"Was it the way you pictured it?"
This is my first blog entry of 2011 and it's something very exciting... I'm here to announce the release date for my debut solo album, "It's Never The Way You Imagine It." Brandon and I worked on the mastering last night and I'm 99% happy with it - there are just three small tweaks I want to make before I send it off to the plant.
I've set the release date for April 19th to allow time for manufacturing and some pre-planning before the release. I'm going to release the single "Alien Nation" a week before the album... possibly in CD1 and CD2 formats with different bonus tracks and artwork on each one.
This album has been a long time in the making. Going back to what can be attributed as the "beginning," I bought my Apple iMac computer in March of 2005 and that's when I began learning how to produce music on my own. Before this point, I had just sort of written songs in my head, or scribbled/typed out lyrics and ideas. I had even managed to throw together a couple songs using my previous computer (a crappy Compaq PC) and the Shitting Glitter 4-track tape recorder, but these were very limiting and nothing I would ever want people to hear. Once I got the iMac, I found that using Garageband was very easy and I could really get the songs out of my head and into the real world. I had made some demos for Shitting Glitter, did some remixes and worked on songs for some other people, but around 2007 or so I started really working on some of my own songs. By 2008, I had some skeletal fragments of songs that could potential go on a Devin Tait solo album, and it was around that time that I got the nerve to actually start telling people what I was working on. One of the first songs I came up with was "Zenith," a song that has long since fallen by the way side. I also worked on some tunes that I had written long ago, shortly after moving to Los Angeles, like "Man Vs. Nature," and even some that had been kicking around in my head since as long ago as my college days ("Ventriloquist").
My grandma Irene Tregellas passed away on December 18, 2007. She had been a huge influence on me throughout my life as far as songwriting, daydreaming, and flying my freak flag were concerned. My grandma was a little "out there" and I loved her for that. She was one of the only people I knew besides myself who wrote poetry, although I called mine lyrics, I realized they were very similar. She also was interested in music and songwriting and we'd often share our writing with each other. After she died, my mom loaned me some of her poem books and I ended up setting some of her poems to music. This project had actually started before she passed on, when my aunt Sharon had found a cassette tape of me playing one of Grandma's songs that I had recorded in high school. I re-recorded the song and performed it for her in a nursing home in Lucas, Kansas, in front of many family members and other residents of the nursing home. That was, believe it or not, the first time I ever played the piano and sang at the same time in front of people! That was the first turning point for me. After playing that song and then working on more songs after she died, it really spurred me to create my own songs.
Through 2008 and 2009 my songwriting and productions skills vastly improved.
Late in 2008, I decided I really wanted to finish a couple of tracks before the end of the year, and take them home to Kansas with me for the holidays to play for my family. The two songs that were closest to being finished were "Sleepytown" and "Modern Life" so I went back to my roots and hired Mary White - who produced the very first Shitting Glitter EP - to help me mix them. I ended up with a demo that I was pretty happy with, but still didn't really want a whole bunch of people to hear.
Sometime in early 2009 I came up with the idea for a song called "Alien Nation" and this was another huge turning point for me. I think this is when I really "got" what my album would be about, what it would sound like, and felt like I knew what I was doing. I think it helped that, unlike many of my songs I had been working on, I composed it on the piano and then built the studio version around the acoustic version. I always think that the true test of a song is if it can be stripped down to just piano and vocals and still be good - then you've got something.
At the time, I thought "Alien Nation" would be the album opener. I ended up having my brother, Brandon, add some guitar and work on this mix for me. This is one of the first songs that I considered finished, and posted to the internet.
As of April 2009, here is what I had considered for the tracklisting of the album:
Alien Nation
Tape
A Modern Life
Man vs. Nature
Strange Season
Recurring Dreams (Nightmare Symbols)
Sleepytown
I Was Gonna Rock You
Ventriloquist
Imaginary Greenland
- Zenith
- K-18
In 2010, I ended up writing a few more songs that would solidify the sound and feel of the album, "Digital Representation," "Not in a Million Years" and "Winnipeg Beach." I posted "Alien Nation" and "Tape" online, creating a Reverb Nation page to start promoting my solo work in addition to my Sound Cloud page. Then, I recorded acoustic versions of a few of my songs that I was working up for my first solo acoustic show, which happened in August 2010. Subsequently I put together a live band and performed a few shows around Los Angeles. It was during this time that I really became familiar with how the songs were perceived by others - something invaluable in the making of my album.
By December 2010 I had the album pretty much finished. My partner, Dylan, and I listened to the entire album driving up to San Luis Obisbo and I felt really happy with it. I made copies for some of my closest confidantes and solicited their feedback; by March 2011 I had made all the changes I felt I needed to based on the advice I received, and then Brandon and I mastered it together.
I had intended to release it the same day as my favorite band, The Human League, released their first album in a decade - "Credo." But I think fortunately, I just wasn't ready yet, and I needed some room to have my own time. As it turns out, April 19th is also my parent's anniversary so it's a very special date for my family.
Here is a track-by-track summary of each song on my album.
1. Digital Representation - this is one of the last songs that I wrote and in the beginning I didn't think it would go on the album. I didn't think it was ready, I didn't think it fit in, and I just wasn't sure about it. After working on it a little more, it became one of my favorite songs, and I just knew not only did it belong on the album but it had to be the opener. This was one of my favorite songs to perform live, too. It's about the internet and Facebook, and how easy it is for people to believe they have some connection with another human being when really they are just infatuated with a webpage that the person has concocted (and often times fabricated) to make themselves look good. Of course even knowing this, we have all been guilty of stalking someone's facebook page.
2. Winnipeg Beach - this seems to be a lot of people's favorite song. I wrote it on the plane ride back from Winnipeg when Shitting Glitter performed there for Gay Pride in June 2010. When I got home, I did a quick demo the next day so I wouldn't forget it. That Friday was LA Gay Pride and I came home from work VERY excited for Pride weekend and I just quickly finished the demo so I could play it for Marc and Bradley, and they both loved it, as did Brandon and Dylan. I think it's a great song.
3. Not in a Million Years - this is personally one of my favorite songs. It reminds me of early 90's era Human League. I've said it's not really about anyone, which is true, but it does draw on my past experience. When I was an adolescent, I would develop these crushes on people who I knew would have no interest in me. In junior high, I would just pick the most popular girl and start buying her presents and writing her love notes. This type of behavior continued and progressed throughout high school and part of college, until ultimately I had a good shrink who taught me that finding someone who is already interested in you is much more rewarding than trying to convince someone to love you when they don't. I'm really proud of my lyrics on this one.
4. Tape - this is embarrassing to admit because it makes this song so outdated, but, this was my FU George W. Bush song. I wrote the lyrics that long ago. Dylan read them when they were laying around at some point and told me they were really good. I'm really proud of the lyrics to this song too and I think it goes as far out to the edge as I could go at the time and still keep my own voice. It's the only song I use a swear word in! It's not just about GWB, it can be about any idiotic, small minded, bureaucratic BS.
5. Alien Nation - a lot of things influenced this song but the one I like to mention is Prop 8. It's about waking up in your own home only to find that you feel like you're in another place. Having moved to California because of how liberal it was and how many gays lived here, it was quite shocking and disturbing when the voters decided to make gay marriage illegal. In the end though, it's also about a person who alienates everyone around them but doesn't seem to realize it. That's what I hope happens to everyone who voted to Prop 8.
6. Bridge to Nowhere - this song was totally inspired by Prop 8. Originally this song was called "Subculture Club" and had completely different lyrics about a gang that was made of gay people that would deal drugs and seek vengeance for the queer community through violence. At some point I decided that not only was that not really something I wanted to glorify, but also that it just wasn't really working as a song. With a little influence from a certain Alaskan politician, I re-worked the whole song and it flowed much better.
7. Sleepytown - I wrote this song in 2003 or so, in my head. I had imagined it was more of a heavy, guitar-rock type song. I love the visuals I get in my imagination from this song. I imagine that I have a daughter and we live in a small town and she is yearning to experience the rest of the world. That's how I felt when I was a kid growing up on a farm in the middle of Kansas. But looking at it from the direction of someone who is trying to protect someone from the outside world made for an interesting story, I thought. As I mentioned earlier, this is one of the first songs I demoed for other people to hear. The original version was a lot different, and didn't have the third verse or the part about the Sandman which I came up with later and had to work it in. The original song also had a horrendous drum track with a crashing cymbal on every beat during the chorus! This is the hardest song to sing and I'm still sure I didn't get every note in tune.
8. So Dystopian - this was also one of the last songs I wrote. It's sort of a throw-away song but I felt it was important to include something a little more simple and experimental. I wanted to do sort of a lullaby that used the "round" style of singing. It's not some effect or echo, I actually sang the song 4 times starting at different point, just like when you would sing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" in music class. It's sort of in the same vein as "Strange Season" and "Alien Nation" where moments in your life take on a surreal quality.
9. A Modern Life - I reworked this song a lot from the demo version I did in 2008, although it's not a completely new version. I just changed most of the parts in the original file over the course of three years. I wrote this song at the bus stop by my house, at Fairfax and Santa Monica. I originally thought it would be a good song for the Human League and did everything in my power to get it to them. I got something of an official response from someone within the band's team that they don't accept outside submissions. So, at least I tried. If you use your imagination though, you can hear Phil singing it, with the girls doing the higher background vocals.
10. Underwater Breathing - this is a pretty personal song, although originally I set out to make something similar to Coldplay's "Clocks" because my mom loves Coldplay. Also, I was in LAPD's Citizen's Police Academy in 2009 and they showed us some video that used the song, and I thought geez, if I could write some song that everyone who ever made a compilation video or movie trailer wanted to use, I would be so rich! The original version was mainly piano and vocals and I hated it. Then I got a new plug-in and sounds for my computer and just completely changed it and ended up loving it. I doesn't sound anything like Coldplay, though.
11. Ventriloquist - by far the oldest song on the album. I'm pretty sure I wrote most of the lyrics for this when I lived in a trailer house after my freshman year of college. I had envisioned it being sort of a piano-driven lounge type song, with a really slow tempo and maybe a small orchestra behind it, with Annie Lennox singing it in a long dress. I think I might have demoed it that way on my old PC. Messing around in Garageband, I came up with the beat and the little fake-guitar line that sounds sort of like sitar, and the bass line, and then just messed around singing the lyrics over it in a more robotic way with a completely different melody, and it just ended up working.
12. Strange Season - this song has a long and storied past, at least in my mind! As 2002 turned into 2003 some very strange things had been going on in my life and in the lives of those around me. It seemed like my whole life was turned inside out. I don't like to go too much into the personal nature of my lyrics. So, I had recorded this song as a demo on the 4-track tape recorder and there was no room left for a vocal, and anyway I was so enamored with the instrumental that I never thought I could come up with a lyric that was worthy. I would just listen to the instrumental and think, did I do that? I was in love with it and it seemed so mysterious to me. I would listen to it from time to time later, and it would just seem to encapsulate that time in my life so perfectly. Eventually I fried that 4-track and so I couldn't listen to the song again, and then in 2008 similar things were going on in my life. One day, washing dishes, something so mundane - the lyrics came to me. I was able to re-create the whole song from my head, from scratch, and then sang the lyrics over top of it. After I finished the album in December 2010, I later listened to this song and thought, NO NO NO! It's all wrong! So I drastically reworked it, the last major work I did on the album, and per my friend Bradley's advice, moved it to the end of the album because it had that "closing" feel. Now I love it just as much as I loved the earlier instrumental version.
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