Sugar on the Sheets

These toes are hungry
like new baby birds
uncurled to feed from
my mothering lips
These ankles scatter
from teeth like a herd
they need the friction
of coarse fingertips and

I nurse these nervous legs, take pride in my work
these thighs are twisting their escape from your slip
I speak in tongues because I don't have the words
I breathe religion on your shivery hips

I will decide
You will decide
when you come in
when I come in
my trembling tide
my second skin
I will decide
You will decide
the fall and the rise
of this wondrous sin, yeah

Your eyes are fastened on me, Captain-like, and cruel
my belly/eclipses them in waves of slow air

I try to hold you safe, like Lu in a pool
locking my fingers in your octopus hair
but you won't be stalled
and you won't be fixed
you're trolling your thumbs
up past your ribs
standing me up
scolding their tack
teasing along the sheer of my back
and you're tossing me fore
turning you aft
a tongue to an ear
a port to a raft
a tempestuous pitch
a pummeling pride
the surge of your stitch
your mastering guide

You will decide
I will decide
when I come in
when you come in
my unsettled skin
my second tide
You will decide
I will decide
the fall and the rise
of this wondrous sin

obey the metronome of this breath
and the meter of these teeth
taste the salt in the sweat
and the sugar on
the sheets are keeping time with this breath
and the meter of these teeth
taste the salt in the sweat
and the tempo that we keep the metronome...

Bugguts

Right now I wish I was a cockroach
so when they finally get in
they wouldn't see me on the ground
you know, they always stare up and to the right,
but never look down

I would just scurry scuttle by the wall,
around their lazy feet and out the door
and have the planet to myself again -
find my inner peace with exoskeleton

I feel so little on the inside
but my skin is persistently life-size.
I think my body wants to get us caught
to match the outer with the inner rot

It wants to stand forever in this non-life,
always looking up and to the right
at this landscape consisting only of swallowed flesh,
unswallowed flesh, and happy bugs

I have one flare left in the gun,
I’ve got the wooden stool I'm sitting on,
I have a ratty blanket and a bottle of whiskey
and the only reason I'm still breathing's
so intent on leaving me
she walked into the Undead Sea all alone

When she left I stood a monolith:
slow breaths - the oxygen economist,
but from my toes there sprang a mutiny
recruiting every organ as it rose in me
rising 'til the very last cell is caught
from my Southest gut to my Northest thoughts

This fit is tidal like the climax only her hands can give me
and I can't stop it.
I'm just air in the lung of a volcano -
the pulse clear, the heart myopic

Twenty years of ego regurgitating
with pride as a fist around my throat
puffs me out like the fish she loves,
rattling my frame as I'm praying out her name,

“Jenny, I want to love this low
'cause it shows me how high your high is
but when you force me to see
the whole amplitude of love like this

I know it's too much for my tiny heart
I wanna live to lick your skin again,
but I can't taste that far

Jenny, I want to love this low
'cause it shows me how high your high is
but when you force me to see
the whole amplitude of love like this
you've seen all the bug guts I can show.
This frequency of fits has cracked my walls
so will I walk or will I crawl...
and lick the bottom of it all?”

Warpaint

The first time we met outside of work,
this can't be a date
I dared you to get fat with me
these kinds of things have no name
When it was clear that we weren't gaining weight
just hints of what could be
we moved on to another game

Watch
there's no difference if I win or lose
each piece
I watch your face betraying every move
while I
it’s so impossible to concentrate....
catch your queen
when every game ends with the stalest mate

We built our love on a black and white chessboard
and for six whole months stirred cocoa
with tongue swords
If you build your love on a black and white chessboard
then there’s a very good chance
that you’ll always be at war

So from all these games on all these dates
a Castleton extrapolates
a tempo set - the speed of chess,
and secrecy in every thing that we do

And if it leads to war or falls to peace
I don't think we should cut retreat
This Sunday game of sparring hearts
is waking up my sleeping parts

If you build your love on a black and white chessboard
then there's a very good chance that you'll always be at war
Yes we built our love on a black and white chessboard
as we stirred hot cocoa with six-month-long tongue swords

Then one day I came to see him painting the walls
when we ran out of things to say
we grappled our way down the hall
covered in war paint

Our lips crushed like armies
under the rule of two love-consumed enemies
Our clothes fell like thrones
to the coup of our shaking hands,
the game was thrown when we moved out of battle stance.
We fell to the floor in the throes of our war dance

Unparallel Rabbits

I guess it couldn't last -
this burrow that we keep,
this haven from the feast

We hear them in the day
we see them in our sleep
you said you wanna leave

You want to see the world
and figure out what's left
I know what I saw I want to rest
We got breakfast cereals galore
but you say the milk's gone bad
I'm thinking, "Is that a metaphor?"

You say what at first felt safe,
now feels trapped
and making love in this place
is just a tribute to the past
but I have no complaints -
I block out the screaming
with the sound system found in the back

I say the problem isn't us
it's a world insisting on itself
but you insist there's no health
to be found just eating off the shelf

You put your hand on my heart
and push me back a little
like you want to be apart
or maybe want to make it start up again
Baby, I know that I'm starting to act just like them...
numb,
spent

I feel verbally inept
I can't say the reassuring things that you need me to say
so I just say, "It's killing us to fight this way,"
and you reply,
"What killed us was a succession of ordinary days"
And I resent the past tense
I wanted to defend the thing
but now we're hearing shots from the roof
and here this clean army boy drops through the vent,
calling you by name!
If this is rescue, then why'd you look ashamed?

There is no greater pain than the misaligned break -
the varied healing tempos of the giver and the take
and here I'd suffered at the thought of her on her own
but all the while myLove had been servicing the telephone

There is no greater pain than the misaligned break -
the varied healing tempos of the giver and the take
when you can't syncopate your process
with the one who leaves,
you focus less on your direction
and more on your speed

I see blood and gore
and love turned war
You want to see for yourself?
Baby, what for? What for?

He hands me a flare gun
I promise to join them soon...

There's shooting on the roof,
a chopper taking off,
the pungent smell of rot
I look up in time to catch one fall into the shop -
she didn't close the hatch!

Gnashing in a pile then rising to its feet,
I fire into its teeth

This one is just a scout!
In a few short breaths the ceiling's raining mouths

Coffeelocks

She walked into the shop
and the windows broke,
the coffee crashing down
as this angel spoke.

I might've survived if it weren't for her eyes
that were eating mine up
she wanted a job so I brought her the forms
with my eyes held shut.

Was this love?
I wondered cause I'd never been
so absolutely jello-ed by a girl.

Was this love?
What other reason could there be
when such a little thing could break a world?

Was this love?
I knew that if she didn't get this job
then I would never know

Was this love?
so I told the boss that I would train her thoroughly from head to toe.


On that day
in my heart
a castle rose
a mansion fell apart

Love with us was such a waking up
warm and foggy as a coffee mug
a burning thing
full of steam
learning us
savoring

I walked into the shop
expecting nothing but no's
rubbed my bleary eyes
last night still on my clothes

Then I stopped in the door ‘cause I'd seen him before
my tongue suddenly thick
but I needed a job so he brought me the forms
like a conjuring trick.

Was this love?
This deja vu was turned into a pinball
ringing in my tilted head.

Was this love?
I couldn't understand how he had jumped offstage and landed here instead,

Was this love?
so I case the place for inspiration on the walls
and then my coffee cup

Was this love?
as I tried to think of clever things to say
to make him look back up.

On that day
in my head
movies played
of things he said,
constantly rewinding,
nothing there to remind me
that I don't believe in love


Love with us was such a waking up
warm and foggy as a coffee mug
strong at first
best served fresh
beautiful
at it's worst
Yeah

Final Days in the Studio (video)

Here is footage from the final days of production with Home. It features Rob Pemberton and Brian Cass (of production team-for-hire Overclock Inc.) staying up all night with me for a full week to finish the album.



You can watch all the studio videos on this playlist:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=3BB6B7C29735D392


And here is the first segment of a three part show by NY celeb Brian Cass (founding member of The Overclock Orchestra), the same genius who remixed Gruvis Malt on Halloween and brought peace and clarity to the production of Home:

Track 12: Oregon...

I've posted track 12 from the album, "Oregon..." on myspace and purevolume.

Here is the description:
"Locked in a backroom of the abandoned grocery store, erupting with violent fits. Unable to sanitize the wound in my thigh with the bottle of whiskey, and convinced that I've been infected, I opt to take my own life. I tie the ratty blanket to the rafters and jump off the stool. Moments later, they break through the door and make Castleburgers."

Shell

Shell

A pinched little voice in my ear said "walk"
I was at the downtown Kennedy stop
No one was around me when my temperature dropped
and all the sudden I was covered with these black polkadots, they sang,

"Hello, hello, hello, hello he---"

I said, "Fine.
Nice to meet you glad to know I'm losing my mind
you can tinker with my inner and my outer design
but promise me I'll make it to the airport on time."

'Cause I was just looking for anything other than where I've been
'cause I was just looking for anything other than Providence
Maybe there's somewhere to settle in better than someone else
I'm hoping to hop on a plane and be safe to just be myself

I covered my arms, jammed my hands in my coat,
there were dots on my shoulders, and dots on my throat
- "hey" -
I tried to look chill, climb the steps of the bus
but climbing up my cheeks was the red royal flush

I was just looking for anything other than where I've been
'cause I was just looking for anything other than Providence
Maybe there's somewhere to settle in better than someone else
I'm hoping to hop on a plane and be safe to just be myself

Everyone stared when they saw what I had become
[crusting like a pie...]
I couldn't fit in the seat with my elytrum
[...my hide and two antennas...]
They were so scared they ejected me onto the street
[...sprout forth from my human goo and...]
I would've crunched if it weren't for additional feet
[...make me brave and thick enough to shift my fulcrum...]

[tra-]
meta
[-jec-]
morphing
[-tor-]
long en-
[-y]
-during
[turned]
shell / [shell]

Open Letter to the Pirate

I have been advised not to talk about this, and I didn't intend to, because I know that doing so will probably worsen the problem. But I have a bad habit of speaking my mind, so here it is:

A few days ago, I woke up to emails from several people alerting me that my album has been leaked, about a month and half before the release date. My heart sank. There's been a grayish tint over every day since. I can be pretty objective, so I scolded myself, "GavCaz, you LOVE leaked albums. You download stuff the minute it gets dropped. For you to be upset about this is very hypocritical." And I thought about that and I found it to be mostly true: I'm a loud proponent of downloading. If I were to be brutally honest, I think music was never meant to be paid for and will one day be free again - as soon as artists have diversified their skills enough to feed themselves through other channels. I'm not concerned about this hurting me financially. So why do I feel sick? Why am I not flattered that someone actually thinks my album is worth leaking? And if my opinion is that downloading HELPS artists instead of hurts them (which it generally is), why am I concerned?

As an artist, my biggest strength (and often times my biggest weakness) is how much thought I put into my music---ironically I find myself thinking a lot about how to make music that sounds less thinky. Every detail of every piece of my work is important to me - every instrument has to work towards the common goal of telling the message of the song, which must be entirely supporting the message of the album: my hi-hat patterns are metaphors, my triangle parts are characters or dramatic devices, etc. Because this album is about (emotional) process, I am extending that signature overthought to the entire process; from my writing over the last 2 years (in this very blog) to the studio videos and the photo shoots, to the album art, and eventually to the films and the websites. And of course the music itself. This project and the message of it will span ALL of my work to date. And for that reason, the girth of it all, it was very important to me that it be paced properly. I don't want you to hear the entire album first. I want to set the scene for the album creation first (through this writing). And then I want you to see the music in micro-pieces (via the videos), so that you can't hear the whole song, but that the music is the marriage of millions of little strange things. Because heartbreak often leads to obsession over idiosyncrasies. And this music is borne from heartbreak. And there are 33 other reasons why I want this to go how I'd planned, but ultimately what I'm saying is, "this project was not tossed together." Even the release date, Friday the 13th of February, is EXTREMELY significant to me.

This is not radio music. I want you to digest it slower and understand each piece of it, if you're willing, because that's the best way for me to connote what a healthy emotional healing process is like: it is a series of tiny revelations. I want you to hear one song a week for a while, so that you can just mull over that song and discover what it is before listening to how it fits into the bigger puzzle. I could digress, but verbalizing this sounds obnoxious to me, so I'll just say: this is not a normal record. Its biggest enemy will be the short attention span. The reason I think my upset is justified even when I'm guilty of downloading other leaks is because, unlike most records, this album has everything to do with the media leading to and from it and is strengthened and given impact and longevity from the lengthy process of its own release. And now someone who has never met me, and never considered the ramifications of what they think is an "album liberation," and, above all has no respect for my process, has decided to throw a bucket of black paint across my colorful canvas, forcing me to ask you to ignore it. Thanks, guy (or girl).

I have never waited to release an album in my life. It has been excruciating to make what is my best work to date and not release it for six months. The only solace was knowing that those who trust and invest in me as an artist would get something that will effect them deeper and longer than anything I've ever done. Because that's what my breakup did to me, and that's what I think art is made for.

I could also write a book explaining that this is the first of my solo albums that has a paid promotional team behind it and when you are an unknown artist of my stature playing music that doesn't bear a resemblance to TV On The Radio, the only chance you have of getting any mainstream exposure in this country is to create a critical mass of buzz from what little fan base and promotional tools you have. The idea is to centralize listeners around your release date in hopes that enough people will be talking about the record at once to grab the attention of the press and radio industry that does not usually scout (let alone tout) artists in my tax bracket. By releasing my album early, this person has fogged up the lens that Five One Inc., the only label willing to put its money behind my music, has been struggling to focus day and night for the past six months. This pirate is greatly hurting the label's (again, the ONLY label willing to help me do what I do) chances of garnering publicity for the most important record of my life.

To those that have downloaded the record: I'm glad you enjoy it. I hope you'll contribute to my work in some way so that I can someday afford health insurance. Please reserve any comments until after my release date so I can just stop thinking about this.
To those that are going to leave this page and do a torrent search for it: who raised you?
To those that don't know what a torrent is, forget I said anything.

Polkadotpropaganda

In a concerted effort to promote my Halloween single + remix to a wider audience, I offered each of my nieces $10 and a highly-sought-after burrito recipe to troll their prospective neighborhoods in ladybug form on Halloween night. Two took the bait (the other 14 refused, citing creative differences). We hope to see a sizable bump in the 0-4 year old demographic with this record, and I have these two darlings to thank for that.

One Life Goal Down

Last week in LA, with the help of two very talented people and some money from Five One Inc., I checked off one of my life goals: to get made up like a zombie and let loose in Beverly Hills.
Early Sunday morning, Sony Pictures CGI/Lighting Expert-gone-photographer Ryan Rogers and I drove two hours west of LA to what I believe was an abandoned winery in Los Padres National Park, Santa Barbara. We left at 5am in order to catch the morning light. I opted to just stay up all night (both so my face would be realistically exhausted, and because there was a MacGyver marathon on). My pants were still wet from walking into a hot tub the night before, and the morning was unusually brisk, so while Ryan set up his twin AB800's I used some of the techniques shown to me by Richard Dean Anderson to defrost my pants. We began shooting by 7:30, in and around this gloriously haunted shack/barn and stopped around noon. I was not nearly as good at acting scared as I thought I'd be, but was quite pleased with the results. We were depicting track eight from Home. Ryan took many many pictures.



The following day, back in LA, Japanese man Kenji and I met Lauren (the female lead vocalist from Home) at Ryan's apartment at 10 am. Always going above and beyond the call of duty, Ryan had rented a Uhaul, and acquired ten bails of hay from Craigslist in order to fashion his storage unit into what looked like the interior of a barn.
Universal Studios SFX artist Erin Dellamore arrived and quickly made Lauren and I look like Jennifer Connelly and George Clooney respectively. For several hours we depicted track seven from the album, and Ryan shot a million photos. Lauren was frustrated with my lack of seriousness in depicting a pivotal argument, so she threw hay at me. I sniffed a lot of that same hay in order to catalyze my allergies (so I'd look sniffly). We picked the hardest scene to start with, but we couldn't start with the zombie stuff, because then we'd have to undirty me somehow.



After a late lunch we moved to a garage in Beverly Hills where Ryan had arranged a Janitor's closet scene. Erin immediately went to town on my thigh, applying latex globs and other goodies to build me a grubby gash. After that, she worked on my veins, forehead, fingernails, and eye sockets. She put slime in my hair. She flicked blood all over me, and covered me with a weird dirt that she fingered out of a bottle. Lauren tore holes in my favorite pants and shirt, both because we were depicting the aftermath of a zombie attack and because she suddenly found me intensely attractive. The Japanese man filmed much of this. All of this happened just off the side walk where mothers, babies, and young children passed without so much as a blink. People in LA cannot be shocked by anything (only morality).







While Ryan positioned me every which way in a corner, a bottle of whiskey in one hand, a glue bottle (which would digitally be replaced by a flare gun) in the other, Erin transformed the arms of Lauren and Kenji into those of the undead (we would need a nice variety of reaching arms to digitally place in the barn scene). The Japanese man was far too excited about his zombie arm, and so quickly abandoned his filming duties to pretend he was being chased by his eroding arm up and down the street. We closed the day with some goofy shots in front of a nice Beverly Hills home, Lauren playing the trophy wife, and I her rotting husband.

A couplet from each song on Home

Bugguts:
"I feel so little on the inside but
my skin is persistently life-size."
Coffeelocks:
"Love with us was such a waking up
warm and foggy as a coffee mug"
War Paint:
"our lips crushed like armies
under the rule of two love-consumed enemies"
Sugar on the Sheets:
"these toes are hungry like new baby birds
uncurled to feed from my mothering lips"
Stampete:
"the living braid of two hearts in the shade of youth
why would you ever untether this parachute?"
The Wall Starts To Give:
"I know you don't believe in God
but I do, and he's not here with us"
Layers:
"but you are just a blank, frozen in your seat
eyes of a lemur, ghostly as teeth"
Unparallel Rabbits:
"there is no greater pain than the misaligned break
the varied healing tempos of the giver and the take"
Red + Blue = Yella:
"I see blue for a second just before the second wave falls through
and it's the only sky I've seen since we made the barricade of dog food"
Oregon...:
"I taste sulfur smoking upwards
whirling towards my loose teeth"
Beetlemeet:
"What about your Lu?
What's a son to do?"
The Human Torch:
"it's a tree house some where, we're a jungle affair
with a porcupine fence and we're so present tense"
Credits:
"you lied about the way this went
you're stepping in your wet cement"

Car Phone vs. Moog

Here's some footage of some synth tracking from Home.

The Michael Stipe of Funk Rap

Here's the first of several video from the Home vocal sessions.

Guitar Tones for Home

All of the guitar parts, minus the acoustic, were tracked with a Strat, played through one of three amps: a Mesa Mark IV, a Fender Deluxe, or an Ampeg 1965 Reverbarocket (with a Mojo tone speaker). We used SM57's, a Royer ribbon mic, and an SM81 for a room mic (that went largely unused in the mixing process). To aid with continuity, we developed 11 different tones, assigned each part to one of those tones, and then recorded all the parts with a prospective tone before moving on to the next. The process is described in more detail here.

50's VERB:
Track 2 (whole thing)
Track 14
Track 15

PORTISHEAD/TORTOISE VIBRATO VERB:
Track 4
Track 11
Track 15

REGGAE VERB W/ SPLIT LINE 6 DELAY(Ampeg left subtle delay, Deluxe right main delay):
Track 11
Track 14

TWINKLY CLEAN W/ LINE 6 DELAY:
Track 3 (beginning and end arpeggios)
Track 14

ELECTRIC WHALES:
Track 10
Track 14

HOTEL CALIFORNIA ACOUSTIC:
Track 3 (end - both rhythm and arpeggios)
Track 7

CHICKEN FUNK:
Track 1
Track 4
Track 5
Track 9 (whole thing)

INDIE/MAJOR LABEL ROCK (distorted):
Track 2
Track 3
Track 10

COCKY LEAD:
Track 6
Track 10

PHIL SPEKTOR DISTORTED:
Track 7
Track 12

RATATAT/QUEEN LEAD:
Track 5
Track 6
Track 11

Drum Tunings for Home

Each song on Home has it's own drum tunings and setup fit to the chord progressions and mood of each respective song. Various drum choices (especially snare drums) were repeated in songs with similar themes or genres to help with continuity.

TRACK 1 - GMAJ, D MAJ, G DIM
KICK: Pacifica 22" tuned to D (no front head)
TOM 1: Pacifica 10" tuned to E
TOM 2: Pacifica 12" tuned to B
FLOOR TOM 3: Gretch 16" tuned to D
SNARE: Pearl 14" tuned to D

TRACK 2 - D MAJ, Bb MINOR
KICK: Ludwig 20" tuned to E (front head, no hole)
TOM 1: Ludwig 12" tuned to A
FLOOR TOM: Ludwig 14" tuned to E
SNARE: Red DW 13" tuned to E

TRACK 3 - F MAJ, G MIN
KICK: Pacifica 22" (with front head)
TOM 1: Pacifica 10" tuned to E
TOM 2: Pacifica 12" tuned to A
FLOOR TOM: Gretch 16" tuned to E
SNARE: Mapex 14" tuned to E

TRACK 4 - DMIN 9
KICK: Pacifica 22" (with front head)
TOM 1: Pacifica 10" tuned to D
TOM 2: Pacifica 12" tuned to A
FLOOR TOM: Gretch 16" tuned to E
SNARE: Mapex 14" tuned to E

TRACK 5 - G9
KICK: Pacifica 22" (with front head)
TOM 1: Pacifica 10" tuned to F
FLOOR TOM: Pacifica 16" tuned to C
SNARE: DW 13" tuned to F

TRACK 6, 12 - C MIN6
KICK : Pacifica 22" (with no front head)
TOM 1: Pacifica 10" tuned to E
TOM 2: Pacifica 12" tuned to B
FLOOR TOM: Gretch 16" tuned to D
SNARE: Pearl 14" tuned to D

TRACK 7 - E MAJ
KICK: Pacifica 22" (with front head)
TOM 1: Pacifica 10E tuned to E
FLOOR TOM: Gretch 16" tuned to E
SNARE: DW 13" tuned to F

TRACK 9 - G MIN
KICK: Pacifica 22" (with no front head)
TOM 1: Pacifica 10" tuned to Bb
TOM 2: Picifica 12" tuned to G
FLOOR TOM: Gretch 16" tuned to D
SNARE: Mapex 14" tuned to E

TRACK 10 - Db MIN 9
KICK: Pacifica 22" (with no front head)
TOM 1: Pacifica 10" tuned to E
TOM 2: Pacifica 12" tuned to B
FLOOR TOM: Gretch 16" tuned to E
SNARE: Pearl 14" tuned to D

TRACK 11, 14 - BMIN, FMIN
KICK: Pacifica 22" (with no front head)
TOM 1: Pacifica 10" tuned to C
TOM 2: Pacifica 12" tuned to A
FLOOR TOM 2: Gretch 16" tuned to D
SNARE: Red DW 13" tuned to D

Finished

I've finished my album. There are 14 songs.
Aside from the 20 or so months of writing/demo-ing that went unlogged, this is a rough approximation of how my time breaks down for this project:
30 hours of tracking Hammond, bass and drums
35 hours of tracking flute, French horn, percussion, African percussion, strings, saxophones
30 hours of tracking guitar
20 hours tracking grand piano
140 hours editing (in 10 days) in Albany, OR
85.5 hours tracking, editing and mixing male vocal
62 hours editing in Fairhaven, MA
12 hours editing in Providence, RI
41.5 hours recording, editing, and mixing female vocal
3 hours additional synth tracking
51 hours mixing*
14 hours mastering
APPROX. TOTAL PRODUCTION HOURS: 524 (or 21.8 entire days)

There is, of course, no compensation for those hours. It is understood that I am donating that time to something I feel strongly about. And I'm not telling you this because I'm bitter about it, or to testify how ridiculously exploitative the music industry is... I'm telling you because a) I'm shocked at how much work it was, b) I want it to be clear how much of a labor of love it is for me and c) I want to have this published somewhere so I can return to it should I ever get the silly idea to try something like this again.

Anyways, we're done. I couldn't have done it without the generosity of Rob Pemberton and Brian Cass, who both matched (and often surpassed) my enthusiasm and precision with their own, and for that I am eternally grateful. We became close friends during the process and I like having those.

I'm ready to go home. hohoho


*Many of the sessions in Fairhaven consisted of my own editing/tracking/mixing in an upstairs room, Rob mixing the entire day downstairs, and Brian Cass synthesizing, sampling, and sequencing in another room. The hours listed above are only the hours I spent. Of course the album wouldn't be complete if it weren't for the time and effort of so many musicians and other engineers/technicians.

Sleeeeep

It is 3:30am, I'm at Christian St. Cattacombs, where I've been working and sometimes sleeping for weeks. I'm averaging 13 hours a day recording, editing, and mixing with the incredibly able Rob Pemberton, and the President of Synthesis Brian Cass. We've got 8 tracks or so mixed... several to go, but what we have so far has brought me to tears more than a few times already (serious). This week we had a special guest fly in from LA to record the female lead on the album. I have lots of footage of these sessions, as well as some mixing footage and even whiffle ball, all of which I will make available when I find a breath. There is a palpable creative electricity in this place that seems incredibly healthy. I'm so lucky to be in this environment, it is only due to Rob's charitable soul that I'm not sleeping in the park. There is so much to do.

Micropoem: The 40th Hour Mixing Track 2 of Home

more calm than a club before it opens
more focused than a birthing canal
more precise than Egyptian stone

What's the Haps

I was stressed these last few days...
because the money is gone.
because my son is on the other side of the country.
because I have no car on this coast.
because I have no home or food on this coast.
because I'm behind schedule with this album.
because my cel phone expired.

But like a pollen storm it hit me square in the nose this morning:
I'm sleeping in a mixing studio,
and I'm waking up to the massive sounds that I've amassed these last two years
holding hands with each other and bobbing in time to my tempo,
exactly where I commanded them to bob. I'm hearing each instrument find it's home in the heavily populated neighborhood of each song that was once born in my head.
I'm thirty years old and I'm doing exactly the thing that makes me happiest in life.
At the end of each day I fall into bed (or couch, as the case seems to be) exhausted but full, as if every last cell was put to work.

How many people can say that?