…As opposed to ‘later’, which is how my last few records have been delivered.

But if you’ve stumbled on the site recently you can see, we’re getting close… er. Closer. Yeah, that’s the ticket. 😀 According to the site, the record will be shipping just in time for Independence Day. But you know what they say about believing everything you read. 😀

The question is going to be ‘how to push the first thousand of these little jewels out the door as fast as possible.’ Do I have ideas on promos? You bet I… don’t.

But I’m open to suggestions!

The first few hundred of these (these happy few) will be hand-signed

…For the simple reason that the manufacturer will be sending them to me un-shrink-wrapped. The first batch of every CD I’ve ever done has had at least some dodginess. So I insist on the first box being done this way (tip to aspiring marketers.) If I find a flaw (and I does […]

So the other speed bump to getting things rocking on the new album is the fact that I smacked my finger with a sledge hammer last month. (Don’t ask.) But I kept it on the down low. I was even playing a theatre gig and it’s not exactly Birds Of Fire-ish so it hasn’t been a huge musical problem.

Strum, strum, strum, strum. Strum, strummedy, strum, strum.

The only detail was that the gig was one of those ‘modern’ plays where the band kinda interacts with the audience a bit. And my index finger stuck out ninety degrees perpendicular to me hand. Apparently a ‘manager’ complained to the MD that it looked as though I was ‘flipping off the audience’.

“Hybrid picking technique. Absolutely essential for authenticity. Learned it from Albert Lee. Really.”

That HR crisis solved, I moved on to seeing a doctor. But apparently, by the time I got it looked at, the darned thing had already started to ‘set’. So $229 gets me a professional opinion that popsicle […]

Well, there have been a few speed bumps on ‘The Rocky Road To…’ the new record. Nothing too dreadful but two (not five) things to report. Here’s the first. All the breathing stuff has created a musical problem I never anticipated. But as Morpheus might say while watching TV, ‘Life is not without a sense of irony.’

When you record vocals they’re usually done last. OK, that’s what I do. You lay down a ‘guide vocal’ for the other guys to play against. And after all that racket is recorded, one spends a day (or nine) recording take after take to achieve vocal magic. Now sometimes the guide that is the keeper because everyone knows the first take of any idea is often the best. And this has always been easy for me because one thing I could always count on was the consistency of my voice. You may like it, you may hate it but it’s always the same. I recorded some takes of songs that were on Positive […]

New year. New web stuff. I dunno why I keep putting a new wrapper on the same ol’ stuff, but hey… it’s festive!

Finishing up a couple of new videos. One for It’s Not The Bomb. I haven’t put up a video from Balance so it was time.

Plus, gun control has become a much bigger deal (at least to me) than when I wrote this. The number of guns and the obsessions people have with them have become more insane than I could’ve imagined. In other words, when I wrote the song ten years ago I felt a little on the margins. Now? I think you’re crazy if you’re not appalled. If you feel the same way, please do what I did this year and send a couple of bucks to The Brady Campaign Against Gun Violence. If yer lookin’ for instant gratification, I doubt this is money well spent, but we gotta start somewhere […]

I’ve put together a medley of three bits from Detroit in a simple promo video. This contains the Overture to Act I, where Eddie Powell introduces the neighbourhood, the aria ‘Tear Down The House’ which ends of Act II and the finale to Act III ‘Evergreen’.

Evergreen is a mix of live tracks from rehearsals summer 2012 with a number of studio overdubs. You’ll note the vocal track has slightly different lyrics from the libretto.

There are a lot of sections with loooong notes. Hiiiiigh notes. Unfriendly to those who have to breathe to make noise. Whenever I get this stuff rehearsed it’s either with pros who tell me to what I can do with my chop destroying stupid parts (unless I open my checkbook—in which case they’ve never heard anything quite like it.) Or, I can get unsuspecting children.

God Bless The Future Of Our Children. Who Are Our Future.

The great thing about young people is that, despite what you may have heard, they will happily […]