Record Release Party. Rebounding From Insults.

Oh sheeet, I’m doing things a little backwards here! On September 25th, 2019 at 8:30pm in the basement of Unnameable Books in Brooklyn, I’ll be releasing my album that has YET TO BE RECORDED. Oy.

I was invited to play, play anything, at the annual poetry/music festival hosted by the fabulous poetry arts magazine Boog City. Reviewing the festival dates and comparing them to my projected album release, by clairvoyance I saw the convergence of the two. The scary thing is I don’t have ESP. Well, I do to some extent, as I feel everyone does. It’s just not reliable enough to SCHEDULE events around.

Now all 4 of you who follow this blog (newcomers, do not feel left out, I will cue you in now) may remember that I announced I was recording a new album about a month ago. I have since experienced two musical hurdles. As life has it, I’ve also suffered through the sudden, unexpected loss of a dear uncle, but I’m going to stick to “working” hurdles to keep on the point that this is a songwriting blog.

The second hurdle, and I’m going out of order here, happened a few days ago when a former producer told me I can’t sing 🙁 I unfriended and blocked him. The most painful thing is, he’s right. Still, I’m at that age where if it feels cruel, I’m not going to second guess myself. This is a person I’ve had on a genius pedestal for years now. Perhaps I opened myself up to the wrong person. I was merely asking him about guitar sounds, when he unleashed about how I needed a vocal coach, blah blah blah. I have had many vocal coaches, including Katy and my wife, and practice my vocal workouts 5x per week, for at least 1/2 hour a day. And knowing my limitations, I’ve already reached out to vocalist friends of mine to sing many of these songs. I don’t think he considered that what I’ve been posting are rough drafts even though I spelled it out to him. He never did answer the question about my guitar sound. Oh, and he used the word creepy to describe my songs.

This paralyzed me for a few days. Maybe a week. But it’s time to move on. I knew that I had to feel this through, completely process it. Even if it disabled me temporarily, I felt I would come out a better, more resilient artist. I didn’t want to brush it off, as it would make me bitter and callous which is incongruent with writing songs. Moving forward, I’m more prepared to process the next cruel comment that comes my way, and there will be more now that I’m unleashing my work out into the world again. After this little break, I feel ready to sing again, and call in my friends who do a better job in that area, and who knows? Maybe someone new will come into my musical life!

The first hurdle happened pretty much as soon as I hit the record button. I was just starting to record the first tracks of the first songs when I stumbled over the arrangements and the writing. Surprise! I was expecting the actual engineering and performance to be my biggest challenges out of the gate. In the months leading up to recording, amidst my latest writing binge, I must have played these songs 100 times to my best audience. (My dog Violet, my bird Mango, and my cat Smokey). I felt the music flow. I felt the rhymes were tight. Then I hit record and realized the bridge was in the wrong place, or that certain words irked me.

Most bothersome was Setting Sun, a song about pre menopausal lust. “you are changing the direction of the setting sun”~ as you can see in the chorus, it’s NOT obvious if I didn’t tell you what it was about. I reckon most people don’t pay attention to song lyrics the first time around. If anything they hear the chorus. Hopefully that sticks in their head. Until they really hone in to the rest of the song they don’t know what the writer intended. At least lyrically that’s what I was going for on “Setting Sun”. But oh my gosh, I was SO far off base. The chorus was hidden below the surface, yet the verses and bridge were WAY too obvious. It also read too much like a narrative. Instead of bashing myself “what were you THINKING?” I reminded myself it was a work in progress. I realized the best way to fix it was to drop little visuals, without really including a timeline, or knowing exactly what happens when. And once the listener puts the puzzle pieces together, they may realize…It’s about an affair between the narrator and a “straight” married woman from the suburbs. “Tell him you’re meeting friends for a drink. Come to the city, feel it, don’t think” and “i’m twisting your necklace tween my finger and thumb. It all feels so reckless.” You can kind of put those stanzas anywhere in the song, in any order, it doesn’t mess it up. It’s lust. Longing and memories and needs all piled up in someone’s body & brain with no particular order or timeline, just bunching up together at once, tearing at the seams.

Considering my best work this year, Mas Caliente Que El Sol, fell into place in an hour, I got spoiled. But lo and behold, there is this thing that at times forces me to obsess over lyrics. This is why a poetry festival will be the perfect time to host an album release show….I better hop to it…no more blog posts for awhile.