Scotch 45 sessions report

The new sessions are motoring along. Now both keyboard and all bass parts are complete on the 10 songs. I had a great day last week where I both created and recorded five of the bass parts in a little over five hours. It helped that I had spent days in advance just getting the bass sound the way I wanted. There are those days as a musician when the mind and the skills are in harmony - when what you hear in your head you can play immediately with your hands. This was one of those days. In addition, the immediacy of the session is preserved by this rush of activity. It sounds and feels both unified and fresh.

Next up - guitars! I've decided to play most of these myself, but we'll see how it goes...Rod and Aaron are far more skilled.

Cheers until next time!

Scotch 45 sessions update

Here it is February already and I'm making fairly good progress on the Scotch 45 sessions. Tried a pass at "Shrug It Off" - a bouncy (for lack of a better term) rocker, but just wasn't feeling it, so I laid down a tune called "Falling Down" which I think is more in keeping with the feel of the session so far.

Keyboard parts are almost complete on ten songs, representing about 30 finished performances. I'm pretty happy with how things are starting to sound.

Aaron Taylor and Rod Moody are on board for guitar work, which is very exciting.

I'd like to have these sessions completed and ready for iTunes by April. I still believe it can be done!

Cheers!

New Throttle Body Sessions Started!

Almost four years since the completion of "Air Canada", I am now starting work on the follow-up album. With a working title of "Scotch 45" (the brand of cassette I used on some old demos from the 70's and the tape's running time) this new album was born out of the boon of songs rediscovered in the spring archiving project. Titles will include "Falling Apart At The Seams", "Girl", "A Typical Wednesday", "Hole In My Heart", "Reminders of You" and many more. Scratch tracks and clicks are laid down already, as are the acoustic guitar tracks. Hopefully this new CD wont take the year that "Air Canada" did to record!

Cheers! - Jer

Sound on Sound (1978) - the balance of tunes

I've made you all wait long enough. Here's the balance of the "Sound on Sound" sessions for your enjoyment.

"Heartache" is a rockin' little tune that I re-recorded for the "Air Canada" sessions. It's a basic story of "I'm warning you" to a girl about all those bad for you men - of which I am one, it turns out! When you're young, it's always someone else, of course.

"Red Car" is a song I wrote about this Datsun station wagon I drove when I was a kid. I swore one day, I would get a better car. In retrospect, it wasn't too bad!

"Girl" is a great song, as far as I'm concerned. One of those I wrote early that is seemingly simple, but actually changing slightly the entire time. It's a quality I love in a pop song. I hope you do too.

"Don't Cry For Me" and "Who Do You Love" were my first emulations of love for the end-of-the-decade burnout of Fleetwood Mac. I loved Lindsay Buckingham's simple rock tunes - just driving and driving, like "What Makes You Think You're The One" from Tusk and also loved Christine MacVie's sad songs like "You'll Never Make Me Cry" - so simple. These tunes are a take on that feel and sound - only with a lot more hiss as I pretty much wore the cassette tape out at this point.


Download "Heartache"

Download "Red Car"

Download "Girl"

Download "Don't Cry For Me"

Download "Who Do You Love"

(right click the link above and "Save Target As..." to your local machine)

Almost Home - the demo tape encoding saga concludes

Well, I'm on the home stretch of my demo tape encoding. It's been a long process, and the entire task is only partially complete. So far, however, I have some observations:

When I was young, I flexed a lot of muscles. I wrote songs at a pretty impressive rate. This was my "Elton" period - one that continues to this day. Mostly piano-based songs, with complex chord progressions, strong melodies.

A short flirtation with end of the decade malaise was followed by a power pop phase - Elvis Costello/Nick Lowe/Stiff Records-influenced.

Come the time of the Throttle Body sessions, I was making very immediate pop-rock, simple, fast and clean. As TBMC matured in the 90's I entered the final stage chronicled on these tapes, which I would characterize as riff-rock. I didn't even bother singing half the time. Or more.

The way back machine has been filled with the joy of rediscovery, sadness and regret and inspiration to get back to some of the best of these tunes and see what they have to offer.

History is hard on the heart

As I am archiving these song tapes, it's getting a bit rough on me. I had the habit at the time of playing the skeleton of the song I was working on and then just letting the tape roll to pick up what was going on around me while I was writing. I would also narrate the events of my days and capture friends and family in the process. So now as I listen back to these tapes so many years later, there are ghosts of my past coming back to life. Funny how joy can turn to regret with the passing of years. But these songs, if ever properly recorded, will never be now what they were meant to be then and I guess I'm just a reflection of that same fact.

What goes on

Ok - it's been awhile, but remember, there's no promise of productivity here, just an archive that is building organically. So what's been going on during all the silence? Primarily a huge archiving project. I am in the process of transferring 35 cassettes with somewhere near 300 song demos onto Pro Tools. It's a huge project that'll require many passes. Eventually some of these songs will be developed into final, finished versions.

I've been saying to musician friends lately who are aware of the project that I always meant to return to these songs - I just didn't realize it would be (in some cases) 30 years later!

I'll try not to neglect the posting of demos for too much longer, but in case you were wondering, that's what goes on...