Tomorrow’s the day that FAWM begins.  I am prepearing my gear.

• All guitar sounds will be through a real tube amp, a Traynor 40-watt 12″ combo.  Last time I tried to play it, I offed the power tubes, so I’ll be retubing tonight.
• I’m restringing my Dean Evo Special Select with Thomastik-Infeld “Blues Sliders” (0.010″ to 0.048″).  I’ll also use an Ibanez Artcore hollowbody strung with LaBella flatwound stainless steel in the unlikely gauges of 0.015″ to 0.056″.  (That’s right, fifteen for the E string–no bending with this one!)
• My bass?  I never restring it unless I absolutely have to.  I use either a Fender J-bass or P-bass.

It’s happening right now.  I’m uploading my new album to Jamendo. Here’s the final tracklist:

1. Patterns in the Sky
2. Abandon in Place
3. Like the Ocean Needs the Moon
4. The Outer Banks of Love
5. Nothing Left but the Sea
6. City in Flight
7. Night’s Bridge
8. Volcanology
9. A Dream of Flying
10. In Search of Forgotten Names
11. Pinelands
12. Harriet Tubman Lives
13. A Spy in the House of Pancakes
14. Rafting Down the Lethe

After the upload, it will take a day or two for the album to actually be published and available on site.

I’ve just signed up with FAWM–February Album Writing Month.  Check out my FAWM page here.

I’m planning on making the FAWM album minimalist blues–as few instruments as possible, probably only bass, guitar, and keys.  I plan on starting out with traditional blues type tunes, but knowing me, by the end I will be doing something jazzy and strange.

My stated goal, upfront, is to improve my ability to “talk” with my instruments, as well as hold down the groove with bass alone.  I’ve learned a lot playing drums, but I don’t want them to become a crutch–I’m going to make sure my bass playing is still top-notch.

It’s on. I’ve selected the final 14 tracks for my next Jamendo album, handmade. Here’s the list, but the tracks are not in order yet. They are listed here by filename, and as you can see, I name my files chronologically (eg BMC061102 was recorded 2006-11-02, or November 2, 2006).

I am still working on putting the tracks in a logical order and creating the cover art.  I can hardly believe the day is almost here!

This is the last recording weekend for my next Jamendo album, handmade. I plan on releasing the album in February. Right now, I’m finalizing the last few tracks and deciding on the songs and their order on the album. Also, I have to finish my cover art and liner notes.

My previous album, evolution, has been downloaded 269 times so far. Further, I was the featured artist on DMusic this past week, with completion of the apocrypha album.

Over the past few months, I have met many musicians on DMusic. But there is one that stands out–someone I’ve become friends with, and someone who really knows how to speak the language of jazz.

I’m talking about Henri Roger. If you go to his music page, you can scroll down to a tune called “Bruce’s Jazz Chords.” Believe it or not, he wrote this in a single night based on an interesting chord progression I’ve been working with at home.  I shared it with him one day, because I’d been playing it so much it had become sort of stuck in my head.

What happened next was amazing.  He took the chords and, well, made them sound like some sort of magic.  I had noticed the pattern had some unexpectedly smooth transitions, but what he did with it was nothing short of incredible.

It’s odd to think I have never met Henri Roger face to face–we are thousands of miles away from each other, but I feel like I have met him.  If ever there were an argument in favor of the internet, it is that it has allowed creative collaborations to transcend the boundaries of physical space.

One of my best friends from Back in the Day has started a blog.

We’re talking middle school here, you know, back in the day–when a typewriter was a dodo bird that pecked really fast on a stone tablet and Yabba Dabba Doo was a popular catchphrase.  Back then, we only had three directions, because South hadn’t been invented yet.

Anyway, the title of his blog is “The Lurking Parade.”

This is a title we’ve been passing around for a long time.  You see, way back when, I was into computers–I had a Commodore Amiga, actually–and came up with this random title generator for short stories.  I fed the names of hundreds of novels and albums into the computer program, and it hacked them up and pieced them back together.  One of the ones that stuck was evidently a combination of “The Lurking Fear” by H.P. Lovecraft and “The Soft Parade” by The Doors.

I don’t know why this name stuck, exactly, except it’s kind of neat how a parade generally does anything but lurk.

Oddly, my friend came up with another title I’ve used extensively–a play on the Doors’ “The Spy” and Animal Logic’s “Spy in the House of Love”.  Don’t know why, but the title “A Spy in the House of Pancakes” has always stuck with me; there’s even a song on my next Jamendo album by that name.

This is the twelfth and final article I’m writing about the songs in apocrypha, a compilation album I am publishing on DMusic. It is meant to complement my Jamendo album, evolution.

What a way to end the series.

Today, I am the featured artist on DMusic. I just finished publishing my second album, apocrypha, which I’ve been uploading a track at a time since December 17, 2006.

The completing piece was “Crumb”, my one and only cover song. As I mentioned in a previous article, I was a fan of a local band named El Robot. I’d love to be able to give you a web address or a site where you could download their music, but alas, years after their last show, no trace remains save their two albums. Well, “Crumb” is my tribute to that band.

The song was originally written by Morgan Caraway (of El Robot, now of Nim Sum), who also sang the lead vocals. Now, as I’ve mentioned before, Morgan is to bass as cornbread is to collard greens. He was my inspiration to put aside guitar as my main composing instrument and switch to bass–something I’ve come to see as a turning point in my life.

Now I find myself at another turning point. Stasis is stagnation; the world must change to truly live. For myself, I find my approach to music has completely changed since learning to play drums. For Morgan, well, he’s limited in what he can achieve as a musician staying in a small town like Gainesville, so he’s thinking of moving on, possibly to Seattle.

As for me, I’ve found a new world–online music. And, thanks to DMusic and Jamendo, I haven’t bought a commercially produced album since last summer. Odd to think that, because I don’t miss it–I actually have to remind myself there was a time that having Music Choice was a big deal on cable because I could listen to tunes that weren’t crap.  And now?  Typically I listen to 20 to 30 new artists a week, all doing new and original material.

Looks like the People’s Glorious Revolution is sneaking up on the mainstream.

My Jamendo album, evolution, just reached the 250 download mark.  I’m still amazed every time I think about it.  Again, heartfelt thanks to everyone who has listened to and downloaded my music.

This is the eleventh in a series of articles I’m writing about the songs in apocrypha, a compilation album I am publishing on DMusic. It is meant to complement my Jamendo album, evolution.

Yesterday I posted “Downburst” to DMusic, track #11 on apocrypha. There’s only one song left to post, so I face the situation of being almost finished writing this series of articles.

Of course I have many other projects to occupy my time. But releasing an album a track at a time has been an interesting experience. Jamendo and DMusic differ in their presentation of albums; on Jamendo, you upload the entire album at once. So I’ve been experiencing “the best of both worlds.”

I believe that both of these sites are the future of music–independent, interesting, and free. For too long our musical world has been choked by the corporations into committee-approved focus-group-tested bland bits of mediocrity.  Time for the revolution.

Now, “Downburst” is a musical metaphor for a thunderstorm.  The rain starts pounding midway through the song, but only for a short while–a downburst, an all too common phenomenon here in Florida.

I recorded this tune on December 3, 2006.