Song #2 - Living Dead Blues

The second song I mixed is called Living Dead Blues.

(The song is currently a free download - help yourself!)

I think this track turned out better than “Killer on the Loose,” but I think “Killer on the Loose” is a better song, if you strip away the production and play the song acoustically.

While we may or may not remix the track, I don’t think I’ll be rerecording anything. I’m happy with the way everything turned out - performance wise. Even the vocals are sitting with me in a way I can live with.

The lyrics on this one are ridiculous: I saw a pretty girl that I know, I always liked her the best. I grabbed her by the face with both hands and I bit into her breast. Are you kidding me? While we were recording it we laughed our asses off. Deadpan comedy, for sure. I figure it’s the type of song you’ll listen to, thinking, Wait a minute. What did he say?

Here are the lyrics:

Song #1 - Killer on the Loose

The first song I put online is called, Killer on the Loose. No reason for this, other than it was the first song that sounded okay. I think it was the seventh or eighth scratch track we recorded, so that fact that we finished it first was just a fluke.

(It's currently a free download. Snag it!)

The vocals on the current version are okay, I guess. This isn't to say that I don't like what I've done. It's just that... I'm getting more confident behind the mic. And with the confidence comes a stronger voice. 

The version that's available today won't be the final version. My studio partner (engineer/producer) Ron and I both agree that the mix is a little rough around the edges, and I can probably do a better job on the vocals. 

If you're the type of person that likes to have your hands on "rare" things, I would suggest downloading the current version - within the next few weeks it will likely be gone for good.  

If you would like to hear the song there's a music player right here on the blog. Or if you'd like, you can listen on my RevebNation artist page.

Here are the lyrics:

The Studio (Part 1)

The studio has been an interesting experience so far. In the past I’ve gone in with a full band. We would set up the drums in the main studio and spend anywhere from three hours to a full day getting our sounds. After that, the other musicians would do a quick set-up in the control room and I would listen to them (raw) in the headphone mix, along with a click track and drum mix.

This time there was no band. Only me, and I needed to do it all myself. 

For the record, drums are almost always recorded first. If you’re wondering about the reason for this, it’s because they act as a foundation for the other instruments.

Here’s a little side note: It took months before I realized that a drummer should never have the others guys loud in the headphone mix. Know why? Because - generally speaking - the other players have terrible timing, and if they’re too loud they’ll pull the drummer off the click. Don’t believe me? Think about it: a great drummer has great timing, but a talented guitar player probably has an amazing sense of melody, or a nice tone, or some tasty licks, or knows how to shred, or whatever. Timing is usually average, at best. Especially if the player is hanging out in the control room, acting like a goof-ball while you’re trying to lay down a keeper.    

Anyways, this time it was different. The drums couldn’t go first because I needed to hear the song in my headphone mix while I was laying down the drums tracks. If I didn’t have it, I wouldn’t know where I was in the song. 

I guess I should point out that I know how to read and write music, so I could have written the drum tracks down on a sheet of paper - I do that sometimes. But in this case it wouldn’t have been the same. I’d be playing drums mechanically instead of instinctively, which is always better. Drummers don’t like to read and think while they play - insert drummer joke here - they like to react. 

So, how did I get around this? 

I needed to lay down a guitar/vocal scratch track (A scratch track is a track you throw away once the recording is completed). After the scratch track was recorded I listened to it inside my headphone mix.

But laying down a scratch track wasn’t as easy as you may think. It came with its own set of problems.  

More to come in Part 2...

The First Performance

July 18th, 2012 I traveled to Bristol, Rhode Island to attend a horror writers convention called Necon. About a week before the conference began I received an email from one of the organizers; they were looking for people to put together a "Necon Anthem" song. This is all jokes, mind you. Nothing serious. The anthem would be performed in front of the other attendants.   

I decided to slam together a song for the event. It took 15 minutes to write; I practiced it a couple times per day until the convention began. I called it, The Necon Anti-anthem.

When I got in front of my fellow writers to play the song - about 125 people - I was nervous. For the first time in over 20 years, I was nervous about playing live. And it wasn't even a real gig! It's funny... I know it's funny. But being nervous... it gave me a rush that I hadn't felt in a long time. Seconds before I strummed my first chord my nerves were electric. But as soon as I started to sing a strange calm feeling came over my body. It was weird how quickly I became comfortable. 

The song went pretty well, all things considered. People liked it. A whole whack of guys I had never talked with before came up to me saying how much they loved it. Words like "Brilliant" were tossed around - and trust me, there was nothing "brilliant" happening. Someone said, "As soon as you started playing I thought, Man... I need to know that guy." That felt nice.

It's interesting how music can bring people together. It's almost magic.

I didn't tell people that I had never sang in front of people before, or that I was nervous about it. Admitting such a thing seemed pointless. Especially since James Roy Daley - the drummer - had played live so many times before.

The song was a highlight of my weekend, and when I arrived home I decided to set up my first gig...

Starting From Scratch

25 years in the music industry and I find myself in the somewhat unbelievable position of starting over. And I don't mean starting a new project. I mean starting over.

After years of playing the drums - quite well, I might add - I've decided to pick up the guitar and learn how to play. The goal, however, isn't to become a great guitar player. The goal is to become a solid singer/songwriter. I'm also going to see how far I can take things, now that I no longer need to worry about my band falling apart around me.

That's the great thing about being a solo artist, in case you're wondering: You'll never break-up.

The songwriting half of this singer/songwriter equation is the easy part. Ever since my very first band I've had a hand in the songwriting. Arrangements always came easy to me, even when the egocentric musicians I played with were too stupid to know it. It's the *singer* part that's going to make things interesting. Singing a song while playing a guitar is completely foreign to me.

But you know what else is foreign to me? Being in charge. As a musician, I've never had much say in the way things were done.

No wait... that's not true.

In my very first band - a heavy metal band called "Leftovers" - I had a great deal of say. I was the business head in the band, and before we fell apart I managed to get the band to #1 on college radio stations across the country (Canada), our product distributed throughout Canada and the UK, our video played a number of times on our nation's music station MuchMusic, and a pile of sold-out shows with us being the headliner.

My next band - a band called Lilith - had a management contract with a guy named Tom Stephen, who played the drums, and managed, an artist named Jeff Healey. Once I started working with him my days of having control was over. Everything was big business. I guess I should point out that my days of getting national radio play were over, too.

I've lost track of how many times I've played live. When I pull out a calculator and do some quick math it seems that I've been on stage well over 1000 times. But all of those times I've been safely tucked away at the back of the stage, playing drums. I won't be doing that again... I'm not retiring from the drums, but I have no interest in being the engine inside some other guy's car again.

I know the day that I started playing guitar; I wrote it down: October 20th, 2011.

That's 292 days ago.

This might piss off a few people, but in January of 2012 - roughly 80 days after I started playing guitar - I worked out recording contract with a cool little studio where I don't pay for anything on the front end. In this new digital landscape, that's about as close to a record deal as you can get without actually signing one.

I've been recording my first solo record ever since. 

I'm curious to see where it takes me.

Hopefully you're curious, too.