This has consistently been my favorite song.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9EKqQWPjyo

Really, Prince?  If you had said, “radio is over,” I might have supported you on some level (but even that’s not true, depending on how you look at it).  Not only will music continue to be distributed via the Internet for some time to come, there is good evidence that CD sales will continue to decline (and we can assume they’ll eventually die off completely).  Prince – you’re certified loony.

The Internet is over, as is clearly depicted in the screen shot above (click to enlarge). Note the simultaneous streams of video, combined with typical web browsing - highlighting the Internet's complete lack of ability to deliver content.

Knocked another big item off my checklist of things to do this week – finished mixing the new Ol’ Bill Dollar album, “Grab Your Gun and Bring in the Cat.”  This is the third full length album from Bill.  Here’s a little taste of the new songs.

I was inspired to get back to work on the album after going to a discussion hosted at Drexel University with engineer Kevin Killen (U2, Peter Gabriel, Paula Cole, Elvis Costello).  It was a great presentation.  He brought along his computer with a Pro Tools HD rig, and opened up actual sessions to demonstrate what he’s doing.  His approach is so simple but so effective – get good sounds on the way in and you won’t need to be so heavy handed with plugin processing at mix time.  While he tracks through a nice console, he mixes entirely in the box, which is part of the reason the discussion was so enjoyable.  He’s an extremely successful engineer who’s embraced digital audio instead of being stuck on tape for the cool factor, or whatever else causes people to love tape so much.  I’ll take the Massey Tape Head over a tape machine any day.

Best wishes this holiday season to anyone who reads this.  It was quite a year, to say the least.  I’ve been looking forward to Christmas vacation for quite a while… I plan on sleeping as much as humanly possible.

Started working with Solas again, and I’m just about wrapped on their new site design.  The site is live, though there’s a few more nuts and bolts to screw down.  They’re gearing up for their album release in early February, and wanted to get a fresh look.  Though it took a while, it would have taken infinitely longer without WordPress!  On top of the new look and feel, the site sports tighter social networking integration thanks to ShareThis and other plugins.

The goal has generally remained the same: keep the design simple, modern, and easy to navigate.  For the band, it needs to be simple for them to update (which is why I chose a WordPress backend to begin with).  Thanks to the mobile WordPress apps for iPhone and BlackBerry, a quick update is a snap–essential for folks that hardly have a minute to sit between gigs.

And, looking forward to 2010…

Musically: I’m almost finished mixing the new album from Ol’ Bill Dollar, and mixes for batsupsidedown should be finalized in January (fingers crossed).

In the interwebs: I’ll be making a website for The Cascia Center set to be built at Broad and Ellsworth streets.  Prepare for a new media blitz.

There’s an interesting article on Tunecore’s blog arguing for musicians to use professional studios.  Now, to solve the “making money off your music” problem.  I agree with the article, but I must admit I’m a bit biased.

You’re a songwriter. It’s what you do. It’s what you’ve trained yourself to do through countless hours of study, practice and effort. Your songs are yours and no one can write them for you. In other words, you’ve become an expert at writing your songs. That’s how it should be.
Read more ->

Machine Gun Joe has decided to give away their latest album in digital form.  From the band:

We decided to post digital copies of our album “Worse Things Could Happen to a Man” for free download. So check it out and let us know what you think. Theres a smaller zip file of mp3s and theres a much bigger zip file of high quality WAV files, so take your pick. You can download them by clicking the links in the about me section. Hope you like it.

Download it!
Worse Things… MP3s
Worse Things… WAVs

Josh and I were fortunate enough to get a small article in this week’s edition of The Spirit???????? ????? ???????? — the community newspaper serving Fishtown, Kensington, Port Richmond, and Northern Liberties. We’ve got a show tomorrow night (5/29) at the M Room, and will (finally) have CDs of the new album for sale.

The Beggar’s Son Offers a Wealth of Rock
by Danielle Zimmerman

The Beggar’s Son have found the musical equivalent of what professionals in the piercing business refer to as “the soft spot” – the precise location the needle must be inserted and any variation left or right leaning would totally throw the entire piercing off – between delivering the cute, catchy chorus of a pop-punk melody and the musky, lumbering wisdom of a twangy country-folk song. Singer Joshua Skinner’s vocals manage to stick to you while drummer Bryan McGee swiftly carries the music along so you don’t get caught up in just one phrase or rhyme.
What sets them apart from being just another Philly rock band is the amount of fun you can’t help but suspect they’re having when they deliver the goods up on stage, or while working together in the studio. Both members of this two-man show have separate musical priorities (Josh with his solo acoustic endeavors and Bryan with engineering duties at a local recording studio) but the Beggar’s Son has provided both with a collaborative creative outlet since their high school days. What they deliver is enjoyable for both the players and the listeners. Enjoyable in the sense that musically, it’s easy on the ears – not that the songs don’t describe some of the darker emotions of sorrow or self doubt that is shared as a collective human experience.
“My solo stuff has always been more introspective, sort of like pointing the finger at myself, while the stuff I do with Bryan is more about pointing the finger at everyone else,” explains Skinner. Lyrically, the feeling of being lost and alone in this big world is the central emotion but it’s not all pessimism. The Beggar’s Son still gives many reasons to smile courtesy of universal messages and foot stompin’ good times.
Thematically, each album has its own overarching theme that is explored from different angles in each descending song. The band’s latest effort, “Battle Hymns for the New Imperial Empire,” spins the yarn of a Civil war era soldier being sent off to the battlefield and his subsequent experiences. Unwrapped, a metaphor emerges and hits closer to home than a Civil War history lesson – a war being fought within the confines of a relationship. Much like Cursive’s Domestica (not to say that The Beggar’s Son and Cursive share the same sound, mind you), which chronicled the slow deterioration of a relationship through the often attempted, and more often failed at, concept album.
Ears that are drawn to honesty in music will certainly perk up whilst listening to The Beggar’s Son. Honesty comes from the freedom that many DIY bands are able to hold on to when they still have the ability to call the shots, and how deep they delve into their own creativity is a factor to be decided by them alone. Another key factor: the smaller the number of people involved in the process of creating music, the more focused it becomes. While creativity stretched to cover a large surface of interests can sometimes be interesting – it also has the potential of ending up less consistent.
At their Thursday night M Room premiere, the cowboys will be assisted with a stand-in bass player to help with their live performance. When it comes to music, I still agree with the expression that “less is more,” and the Beggar’s Son delivers that bare minimum from the bottom of their hearts.

So it was finally time to paint the mixing room.  Moving all the stuff out of the room was an extreme pain, but it was worth it. No more of the strange green that was once on the walls. Now the walls are brown (“cardboard”) and and even stranger green.

So after many months of working on the two new Shadow Loomis albums (“Walkin’ Stick” and “Where Angels Fear to Tread”), we’re almost finished. I finished mixing “Walkin’ Stick” a few weeks ago and got straight to work on the “Where Angels…” yesterday. One thing’s for sure: having free time can be very beneficial when it comes to getting mixing done. Between yesterday and today, I got seven of the nine rock songs mixed. I made many conscious decisions to make the two sets of tunes sound different. Once the final two songs on “Where Angels…” are finished with overdubs and mixed, it’ll finally be time for mastering.

After mastering, the albums will be freely available (or for a small donation if you’re feeling generous) from Shadow Loomis’ website. This would also be a good time to mention I’ll also be setting up a new blog for Shadow Loomis to coincide with the release of the new albums, so look for that soon. Soon as in a couple of months.

Saturday April 5th 2008 at 7PM
Yardley Community Center
64 S Main Street Yardley PA
ALL AGES!

The Beggar’s Son
These Arms Have a Purpose
The Ghost in You
The Front
Aaron and the Kodak Kids