It's been a few years since I actively recorded some new songs. I've continued to write, but I haven't recorded much. I've officially begun a new album. I have now completed the drum tracks on about 16 songs. Bass tracks are done on 5. And rhythm guitar is down for a few.
Some of these songs are 4 or 5 years old, maybe even older. Some were written a month or two ago. There's a song or two that have lyrics that were written a decade or more ago, but the music was finally written recently.
I'm excited for these new recordings. I'll keep the site posted with updates of the process from time to time.
Over at The Wheel's Still In Spin, my blog about music and movies, I listed my favorite albums, EPs, and movies of 2010. While The Tallest Man on Earth and Exit Through the Gift Shop amazed me, there were a lot of other greats during the past year.
It's been exactly a month since the San Francisco Giants won the World Series. The city has been electric. The city hosted a parade and rally and had a huge turnout. And every now and then you'll still hear someone chant, "Let's Go Giants!"
I wrote a brief article about the connections between this team and the city. It's over at This Generation. Read it here.
Tonight the Giants won the National League pennant.
I have lived in 4 cities with major league teams. I have seen the Reds, Indians, and Rockies make it to the World Series, but it always happened after I moved. This is the first time in my life that I will be living in a city as it hosts the World Series.
I was a game one of the 1990 World Series. That is, to this day, the greatest baseball game I ever attended. The Cincinnati Reds were the underdogs. The Oakland A’s, with the Bash Brothers of McGwire and Canseco, were expected to mop up the diamond with the Redlegs. But the tables were turned and the Reds ended up sweeping the series. That first game in Cincinnati was a cathartic contest. Eric Davis hit a homerun into right field in the bottom of the first inning to put the Reds up 2-0. They went on to shut out the A’s 7-0. The energy in Riverfront Stadium was amazing. Everyone heard the reports of how the defending champion A’s were going to win the series. There were predictions that there would be a sweep, but few predicted it would be the Reds controlling the baseball broomstick.
A few weeks ago I had a goatee on my face. The post-season escalated with the Giants slogan of “Fear the Beard” for their facial hair sporting bullpen staff gained more popularity. I grew out the rest of my beard. I wore my Giants hat, which is usually on my head regardless of how well the team is doing. They eked out another win. By the end of the game I was once again on the edge of my seat. This was the seventh postseason game of the year for the Giants decided by one run. They’ve luckily won 6 of these 7 games.
This 2010 Giants team is one of my favorite teams to watch. They play as a collective group. Towards the end of the season and into the postseason they have had a momentum behind them. They pull out these struggling wins in late innings to gain the minimum run advantage to be victorious.
I’m looking forward to the World Series. The Rangers are going to be tough competition. They have a great pitching staff and a solid lineup of hitters. They’re averaging over 5 runs a game in the postseason to the Giants 3 runs a game. It’s probably going to be another series were the Giants come in as the underdog. And I’m going to be hoping and rooting the team to each win and earn win their first championship since the Giants moved to San Francisco 52 years ago.
This song became the inspiration for the format of the album, The Final Broadcast of the Underground Radio Show. The inspiration for this song, however, was WOXY-FM. In Cincinnati, OH, WOXY-FM was the best local radio station. It was an independent Alternative rock station that played the best music. Dustin Hoffman’s character in Rainman constantly quoted the stations tagline, “97X, Bam! The future of rock and roll.” It was consistently named one of the best radio stations in the country.
It was one of the few stations that ever played music by Mclusky, Spiritualized, Ted Leo, and Galaxie 500 in between songs by Loretta Lynn, Elliott Smith, Pavement, and Sonic Youth. The station also brought many artists to town to record radio sessions and was the biggest supporter of local music.
In January 2004, the owners of 97X, Doug and Linda Balogh, decided to sell the station to one of those corporate radio companies. May 13 became the final day of 97X on the airwaves. That final broadcast was a sad day for all indie rock fans in the Cincy area. When the station stopped broadcasting, there was no longer anything close to it on the airwaves.
The Baloghs sold the broadcast facilities and licenses, but they retained the music library and the names “WOXY,” “97X,” and “The future of rock and roll.” The new corporate bosses had no intention of trying to duplicate what WOXY made famous. They just wanted the best competition removed.
The Baloghs gave the names and library to the DJs who decided to continue WOXY online as WOXY.com. The station ended up broadcasting online and has had an on-again/off-again life. Due to funding issues, it has cancelled its feed, renewed its feed, and now no longer broadcasts at all.
When WOXY was sold, the fans in Cincinnati had some mixed opinions. Sure, the Baloghs had a right to sell the station and make millions of dollars. But Cincinnati would never hear anything like it again. As one of those listeners I responded by writing this song.
This song is essentially about advertisements. Everything is designed to be shinier and glossier. Things are designed and packaged to sell, not to be helpful or rewarding.
The same thing is done with music. It seems the best music isn’t what you hear on the radio. There’s great music out there, but you have to find it. You can’t rely on the crap that is being disseminated to us.
The record companies have been overrun by businessmen who don’t care about the art. There was a time when record labels would allow a musician or band to develop into great artists. They would recognize potential in a musician to become a great artist, not simply a big seller from their first album on.
Even the phrase indie rock has changed. It once meant – and should still mean – that the music is independently created, produced, and released. Now, it seems to define a style of music. There are still a lot of great independent labels – Merge, Matador, Secretly Canadian, Kill Rock Stars, and more. And musicians are learning how to control their own careers and release their music the way they want.
Well, enough of a rant. Please listen to the song and read the lyrics after the jump.
I wrote this song while living in Northern KY. I used to go to The Southgate House’s open mic on Monday nights. A bartender there, Lenny, always shared some good stories about Newport, KY, its history, and how the town has changed.
In 1937 there was a major flood in the greater Cincinnati area. Newport was covered in water. The Westside of Newport got hit the hardest. Water was ten feet high in some spots. Lenny told me stories about families that tried to clear everything out of the first floor and run for safety.
They built up the levee. In 2001, they opened a mall on the levee. It started to rejuvenate that area on the southern bank of the Ohio River but parts of the town had never really rebuilt from the flood over sixty years earlier.
I had a song I was working on. It was about the flood. I had carried the song to a certain point, but I couldn’t get an appropriate ending. Lenny had a few lines he had jotted down about the flood, too. Lenny’s lines essentially became the bridge to this song and helped me find my way to the final verse and the story’s ending.
When it came to record the song, the woman who has been girlfriend for almost five years now helped me out on vocals. The song was written at a time when the Ohio River started rising very high because of some heavy rainstorms. There was fear that the levees were actually going to break again. My girlfriend was housesitting up on top of one of Cincinnati’s many hills. I went up there one night. When I hear this song about a fictitious of how a father was born on the night of the 1937 flood, I think back to those early days of our relationship.
Shooter Jennings released a new album in March called Black Ribbons. According to the Amazon description, the album “features a unique collaboration between Jennings and best-selling author Stephen King. The 70-minute concept album sees King provide the voice of Will O’ The Wisp, a late-night talk show radio host who is in the last hour of his final broadcast before the airwaves is overtaken by ‘government-approved and regulated transmissions.’”
This is a good concept. It sounds very similar to the album I created back in 2006, The Final Broadcast of the Underground Radio Show. My album focuses on the final 30 minutes of a pirate radio show. The album begins with the static intro of a listener dialing in the underground radio show. This is the final broadcast before the FCC punishes the DJ. He plays a group of independent and original music concluding with the song “The Final Broadcast.” Then, at midnight, the airwaves go back to static.
There are differences between my concept and Black Ribbon, but this is an interesting coincidence. I am currently reading King’s book On Writing and proud that I had the same idea as a Steven King related project.
This started out as a simple song. Then I got the idea of adding the sound of the storm. The only sample of that soundscape is the thunder sound during the storm. All of the other water sounds were made in my bathroom.
This is one of my favorite songs to listen to with headphones. Every instrument is split into two channels and panned to two different sides. I was trying to give both a rocking effect and generate the feeling that the song was being pulled in two different directions, like the lyrics.
This was the first recording that I ever completed and felt truly satisfied with. All of the parts fell into the place and I was fortunate that the tremolo and slide guitars worked throughout the song. Many people have asked about the woman singing - that's Ben Bergstrand's falsetto vocals. They add such a great quality to the song. Check out Ben's band, Cowboy Curse.
This song was written about the progression of a break-up. The first half of the song was written 2 days before I was dumped. At that time I couldn't finish it. 2 days after the break-up, with the end of the true story foretold, the second half of the song was written. I guess you could say the guitar solo is the break-up.
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