Tickets For The Projector

I've got an idea for the album cover (you know, those 12 songs that I recorded last year, then mixed, added extra vocals to and whittled down to 9 songs). The album will be called The Projector and these tickets will play a part. Notice how the outside ring of tickets are tan and the inside ring of tickets are blue. That's because the sun bleached the heck out of them. I thought I was buying tan tickets but blue is good too.

Location:Guerrero St,San Francisco,United States

We Stand In Front, In Video Form!

When recording the final track for the Twelve Songs Project, I decided to go ahead and make a video too. Last time I did this, my recording engineer got on my case for not turning the actual audio from the video recording up a bit to give it more of a room sound. So, I did that this time. Oh, how I wish I'd taken video of me playing the guitar solo too. Playing guitar solos makes me feel like a real badass!

Fresh Baked Bread

Every new year, I resolve to bake more. This year, I appear to be on it! Check out this wheat bread I baked recently. Looks perfect, right? It kind of is except it was a little dry and I made way more than our humble, two-person household should consume at once. So, next time I think that I'm going to use more white than wheat flour and see if I can fix the dryness factor.

     

     I'm still thinking about a theme for this year's resolutions. This year is going to be all about expansion and building on the groundwork I've already laid in both my screen printing business and my music.I have an album's worth of songs to release and I'm taking a drawing class in the hopes of taking my design work to the next level. I actually accomplished all of last year's resolutions, which makes me very happy. So this year, I'm thinking this is what needs to get done. I just need to remember that resolutions are like the bread in that they're probably not going to be right the first time.

1. Bring creativity back. I've been working so hard to lay the groundwork for The Heated and it's good work but I've had to put more of the creative work on hold to do it. It's time to get back to the creative stuff now and I'm really excited about that.
2. Read more books. I don't have cable but that doesn't stop me from getting in some television time before bed every night. I'd like to change a lot of those television nights to reading nights. So far, I've read Just Kids (it was great!) and am working on A Guide To The Good Life.
3. Release an album. Release videos around the album.
4. Put things off until I have to do them. This may sound counter-intuitive but I've found that a lot of my stress comes from not getting things on my to-do list done because I've tried to schedule a bit of extra time in there. So I'm going to open up my interpretation of my to-do list in that if something is listed at to-do on a Monday, it doesn't really need to get done until it really needs to get done and I'm not going to worry about things until then. Make sense? 
5. Oh, and I almost forgot, bake more.

Twelve Songs Project Complete!

I'm extremely pleased to announce that my quest to record and release one song a month for all of 2010 is complete! Now there is the business of further mixing and culling until I have an actual album to release. I'd like to thank all of you who lent their support in various ways. This could not have happened without you and you are awesome.

Me Play Drums

I found this old blog post that I never got around to editing. It probably had something to do with me playing drums. That seems as good a segue as any to tell you that I have a new song out called "The Flood Building". Yet, there is no snare drum in "The Flood Building". But there are shakers so... close enough?

The Union

The latest song from The Heated is out now. It's a song about a lot of things but I would say that the main theme is that sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do in order to make it. I think that's called growing up or something.

Anyway, I'll let you in on a little secret. C'mon and get a little closer. A little closer. A little... oh, that's too close. Whoa. Ok, I shot video of the recording process behind this song and hope to have it released ASAP. ASAP may be a few weeks to a month. But I've really been wanting to show you all what goes in to this project. It's a lot of me making funny faces with headphones on.

Leaving The House With The Burner On

Yes, this is the latest from The Heated. Uh... it's a little dark. People like getting depressed, right?

Ionosphere

I released a new song then forgot to put it on my blog again. Bad blogger, bad. Anyway, here's Ionosphere. The story behind this recording is that it was done in my sister-in-law's tiny camper while on vacation with a group of friends (luckily, my recording engineer was among them) along the coast of Northern California.

The Song About Jerks

Yes, I've written a song about how people are jerks and how I can't stop obsessing about how people are jerks. It's also a little bit about Moses. Anyway, it's called Vigilance. You can listen to it. Right now!

Ohio

The latest effort from The Heated is out now. Check out Ohio below. You may have noticed that I changed the cover art of the 12 Songs Project. Really, the first one was thrown together quite hastily and it showed. So I made a new one. Improvement, yes?

For The Greater Good

Dang it. I keep forgetting to immediately post here when new songs go up. For your consideration, For The Greater Good.

Driving Into The City

The latest from my Twelve Songs Project (wherein I give away a song for free once a month for all of 2010) is up and ready for you to download. It's maybe the closest I've come to writing a happy song, written after driving home to San Francisco from Santa Cruz with friends after we'd attended a going away party. This party marked the last of our friends to leave Santa Cruz and it just felt like we were all growing up and stuff. Anyway, check it out below, why don't you?