Dialects was my favorite project because I expressed the music exactly how I wanted to. The grooves that I got on that album, just playing all the instruments myself, were better than what we could do live with the band. There’s no comparison, for the simple reason that all the accents and nuances of phrasing and all of that were really coming from one person.

— Josef Zawinul (liner notes to Dialects, CD reissue, Columbia/Legacy, 2002)

— Mikel Rouse from an interview I conducted with him for The Masterdisk Record.

There is a story of a tiger cub that was brought up among goats. One day he got lost in the jungle and ran into a big strong tiger who took one look at him, saw him acting like a goat, and with one cuff of his paw knocked him halfway across the jungle.

I meet a tiger in myself who is not familiar, who says “Choose!” and knocks me halfway across the jungle.

– Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, Image Books, New York

This was the fifth RSD, and shops are getting more organized. We got to J&R kind of late and it was surprisingly mellow. Last year it was nuts, but then, I was there waiting in line before opening (at 8!) This time they moved all their RSD releases up to the second floor, in a spot with good traffic flow. Last year it had been unpleasant down on the ground floor, with nerds and jerks (eBay-reselling-parasites) jockeying for access to the wall where all the stuff was. Big improvement this time. They still had a lot of great exclusives too — I got the Genesis Spot the Pigeon EP there. Blue vinyl, Audio Fidelity: very nice.

The main thing I noticed about RSD this year is that there are more women. I’d say It was like 60-40 men to women. The breakdown in record stores used to be more like 95-5. More women have been nerding out in record stores over the past few years. But this was a big bump. This is good news for record stores, for music, for record store clerks and basically for everybody.

Colored vinyl is great, but translucent colored vinyl is greater.

Other Music is the king of RSD in New York City. They do it right. The atmosphere is festive, access to the store is fair and organized, the crowds are nice (RSD make-a-buck-opportunists seem to stay away), the music on the sound system is good, the staff is friendly, and they get cool RSD stuff. Cool free things too. Other Music has only been getting better over the years too. They can’t compete with online retailers (ahem Amazon) in price or selection — who can? But what a shop CAN do — and OM does it better than anybody — is to present a carefully curated selection of top music. I’ve noticed that more and more the ‘featured’ items on their shelves are not necessarily new. They’re just unusual — and GOOD.

The Deerhoof / Of Montreal track is pretty cool (translucent gold 7″ from Polyvinyl) — it’s actually the only thing from Of Montreal I’ve dug at all in a long time. They lost me after Aldhils Arboretum. I remain a big fan of The Gay Parade and Coquelicot. The B side is just Of Montreal – and KB is doing his best Neil Young / John Lennon there. Pastiche. The earlier records, while heavily indebted to 60s psych/pop, were not just pastiche. The voice was original — it was experimental not in terms of genre or production, but in terms of actual music. Changes, melody, arrangement. Everything I’ve heard in recent years sounds cynical and self-conscious. Maybe I’ve missed the good stuff. KB is obviously extraordinarily talented. Deerhoof are a great, great band.

Sub Pop’s new CD sampler Terminal Sales Vol. 5: Mixed Nuts is extremely impressive, again. Last year’s Vol. 4: Please To Enjoy was ridiculously lavishly packaged, and this one is no different. If you’re running a record label, or a record store, or if you’re a musician or a band, please freaking enjoy being those things. We’re into music, right? Not ball bearings? Right. Do cool things. Make your CD sampler absurdly deluxe, and give it away for FREE. Make this year’s even more awesome than last year’s. Because you’re a record label, and you CAN do it (amazingly). We’re not supposed to be creating product. We’re supposed to be blowing minds.

It’s nowhere near as fancy — nor was it free — but Finders Keepers put out a kick ass “mixtape” CD (it came on cassette too). It was $2. A cardboard sleeve — actually very similar in size and weight to the Workbench CD sleeves — houses what is, I think, a professionally duplicated CDR. And they put a tiny Finders Keepers button in the package too. But the main thing is — I’m listening to it now — the mix is great. And this normally would bug me, but there’s no info as to what’s on it — it’s one long track — no credits or anything. Not online either. Kind of refreshing to listen to something like this without any context. Smart. Kudos Finders Keepers.

Mastodon does “A Spoonful Weighs a Ton” proud. Though listening to the original I’m reminded what a great recording that is — and what a brilliant producer and mix engineer Dave Fridmann is. And “A Spoonful Weighs a Ton” remains awesome.

Vinyl pricing is, in most cases, too high. It’s primarily the majors that are guilty of it. Something’s wrong when an indie label can “afford” to put out a well-made vinyl package for $18 but the same quality product — for legacy acts in many cases — is upwards of $33 from a major. I really wanted to hear the previously unreleased version of live “Directions” (Miles Davis) — but I can’t spend $25 for the one tune on LP (I have the rest on CD). I mean, it’s a standard LP sleeve, not even gatefold or anything. I’m sure it’s nicely done (Columbia/Legacy) but it’s too much. I will, however, spend $9 on a purple 7″ but that’s for previously unreleased Shuggie Otis. Had I read the back of the sleeve, where it says that there’s a “deluxe, expanded, remastered edition” (yeesh) of Inspiration Information coming in May… I might have held off. Too bad this new edition hasn’t been mastered by Scott Hull, who delivered an incredible sounding version for Luaka Bop on CD. Bottom line is that Shuggie was operating on genius-level in 1971 and I have to hear everything from those sessions I can.

Cutting the majors some slack: the Mastodon / Flaming Lips pink 7″ (Warner Bros) was $7. NICE.

Photo: Andy Dolman

Like last week’s post. I was really definite about my facts. The first batch of demos — the primary purpose of which is to start a collaboration process with a producer — would consist of 8 tracks. I then mentioned that these tracks might be collected into an EP for release (at least I wasn’t so sure about that!) . But within a few days I decided I probably wouldn’t want to re-release “The Devil Is a Sad Spirit” and “Dunebuggy” with the rest of the tracks — after all, these recordings have been released already. So that’s one change.

And then I decided to drop “King Laugh” (aka “Hermes”) from this first group. I haven’t exactly thrown it on the scrap heap, but that’s probably what I should do. For now, it goes into the “Not Using” folder.

This track has been such a pain in the ass — from the start. I’ve written about all that before, so I won’t go into it again. What happened this week was that I finished recording “Soft Power” — I’m very happy with it, thankfully — and then chose “King Laugh” to work on next, because it was “almost done.” But nothing was falling right. I had already re-recorded — at different times — the drums, and then the bass, and this week I thought that maybe I just needed to re-record about half of the guitars. But nothing I did — none of those re-recordings — really addressed the main problem, which is simply that the writing is disjointed. The intro I like, and I very much like the solo section. But that’s not enough.

It’s funny that it has taken me so long to get to this point with this track.

This is the part of “blogging about the process” that is the most difficult. Creative work is messy and nonlinear. Reworking is built in. But writing a blog post is a pretty controlled thing — it’s when you have more than one post the story gets out of hand. I thought about revising last week’s post — and have done it, with other posts — but I decided that it’s truer to my intention to document the process to leave it as-is.

In my case, this means recordings. I could write lead sheets for each (well, most) of these pieces that would provide some information, but not the important information.

Recording, of course, takes time. I’ve sketched out 17 tracks in Pro Tools, but most of those sketches have 1 or 2 guitars only. I need drums and bass and finished guitars to get the full idea across. To fully flesh out 17 tracks would take months, so I’m not going to do that. I’m trying to finish 6. I’ve tried to choose tracks that represent the scope of the whole project.

So Union Square will stand in for Gentleman, Josie, Grand Street and Badger.

Soft Power, Corporeal Agents and Dunebuggy will stand in for We Barely Stop, All Harmonize, and Celestial.

King Laugh will stand in for Target Practice and Eris.

Blues In C (still need a name for that one), Urhixidur and The Devil Is a Sad Spirit (all to be included in the initial demos) are pretty much their own things.

Like that. So, in the past couple weeks King Laugh (which was called Hermes) got new drums and bass. Acoustic guitars, percussion and some electric guitars remain from the first sketch, and a couple new electric guitars need to be added. Union Square got drums and bass and needs guitars. Dunebuggy and The Devil is a Sad Spirit are done. Corporeal Agents and Urhixidur need to be mixed. Blues in C needs some guitar work — I’d like to redo some other things too, but will try to refrain since I have so much work left on the others. Soft Power got drums, bass, percussion and some guitars. It needs a couple more guitars, then mix.

So — there will be 8 pieces in this first batch of “finished” demos — 6 of which have not been released before. I hope to finish the recording within 2 weeks, and then crank out the mixes in a weekend.

I’m happy with how most of this stuff is shaping up. When I was writing these pieces I was excited about each of them. Then when they were sketched out using 1 or 2 guitars they seemed less special — like they had less personality. A lot of the excitement in writing was due to how I was imagining the tracks — the sound, orchestration, interaction, energy — most of that is lost in a simple sketch. So I’m glad (relieved too, maybe) to see some of that excitement returning, now not just in my head, but actually recorded and coming out of the speakers. This has been a tough process and I’m glad there’s already been some payoff.

Once I get these finished I want to post them so you can hear the project take shape instead of just reading about it. Initially I was going to post a track here and there on Soundcloud, but I had the idea this week that maybe I’d put this first batch of demos together as a digital EP. I think that would be a more potent way to generate interest in this project. After all, if it’s crowd-funded, as I believe it’s going to have to be, I need interested listeners. How could anyone know that they’d be interested if they can’t hear what the music is like?

I’ve often thought there may be one common denominator for all great music, and that is its capacity to bring a smile to your lips. It’s not the subject matter. And it doesn’t really have much to do with mood. It’s the commitment to the moment. It’s what Sam Phillips called throwing yourself into the music with abandon. It’s the one quality that unites Thelonious Monk and Jerry Lee Lewis, the Master Musicians of Joujouka and Howlin’ Wolf. The sheer delight that they take in making music. The gratification that they suggest awaits us all, if we will only give ourselves over to what is going on around us, right now.

–Peter Guralnick in an article on Howlin’ Wolf in Oxford American Issue 75

I love Howlin’ Wolf, I love that Oxford American cover, and I love this insight by Peter Guralnick too. I think he’s very close to a truth about art that’s not usually pinned down with such accuracy. As a listener and practitioner I’ve understood commitment to the moment for a long time. As a writer I would never have gotten so close to expressing it.

When guitarist Lucio Menegon contacted me about playing this gig I thought about what I might present. My new music is not ready (and there’s no band to play it yet!), so that wouldn’t happen. And after doing a handful of solo gigs over the past years I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t particularly love doing solo gigs. Nor are my chops in top “solo gig” condition, what with all the time I’ve spent composing, recording and playing bass and drums (and not guitar).

I thought of my friend the guitarist E Ryan Goodman. We’ve talked music a lot over the years and played together a few times; I posted two of his pieces on Workbench; and he’s released two CDs of his own solo music. It occurred to me pretty quickly that this gig would be a great reason to get together and play.

Ryan and I discussed what we wanted to present and got together for rehearsals this month. I really like what we’ve developed in such a short time. We’ve recorded the rehearsals and may release some of the music online eventually.

I’ll be playing my Kenny Hill classical guitar and Ryan will be playing a steel-string Gibson.

Our set is at 9. The other acts on the bill are Rob Cambre (guitar) / Lucio Menegon (guitar) / Marco Buccelli (drums) at 10; Brett Zweiman (guitar & processing) at 11; and The Passover Trio at 12.

Full details on the Facebook Event page for Avant Guitar Night.

Last time I mentioned that I bought more memory for my laptop, because it was crashing a lot. Innocent days. Tuesday morning I got up and the computer display wouldn’t come on > cut to > Apple Genius Bar appointment where I find the logic board has bit it > cut to > phone call to the wife and hand wringing decision > cut to > new laptop and over $3k to pay off in 1 year.

So. I won’t have to worry about crashes anymore. That’s cool. But the plan had been to use some of our money this year to finance this new album project. This unexpected expense makes that… challenging.

I’ve been working with the good people at Pledge Music in my role at Masterdisk — they help artists get funding for projects. I may explore whether that might work for me too. I don’t have loads of prior album sales or a large mailing list, or lots of traffic to my sites. But considering how many times my albums have been downloaded, there may be interested people out there who would engage. I may also be able to reach out to some of the Billy Nayer Show fans who appreciated the albums I did with them — this new project is much closer to that sound than my first three albums were. And I have a pretty great network of people working creatively in music that could make the recording and post-production process run smoothly.

Thinking out loud there — that’s been the main music-related consideration of the past few days.

Musically, things are moving along. Last time I said that writing for the album was nearly done. Well, now it is done, totally and completely. I’ve got 17 songs, 15 of which are brand new.

The recordings that exist so far are — in most cases — bare sketches. Solo guitar, or a few guitars to outline important features. I want to fill out some of the sketches now, so that I can “explain” the tunes to other people — and in some cases, re-sell them to myself. But I need to remain mindful that I don’t need to make masterpieces here — I just need to get “enough” done. I don’t want to get bogged down in a lengthy demoing process.

The first decision has been how to get some basic drum tracks down. I tried using samples and a sequencer in Pro Tools the other day. I could see that with a little practice and a midi controller I could probably get fast at it. But I don’t love that work process. Next day, inspired by some bucket players in the subway, I set up the primitive rig you see above, and had a go at the same tune. The sound is way lo-fi — the “kick drum” doesn’t have much weight — but you get the idea of the drum part well enough. And it’s more fun to do.

Matt Stevens

SO glad I’m nearly done with the writing part of this album. The previous two tracks came fairly easy but this one was a grind. Because the past few tracks have been different from the earlier ones — multi-part pieces, with distant (in my mind at least) ideas coming together in unexpected ways — I was planning to write until I hit a wall. Done!

This week I bought more memory for my laptop. It was having a hard time with ProTools 9, which is what I’ve been using to record these sketches. Lots of crashes. That seems to have been ironed out now, so I’m ready to jump into recording mode, and get these sketches fleshed out.

Good timing to be getting into recording mode for another reason. I’ve been producing recordings for Philip Lynch for a very long time. I shudder to think of the file dates on some of these tunes — like back to 2006. Philip has been very patient indeed. We’re in striking distance of completion of his album finally, which is looking like it will be a 15 song, 40 minute affair. Nearly everything is recorded — we just need to add the final missing parts. And then we may hire out someone to mix the final 5 or so tracks.

As I move along in the process of making this album, I’m beginning to take a more detailed longer view. And asking questions, like “Will this be a CD and an EP? Who’s going to record it? Play on it? Mix it? Design the packaging? Print it? Promote it?” And perhaps foremost, “How the hell am I going to pay for it?”

Luckily, others have managed all this successfully before me. I’ve been relying on the experience of UK guitarist Matt Stevens in particular, who has done a tremendous job of getting his music heard on a total DIY level. Matt’s blog posts for Live Unsigned are a great source of practical advice.

I’ve also been very much enjoying Matt’s recent music — solo (check out Relic) and with his band The Fierce and the Dead.

It’s a tricky thing to create instrumental rock music that doesn’t just substitute a lead instrument for the role of the singer while sticking to typical ABAB forms. Or at least it’s tricky to escape those tropes and still provide emotional engagement. I think Matt’s been successful at this in both these projects.

At Mexicali Live w/ the CS Gray Band. Photo by Vernon Webb.

This time, I set myself a schedule to write six songs over the course of January: one every five days. I came up with the first two songs in ten days, but I ground to a halt shortly after.

My friend Chris Gray asked me to fill in for his band’s bass player for a gig on January 28. It was a hell of a lot of fun — the rehearsals and the show. Aside from one duo gig in 2006, I hadn’t played with a group of any kind in 8 years(!) and I really missed it.

I suspect that it was some combination of setting the January writing schedule and playing with the group (and who knows what else) that shifted my album goals. I recognized that I needed to define the scope of the music more.

As I mentioned elsewhere, I had a lot of influences fueling this project. Here’s a quick recap of my main preoccupations: Jeff Beck’s mid-70s fusion records; Jimmy Page solo stuff; Led Zeppelin; John Scofield with MMW; The Meters; Booker T and the M.G.s. There’s a lot of difference in that music, but the list splits pretty cleanly into two categories: amp-loud and drummer-loud.

Drummer-loud, to me, is the volume level of a band that uses the drummer’s level to calibrate the rest. Amp-loud is the norm in rock: the guitars run the show and the drummer has to be miked to be heard. In performance without a PA, the amp-loud drummer has to hit harder to be heard: the kick drum gets lost and the cymbals become white noise. The amp-loud band is at home on the bigger stage, with a good PA. Then nuance returns to the drummer and the rest of the band.

Beyond mere volume, though, I think the music you write is going to be different for an amp-loud band vs a drummer-loud band. I’m not sure exactly where the difference lies, but I can feel it in there.

Amp-loud playing has its charms (believe me — I’m a guitar player) but my own project needs to be drummer-loud. And I think some of my recent songs were written with an amp-loud band in mind. (See the last post about writing for a phantom band: The Band That Did Not Exist.)

Another dividing line that got clearer in January involves the rock shuffle. I’ll try to get into that next time.

Oh, and here’s the split: amp-loud: Zeppelin, Beck, Page; drummer-loud: The Meters, Booker T. and the M.G.s, Scofield w/ MMW. One caveat: you can, of course, make any drummer-loud band amp-loud in different settings; basically, introducing a PA can do it very easily.

CS Gray Band - photo by Vernon Webb