Coffee House Musician

I’m cheating and writing this Friday night.  I’m trying to record my third CD, or rather, trying to get some very basic work done on it, and it’s borderline impossible.  The kids are fighting, I had to yell at one of them, and poof!  There goes my mood.  Makes me totally not want to work on being creative with music.  There are some things you have to be in the mood for, and at least for me, music is one of them.

But try explaining it to people.  If you’re not a songwriter, you won’t understand.  Not really.  Don’t nag me about housework when I’m about to do some arranging or recording.  Don’t bring up that bill that needs to be paid or that party that we need to plan.  Don’t fight with your brother (or sister) in the next room.

This is the REAL reason people go to recording studios to record - they want to be left the hell alone.

I could really use a good strategy for getting myself into the mood to arrange/write/record/engineer when people around me are annoying me and killing my mood.

Other than that.  I had nasal surgery - the surgeon took out a bunch of tissue making it harder for me to breathe, and he repaired my deviated septum.  I won’t be singing until after Monday, because right now there’s a plastic splint up inside each nostril.  Isn’t that pleasant?  Once those are out, I can think about singing again.

I’m going back downstairs to try to work on some songs… wish me luck.

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Well, it’s like this.

I like to play covers.  I really honestly do.  I did go through a period of shows where I only played my own songs.  If you write 700 songs, then you can probably play your own songs and never get bored.  I tend, unfortunately, to write about 5 songs per year.  Do that math.  It’s no good.

So playing covers makes gigs fun for me.  I just added “I Don’t Like Mondays” and “Comfortably Numb” to my set list.  Good fun.  And of course it changes the number of venues I can play in from 3 to 300.  That’s a good thing.

Work on CD #3, um, continues, sort of.  Today I dusted and cleaned my studio.  I also brought up a song and listened to it.  And I decided that I need to spend some quality time with my monitors, because I have no sense of reference after not using them for so long.  This is important if you plan on mixing your own stuff.

Today, Saturday, my wife and I are headed off to Orlando to celebrate our 13th wedding anniversary.  So I’m actually typing this the night before.  And, um, I don’t really care about music that much right now, so I guess that’s all I have to say.  Almost.

Next Wednesday I am having sinus surgery.  If nothing else, it will give me something to blog about.

Oh yeah, one more thing.  Michael Jackson, RIP, and I am sorry for the loss to his loved ones, especially his children.  The guy did sleep with children, but we don’t know if anything actually happened, and we never will. One thing is for sure - he was a tortured, talented man, and millions of people will miss him.

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I’ve become convinced that, for my new CD, I need to go with shrink wrapping.

More specifically, I’m going to go with discmakers for the whole deal - I’ll upload the graphics and music and they’ll send me shrink-wrapped finished CD’s.

I’ve seen people pick up my CD’s at gigs and then put them back down - are they too amatuerish looking?  On one level, no - I think they look pretty good.  But they’re not shrink wrapped, like all the CD’s at the store.  Does this matter?  I think it does.  I think it screams AMATUER when the CD is not shrink wrapped.  It’s about the only thing I can’t do, at home.

Besides, I’m pretty tired of hand crafting CD’s.  It IS amateur.  Pay the pros to do it right.

On another topic, I’m putting together my, um, portfolio… press package… whatever the heck you call it, I’m putting it together.  Or rather, I’m thinking about putting it together.  I’m off to do web research on the best way to proceed…

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