I’m a smidge on the exhausted side. The good kind of exhausted, where you feel like the languishment is validated. Where you feel accomplished.
I took my daughter to Dodge with me yesterday to get her first tattoo. There was no question that we’d be making the trip to see her Uncle Brendon, and I think it was his recent move back to Kansas that cemented the plan in her mind. It wasn’t a big hairy deal – a small piece of art on her arm representing her bond with her kitty cat, who is pretty much the closest thing to a grandchild Jonikka and I are ever likely to have. And it was fun.
It’s a four-hour drive from Manhattan, so I wanted to make the trip worth it. After we got the ink, we stopped at the brewery for a bite to eat and then made our way back to my brother’s place to try setting up my new recording rig for his drum kit. We were just dialing in mics and testing the system, seeing how things sounded in the room, and getting some presets saved in my software… but it was worth the trip. Next time I go down – hopefully here in just a couple weeks – it’ll be to lay down some tracks on a couple of songs.
The journey to which I allude in my title, however, is not the trip to Dodge City, but rather the work on the current album.
Fans of the Tuesday Nite Blues Band know that we released our debut album in 2011, played a few shows to support it, and then kinda disappeared. It was a difficult time, and letting go wasn’t easy… I continue to be so very proud of that album. Between the composition, the performances, and the production work, it is easily the best-sounding musical project I’ve had the pleasure of being involved with. And it still sounds great today.
Over the years that followed, my focus shifted away from writing songs. I penned my first novel, which I published in 2018. I focused on work and family and education, dealt with a medical event that consumed the better part of a year, and then the world ground to a halt for a bit in 2020. You probably know why. And it was in that space that I finally found the drive to start writing music again.
The new album currently has 13 tracks in various phases of production. A couple of them are songs dating back to earlier years in my musical journey, but most of them were penned in the last five years. I’ve explored life in the wake of the pandemic, love, loss, the trials of getting older… it’s all in there. And once again, calling it a “blues” album would be disingenuous. We’re likely to indulge in some rebranding before we start sharing anything.
So here’s a funny thing. In the old days, when you recorded a band, you started with drums. Everything else needed to be laid on that foundation so the rhythm and timing elements could be matched up while layering other instruments. And many drummers, while excellently expressive and full of the right energy, are not necessarily the most reliable timekeepers. Songs might speed up and slow down as the energy of the song changes. Which, by the way, is fine.
As a matter of fact, a goodly number of classic compositions in rock ‘n roll history will defy a metronome more adamantly than you would guess.
My brother, however, has damned near perfect timing and rarely pushes or drags the tempo. This gives me the opportunity to lay down other parts first, recorded to a click. It’s a very liberating process, in that I can layer instruments and work on arrangements on my own time, and we were able to work on arrangements while we still lived 1500 miles apart. I have several arrangements with some scratch percussion recorded on his electric kit, but now its time for the real enchilada.
So this month we start laying down real drums on the album, coinciding with Bonnie’s vocal sessions and some additional piano and strings. It’s been nearly five years since I penned the bluesy rock track Nobody’s Home. In the years that followed, I laid down guitars and sent it to Drew for some quality BASS, shared it with Bonnie so we could workshop vocal arrangements, Anne to help me find the soul of the song with the piano in their parlor, and Brendon to lay down some rudimentary percussion. Now it’ll be one of the very first songs we wrap.
And then to Bullet Ride to see what we need to do to actually make it sound like it deserves.
And still I hesitate
Afraid to break the silence of my soul.
I know, this conversation’s getting old.
But if I take these reins
And break these chains
And make a change
My story will be told…
Yeah. It’s good.