I think today is a good day to tell you about my in-progress EP.  Let's pretend I'm a journalist and use the 5 W questions, shall we?

Photo by Joshua Chan

WHY?

I wrote a great deal of songs during the pandemic.  Most of these, you'll never hear.  They're not all winners, you know.  As I kept writing, several of the songs ended up being about Black experiences. As they say, write what you know.  Now, I've written about this sort of thing before. After all, writing songs is how I process emotions and try to deal with my anxiety and depression and life in general. Eventually, I had written enough songs that I thought were good enough to not discard. I'd like to share them.  That's what songwriters do, you know, we generally prefer to share what we write. Instead of staggering these songs across multiple releases, I decided to collect them all into one project.

WHO?

The songs on this project are all very much about Black experiences. That being the case, I thought that the best way to approach recording them would be to enlist the assistance of people who would most be able to personally relate to the subject matter.  The artistic aesthetic for this project is that all personnel are Black. This includes musicians, engineer, mixer, mastering engineer, photographer, videographer, and graphic design. If you've read my blog or heard me talk about music, you know that I consider collaboration to be a highly valuable and important part of making art. This is an opportunity for me to work with some very talented people who I've never worked with before. I feel like the enthusiasm they are bringing to this project can only enhance the final product.

WHERE?

I am recoding at The Dreamcatchers Recording Studio in Reynoldsburg, Ohio. Rizo is the gentleman at the controls.

WHAT?

This is going to be an EP.  In addition to the detail about the personnel above, it will be different from my past work in two major ways.

First, every single song on this project is told from my point of view. By saying that, I don't mean that I've never written a song from my own point of view before.  "North of Sixteen", from Echo in the Crevices, is very much a first person story, and it's a very clear narrative. "Goodbye", from Anxious Inventions & Fictions, is another example of me being the voice speaking in the song. This certainly isn't the case all of the time. Songs like "I Am a Number" and "Your Anthem" are observational.  Songs like "Little Light" , "Le Soldat", and "She Speaks in Metaphor" are purely fiction, but plausible. My most recent single, "Wapakoneta", consists of a kernel of true memories buried in a fabricated story. This new project however... this is extremely personal. I am the voice on all of the songs. I am open, I am vulnerable, and I am speaking the truth. Note that you won't find any instances of me pushing for social or political causes or changes on this EP. (If you're looking for my thoughts in those areas, feel free to reach out to me in person.) I am saying things that are true, and then saying how I feel about them. The listener is free to draw their own conclusion. Being this open is scary.

Second, every song on this EP is in a different genre. Usually, piano is my tool of choice for writing songs. Piano provides a blank slate. There are a nearly unlimited amount of choices one can make as far as arrangement and instrumentation when starting with piano. As I arranged the songs, I tried to put together arrangements that would best serve each song. After I got three songs into the project, I noticed that they were all different genres. At that point, I decided to lean into it. Yes, each song is a different genre, but they all sound like me.

There is another detail about this project that I'll keep secret, but it is a secret that I have shared with the lovely people who subscribe to my mailing list. They are the first to know what I am up to, and I share inside information with them that I won't share elsewhere. If you'd like to join them and step into my world, please sign up here.

In a nod to Jimi Hendrix, the name of the EP will be I Am Experienced.

WHEN?

This blog post is going up on Monday January 17th, 2022.  In the United States, that is a federal holiday called Martin Luther King Jr. Day.  Some people in the United States might spend a few minutes on this day thinking about topics such as racism, prejudice, and equality. Some people might spend a few minutes thinking about how to not be partial in one's individual interactions with other humans, or what the world might be like if everyone had an altruistic love for their fellow person. Many people ask themselves when, if ever, anything will improve. Those are all valid thoughts, and I'm not going to address them here. I will say that I have made some art in which I talk about my feelings, I am working hard to get it professionally recorded, and I will share it with you as soon as I possibly can.

Have you watched the music video for "Wapakoneta" yet?

If not, well, this is it:

Do you see that black shirt with the red roses that I am wearing in the video?  I am giving that away.  I have worn it exactly once.  It has been laundered, and is hanging in my closet, waiting to meet someone new.

If you would like the shirt off my back, all you have to do is join my mailing list.  You can do that by clicking here, or by heading to the home page of this website and scrolling down.  To enter, just add your email address, your first name, and your last name.  That's it.  Simple, right?

I will do a drawing in two weeks from all of the eligible entries, and I'll send the shirt to the winner in the mail.  You'll also get a present right away, just for signing up.

Yes, I realize it has been a few months since my last blog.   Part of that is general life business.  Part of that is struggling with being in a dark place that I've written about before.  Let's agree to call it a brief hiatus, and I'll make an effort to get back to regular updates.

Hey, here's some news!  You might be aware that I released a new single on 20th July.  Well, I decided to shoot a music video for it.  Now, this is not a skill set that I have.  How did I go about making a music video in nearly complete DIY fashion?

First, I looked for information.  I found every Internet source that I could find about "how to make a music video".  I consulted fellow musicians who had experience in producing and releasing their own videos.  I took the information I learned and set about preparing in advance how best to execute the project. 

One of the things I learned is that before you decide to shoot a video, you need to decide WHERE to shoot the video.  For a song called "Wapakoneta" that specifically mentions Auglaize County in the lyrics, I figured that as much of the video as possible should be filmed in that city and that county.  Here are some photos from location scouting:

I'd really like to have draped by bass over Neil Armstrong there and taken a photo, but I think that might have landed us in some trouble with the local authorities.

My wife and I had different ideas about how to go about doing the video, so in the spirit of cooperation and compromise, we co-directed.  We plotted all of the scenes in advance on a shot sheet, and matched each of them up to specific segments of the song.  On the days where Misty was the director, I stayed out of the decision-making process.  On one of those days, I didn't even attend the shoot.  On the days where I was the director, well, I tried to keep her out of the decision making process.  A dear friend of ours (shout out to Cara Shay) filmed everything on an iPhone of some sort.  Since I do not have video editing skills, I hired a professional to take care of that.  Other than fuel and time, the editing was the only expense.

The video for "Wapakoneta" makes its debut next Monday 27th September via a Facebook Premiere... well, if I can figure that out.  I posted it by accident, then immediately deleted it.  I'll do a YouTube Premiere on Tuesday 28th September.  See, the nice thing about a premiere is that we all get to watch the video together and have an online chat about it at the same time.  While we're all waiting for next Monday, I'll upload brief snippets so you can have an advance look and maybe also a behind the scenes peek at the process.