitalized? I guess it's been a while since I've written professionally!) isn't easy with my schedule. Neither was figuring out how to set up the "Notes" section of the Facebook page. But I found it. So now I have a place to write notes that are too long for Twitter, and occasionally maybe even set down some genuine observations.

It's been a busy couple of weeks musically. I wrote a ton of new songs in April when my crazy tenant moved out and I finally had the space and peace to hear myself think and the permission to use my own piano in my own living room.

In addition to an EP recorded in October and STILL awaiting mixing/mastering, I wrote two EPs' worth of music in April. As the band and I began recording the first of the two EPs at Jankland Studios in Wall NJ, we realized that the seven songs we had for the first EP were already 36 minutes long. Given that a generation ago, that was nearly long enough to be an album (and TWO generations ago that WAS an album length), we decided that we might as well write a few more (ideally SHORT) songs and make it a full-fledged album.

Tom Briant, my lead guitarist and also lead guitarist for the Josh Zuckerman band, sent me three short melody demos he'd recorded which had no lyrics.

Well, tonight after work I came home and wrote lyrics for one of them. So Tom and I now have our first collaborative effort under progress with two more to go for this project! In addition, my uncle Tom also intends to contribute some music for me to craft librettos to. By the way, for any Beatles fans, this album is VERY Beatlesque, although the song I worked on tonight sounds either like the Byrds or early Stevie Nicks/Lindsey Buckingham.

Of course, this also means that what was intended as a third single/EP from the MEMOIRS OF A MANWHORE album will now be an album in its own right, which means we will probably wait until after the summer to finish these new songs and this particular album project. Instead, our next studio endeavor will be what was intended as the fourth single/EP from the MEMOIRS album, a remake of "Sad Sack" and four new swing/big band-styled songs.

And all the while, we are also STILL working on the remake of ENDLESS STREET: A SPIRITUAL TRAVELOGUE and its companion piece, LEGITIMATE BUSINESS (which will contain a single-length edit of said song, which is a new addition to ES:AST) and half a dozen cover songs with over 40 minutes of run time. This past week, Paul Galiszewski (of Josh Zuckerman Band as well), laid down killer live drums to "Days of Hollow Men," which for years had been surviving on a drum loop sampled from John Hiatt's "Something Wild." While Hiatt's drums are excellent, the loop was not. Paul just propelled this song into the stratosphere.

Well, that's it for tonight. But I'll leave you with the title of the song I wrote tonight to Tom Briant's music: A Prison of Honeyed Words.