Announcing The Lowdown!

My new show will be uploaded to Facebook & YouTube Sunday evenings. The link can be found here to find it. Show # 1 can be found at 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36bfvUDxW50

Dog Days

The end of summer, more or less. Gotta say though it's been a good one. Never got too hot and there were nice bits of rain in there. I like rain. Doesn't matter; summer, winter, it makes me want to stop whatever I am doing and sit by the open window and watch the rusting metal roof below my office window get a deeper red as it's soaked. And Fürth has some pretty good storms too. The only thing I like more than a good hard rain? A great storm. I want lightning, thunder, wind and rain, blown horizontally hopefully.

August gigs in Germany usually involve a beer garden. I used to dread these gigs (the only thing worse is a line dance gig, which I stopped a few years ago, right after they stopped calling :-) but after a while I figured it out. Just relax, do what I like and have fun. I always thought you had to play complete shit for this sort of gig but I was wrong. People after a large meal and well into their 3rd beer are pretty easy to get along with. Give them some songs they can sing along with and you have the makings of a nice afternoon for everyone. And last but not least, the great food and local beers I feel obligated to consume.

I am 2 songs into the early 2017 CD. They are still writhing around on my recorder trying to become a real song. . I think one is pretty good. The other isn't right. It's a dark little song I envisioned as a slab of musical noise and that should be less that 2:30 minutes long. Somehow though it never seems to be what I can hear in my head. While this simmers on a back burner I am going to start the process again with 2 more songs. The process being getting 2 songs and 5 musicians into the rehearsal room and recording for about 6 hours. From this evening the important tracks are the drums ultimately. Every thing else I can redo at home if nessessary. Then for the next couple weeks a procession of the usual suspects pass through my apartment leaving guitar, bass, keys, sometimes vocal harmonies on top of the basic drums and bass tracks we did in the studio. It feels sooooo slow as a song goes from being written, rewritten and then rewritten, arranged and recorded, possibly rerecorded if nessessary as the idea for the songs changes. That's my curse and dilemma. I have a hard time knowing when to quit. Arrangement is BIG. You gotta wrap that baby in a great arrangement before you shove her out there into the cold old world and move on to whatever's next.

cheers,

          Terry