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Starting to get more things done on the album. With a little research and a little advice, I’ve decided to use Bandcamp to manage my album sales. Just setting things up now, but I still have a few more technical issues to plug my way through.

It’s getting close!

Yep, so I have to get all this album and web site stuff set up before my gig, next week. I wonder if I’m forgetting anything important.

Oh yeah – I guess I should make sure my axes are playable. That sounds like a fun activity for this weekend.

So I wrote some liner notes last night for the upcoming release of The Living Room Recordings. I had recorded seventeen songs, but decided to only put eleven of them on the album (gotta save some magic for album #2).

Here are the songs you can expect. It’s about 35 minutes of mandolin and banjo-y goodness.

GARBAGEMAN’S WALTZ [2:49]
Instrument: Mandolin

DARWINIAN GOSPEL SONG [2:06]
Instrument: Mandolin

BACKUP MAN [3:25]
Instrument: Irish tenor banjo

DECADES OF DOUBT [3:28]
Instrument: Mandolin

DARLING BESSIE (MOO-COW) [3:37]
Instrument: Mandolin

SWEET BLISSFUL IGNORANCE [3:33]
Instrument: Irish tenor banjo

BLIND STUPID LOVE (THE BARNACLE SONG) [3:53]
Instrument: Five-string banjo

ONE WAY LEFT TO GO [2:02]
Instrument: Mandolin

PROGRAMMER’S LAMENT [3:10]
Instrument: Mandolin

SWEET TALKER (FUNGUS LOVE SONG) [4:10]
Instrument: Mandolin

SHE MURDERED MY SWEETHEART [1:57]
Instruments: Five-string banjo, washboard, kazoo

I say “New Album Soon”, like there is an old one kicking around some place. I’ve always wanted to record an album (on account of all that high quality original music I’ve been churning out?). A few months ago, I was offered a gig at A Thing for Chocolate, by my friend, Trish Murray – of Red Leaf Music. She said that this would be a great opportunity to sell CDs.

So I decided to record one. The gig is May 7, so I guess I’d better get this thing launched, eh? Almost done. I swear, dude, if it weren’t for the last minute, I wouldn’t get a frigging thing done.

And apparently it costs thousands to actually create CDs, so I’m just going to sell digital downloads. I tell myself it’s because I’m all hip and 2015-ish, and not because I’m broke. Gotta say, it’s pretty cool to live in a time where I can release an album with basically a $0 budget.

I wasn’t sure what to put on the cover of the album, so I was talking to Mick (my twelve-year-old). I basically waved my arms around and described what I thought could be cool. He made me sit down for the photographs (despite my unwillingness to sit still at the moment), then went to work with various apps and devices. Here’s the result:

 

Pretty cool-ass, if you ask me.

Trish tells me that the May 7th gig should be my Album Release Party.

To the best of my knowledge, all that really involves is referring to the gig as an “Album Release Party”, right?

I can do that. It’s almost ready, after all.

Here’s a pretty new song. Recorded last weekend.

Here I am about a year ago, performing my favourite Johnny Winter song:

Filmed by Brian Cote.