Long Road To Hoe
This past weekend was a busy one, and was capped off by a Sunday trip to Malibu's Seamonster Studios, where my band Shitting Glitter is putting the finishing touches on some b-sides for our forthcoming single and preparing our plans for recording "Food Drinks Music" - our third full length album.
The recording this day mainly involved Brandon's guitar parts for the b-side entitled "Delay" which was an old demo that had been kicking around for a couple of years. I thought it would make a nice addition to the "Slut Buffet" remix single so we dusted it off and are finishing it to sound pretty great. While Brandon spent hours perfecting his guitar riffs, I spent my time shovelling dirt from the hillside driveway that leads down to the home/studio of Hoagie, our friend and co-producer. Over the past few years, dirt has slid down the side of the hill and covered a foot or two of the inside edge of the drive and I wanted to help out since Hoagie always goes above and beyond helping us with our music. I looked up the driveway on Google Earth beforehand so I'd know what I was getting myself into (I've been down it enough times but really Google Earth is just my new favorite distraction). It's a long road to hoe, let me tell you, and I only got about 12-15 feet done before it got dark and my back wouldn't have been able to take much more anyway. As I shoveled I thought of the work as a metaphor for the work that needed to be done on the album. That, too, is a long road to hoe, albeit a much more fun and personally satisfying one. Of course any job well done is satisfying to me, but music does more for my creative appetite than anything else.
In addition to the 12 or so tunes we have been concocting for this album, I've begun working on my first "real" solo project. I say real because, throughout the years I have dabbled in writing and recording my own songs but never to the point where I wanted anyone to hear them. However, my dear grandma Irene suffered from a stroke last July just a few days after I went home to visit the family, and is now in a care facility where she is unable to really communicate with anyone much. At my aunt's suggestion, I re-recorded an old song that she wrote the lyrics too back in the 70's and had a friend put it to music for her. (I have already blogged about this, see the entry "Daydreams of Youth"). Anyway, apparently the song was a success and brought a smile to grandma's face. A day or two after my aunt told me how responsive grandma had been to the song, I went to the LA debut show of british singer "Mika" and something inspired me to make a decision to record songs using my grandma's poems. I had borrowed a few of her writing journals from my mom and had been thumbing through them, and I also had a couple of piano pieces I had been working on but failed to write any lyrics for. Later when I sat down at the piano with the journals, it just flowed. Words jumped off the page into my head, weaving themselves around the piano notes I was playing. I am working on three songs at the moment. "Be Not Afraid" is a really pretty song about assurance from a higher power. I'm not religious but I think even the staunchest athiest has times where they have to believe in something bigger than themselves, whether it's nature or karma... so while personally I don't relate to a lot of the words my granmda wrote because of their biblical nature, I can always reinterprate them into something meaningful to myself. "Recurring Dreams (Nightmare Symbols)" were two different poems that I combined into one song, using a piano piece I had been playing quite a bit at home because my boyfriend Dylan said how much he liked it and it reminded him of the band Air. The lyrics are surprisingly well-suited to the slightly dark and atmospheric piece of music. Lastly, I adapted the poem that I remembered most from my childhood, one that my grandma had always been especially proud of and had given me one of those wooden plaques with the words etched or decoupaged onto it. The poem goes "Are people crazy who try to create? Someone inquired and I'm glad to relate / That if this be true it brings no sadness / For great people thrive on this kind of Madness." I added lyrics for the verses and used her poem as the chorus. I also think that the title of the project will be called "This Kind of Madness." Last night I recorded a nearly finished version of "Be Not Afraid" but I want to re-record the vocals with a better microphone and clean up some of the instrumentation.
So that's my long road to hoe, as usual I have many projects on the burners and it's always a mystery to me how and when they will be finished.
The recording this day mainly involved Brandon's guitar parts for the b-side entitled "Delay" which was an old demo that had been kicking around for a couple of years. I thought it would make a nice addition to the "Slut Buffet" remix single so we dusted it off and are finishing it to sound pretty great. While Brandon spent hours perfecting his guitar riffs, I spent my time shovelling dirt from the hillside driveway that leads down to the home/studio of Hoagie, our friend and co-producer. Over the past few years, dirt has slid down the side of the hill and covered a foot or two of the inside edge of the drive and I wanted to help out since Hoagie always goes above and beyond helping us with our music. I looked up the driveway on Google Earth beforehand so I'd know what I was getting myself into (I've been down it enough times but really Google Earth is just my new favorite distraction). It's a long road to hoe, let me tell you, and I only got about 12-15 feet done before it got dark and my back wouldn't have been able to take much more anyway. As I shoveled I thought of the work as a metaphor for the work that needed to be done on the album. That, too, is a long road to hoe, albeit a much more fun and personally satisfying one. Of course any job well done is satisfying to me, but music does more for my creative appetite than anything else.
In addition to the 12 or so tunes we have been concocting for this album, I've begun working on my first "real" solo project. I say real because, throughout the years I have dabbled in writing and recording my own songs but never to the point where I wanted anyone to hear them. However, my dear grandma Irene suffered from a stroke last July just a few days after I went home to visit the family, and is now in a care facility where she is unable to really communicate with anyone much. At my aunt's suggestion, I re-recorded an old song that she wrote the lyrics too back in the 70's and had a friend put it to music for her. (I have already blogged about this, see the entry "Daydreams of Youth"). Anyway, apparently the song was a success and brought a smile to grandma's face. A day or two after my aunt told me how responsive grandma had been to the song, I went to the LA debut show of british singer "Mika" and something inspired me to make a decision to record songs using my grandma's poems. I had borrowed a few of her writing journals from my mom and had been thumbing through them, and I also had a couple of piano pieces I had been working on but failed to write any lyrics for. Later when I sat down at the piano with the journals, it just flowed. Words jumped off the page into my head, weaving themselves around the piano notes I was playing. I am working on three songs at the moment. "Be Not Afraid" is a really pretty song about assurance from a higher power. I'm not religious but I think even the staunchest athiest has times where they have to believe in something bigger than themselves, whether it's nature or karma... so while personally I don't relate to a lot of the words my granmda wrote because of their biblical nature, I can always reinterprate them into something meaningful to myself. "Recurring Dreams (Nightmare Symbols)" were two different poems that I combined into one song, using a piano piece I had been playing quite a bit at home because my boyfriend Dylan said how much he liked it and it reminded him of the band Air. The lyrics are surprisingly well-suited to the slightly dark and atmospheric piece of music. Lastly, I adapted the poem that I remembered most from my childhood, one that my grandma had always been especially proud of and had given me one of those wooden plaques with the words etched or decoupaged onto it. The poem goes "Are people crazy who try to create? Someone inquired and I'm glad to relate / That if this be true it brings no sadness / For great people thrive on this kind of Madness." I added lyrics for the verses and used her poem as the chorus. I also think that the title of the project will be called "This Kind of Madness." Last night I recorded a nearly finished version of "Be Not Afraid" but I want to re-record the vocals with a better microphone and clean up some of the instrumentation.
So that's my long road to hoe, as usual I have many projects on the burners and it's always a mystery to me how and when they will be finished.
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