I did an interview for The Setup, where creative folk go into nerdy detail about the gear they use to get stuff done.
Status update: I’m still doing music full time in 2016! I’ve got some things I’m excited for you to hear/see but they ain’t ready yet. So here’s other stuff:
I’ve got a live show coming up on April 16. Details over on Facebook. If you’re near the place where it’s happening on the date and at the time that it happens, you should come inside the place and see a music show.
I was on a couple podcasts recently if you wanna hear me talk with my dumb mouth. One of ‘em’s short and serious and the other’s long and wacky:
The Passionative Podcast [iTunes]
In this episode, I interviewed Brad Sucks, the OG of crowdfunding your album and one of the first people to give away his music for free online. Brad and I talk about how to trust yourself and your art, stop worrying about things being perfect and focusing on building a fan base instead.
We’re thrilled to welcome Brad back to the show for a deep dive on Stardew Valley. On the way, we also touch on Moshow the Cat Rapper, Stovokor, Axl Rose, Bee and Puppycat, Kickstarter entitlement syndrome, Undertale disruption, Josh’s impending spin-off podcast Quarter Quorner, John Campbell, blind-fire delivering psychology services, a series of tweets that Jesse never got over, veterinary rackets, Andre Agassi, getting involved in an ass tattoo, signatures versus Signature signatures, living in the formative and evolutionary age of video games, and what kind of murderer you would be.
Also I have a note here reminding myself that I’m way, way overdue on sending out my mailing list, so sign up for that if you want to get in on that.
I think that’s all for now. Thanks for reading. I enjoyed 10 Cloverfield Lane.
Happy New Year to you all. I'm gonna do music full time in 2016, so that'll be weird.
I’ve been winding down the “real” work (aka hourly, billable, profitable, stable) in favor of doing music full time (aka unlimited hours, not billable, unprofitable & very unstable) which has been slower and harder than I thought. But I’ve been finishing up a few projects and songs and getting ready to crank out new Brad Sucks material all over the place. Here’s what I’ve been up to in the first bit of 2015: Bee & PuppyCat
I’ve written a few things for the awesome Bee & PuppyCat show that I’m excited about. The song I’m finishing this week is sung Felicia Day. I got to direct her via Skype which was a new and cool and frightening experience for me. It was pretty awesome to hear her singing words and a melody I wrote.
Natasha (B&P creator) posted this shot of me on the monitor in the studio while I was handsomely directing Felicia Day from my desk here in Canada:
It’s been really fun working on this, I’d love to do more. If anyone reading this runs like an uh, awesome, successful project that needs… bad music… you know, get in touch.
I Don’t Know What I’m Doing on Vinyl
A while back I asked on Facebook if anyone's interested in a vinyl pressing of I Don’t Know What I’m Doing, which was first manufactured as a real packaged CD in 2005. People seemed enthusiastic so I’ve been moving forward with it.
Honestly, I’m not a person who cares much about vinyl records. I own two: Micheal Jackson's Thriller and Twisted Sister's Stay Hungry and they’re hanging on my wall. I don’t own a turntable. I’ve got more nostalgia for cassette tapes and 128k MP3s downloaded from Audiogalaxy. Pressing (and shipping) vinyl is 'spensive and a big commitment and I’d like to avoid having hundreds of my own old-ass record in my basement, so I’m hesitant (aka scared).
But I have a bunch of vinyl quotes and I’ll figure out the next steps soon and probably re-ask that everyone’s suuuure they want my 100% digitally recorded album in an old, giant, fragile, heavy, noisy, expensive to manufacture and also expensive to ship format.
My friend Bruce’s album
Over the past year I’ve been helping my Texan chef friend Bruce Enloe out with bass playing and some recording and mixing on his new record Unseasonably Cool (soundcloud link). (Tracks 2, 3 and 7 are my faves.) I also played bass at the CD release show last week, which had this cool poster (designed by Mark Ettinger, drummer of the band):
Also there was an article in the big local city paper about Bruce and the record.
That’s it, thanks for reading. More stuff soon. "Always be social media-ing," they told us in Internet school. I update my Twitter and Facebook regularly.
Sad news. I learned yesterday that ANSI artist Fredrik Olsson aka Big Yellow Man, who did the rad artwork for my 2008 album Out of It, passed away in October.
I really wanted to use ANSI artwork for Out of It because BBS’s and ANSI were a huge part of my teenage life. (I was in iCE and ACiD at various points.) I also thought it might be the first time it was done? I found Fredrik’s work on Deviant Art. Pieces of his like “television” and snowy street really stood out to me from other ANSI artwork, which tends to be a bit juvenile and cleavage-heavy. “television” is the back cover of the Out of It CD and I still love looking at it.
Fredrik was a loved and respected member of the Blocktronics ANSI art community. They’ve paid tribute to him with their latest Artpack. (I used PabloDraw to view it.)
I didn’t know Fredrik well, but he was great to work with. Not only did he design the artwork for the package but he handled all the fiddly print stuff to make sure all the colors and pixels came out perfect. He seemed proud of how it turned out.
Check out some of Fredrik’s artwork. You can also watch a captured session of him drawing an ANSI piece if you want to see what it was like to paint with your keyboard and ANSI text characters in the old MS-DOS days.
Thanks and so long, Fredrik. You’ll be missed.
A friend recently reminded me that in about a year it'll be the tenth anniversary of I Don't Know What I'm Doing's first pressing. I've had a few requests for vinyl but not really enough to make me confident I won't lose money and wind up with a big box of records in my basement. Anyone hot to buy it in an ancient format? Oh yeah here's the Facebook post.
Just got back from a vacation in Nova Scotia. Man, I really needed that. What a beautiful province, I ate so much chowder and so many mussels and looked at so much ocean. I also was really surprised at how much I loved the Alexander Graham Bell museum. Turns out I knew almost zero about him, what a rad dude with a rad wife.
I'm really excited about music and recording again. I wasn't sure that'd ever happen. I’m going to start recording drums for new songs in the next few weeks -- it’ll be my first shot at using a live kit and human drummer for Brad Sucks songs so I’m curious/nervous to see how it’ll go.
I’m heading back to XOXO in Portland in September this year. If you’re in town, let’s grab a drink. XOXO was really inspiring last year, it really nailed home for me that my independent Internet creator angst is not in any way special or unique to me.
I've been loving the latest Queens of the Stone Age record the new Freeman record (by Aaron Freeman from Ween.) What have you guys been listening to?
PS: Current plan is to update here more regularly. But I also post stupid stuff on Twitter and Facebook.
The last half of 2013 was a lot better than the first half. But I did spend a lot of time working on getting better musically and cranking out demos, so that's good. I was really in a slump there for a few years, it was impressive, how does that shit happen? Hopefully no more. Thanks for your patience. So I'm looking forward to a musically productive 2014, movin' on into the future, taking more chances, being a person who does things again.
To celebrate, here's a video Eddie Utah did for Making Me Nervous with a GoPro camera:
I hope you're all doing great. I know blogging and RSS sort of died this year, but you can also find me on Facebook and Twitter and Soundcloud and maybe Tumblr sometimes? There's also a mailing list.
Thanks to y'all who came out to the Montreal show. I'm actually glad there weren't more of you because I'm very shy. Winding down the year here -- I'm playing bass December 27th as a replacement member of The Burning Sensations. The next day there's a Brad Sucks show in Kingston on December 28th and then it's time to get cracking on rehearsing and recording some new things in the hopes of a musically productive 2014.
(poster by Geoff Gibson)
I've got a few shows coming up: November 16: The Branch, Kemptville, ON November 30: Il Motore, Montreal, QC December 28: The Mansion, Kingston, ON
Posters by Geoff Gibson (Samurai in Street Clothes):
When I was in Portland a few weeks ago for XOXO I sat down with Josh Millard and Jesse Holden and a bunch of delicious beers and recorded this podcast interview.
I had sworn I would never attend a conference again but I was at XOXO in Portland a few weeks ago and it was damn lovely. Lots of cool people and fun stuff, I'll be going next year if they have it again.
Looks like all the talks are being posted on Youtube. Some favorites of mine were Jonathan Coulton's, Cabal Sasser's, Adrian Holovaty's and Vi Hart's. The first two made my eyes water a few times. I hear there were some great ones in the morning as well that I missed due to the previous evening's party levels getting out of hand.
One of the most inspiring things during the event was seeing all these independent, do-it-yourself creative types struggling with the same issues I've struggled with: overwork, pressure, isolation, confidence, customer/fan issues, balancing business and creativity. When you do it all yourself you can go a little crazy, getting wrapped up in your own universe and forgetting your problems aren't the worst problems ever invented. It's a struggle for everyone and there's something very comforting in that.
Hey, just found out UFC women's champ Ronda Rousey likes my song:
Crazy! Also in other MMA-related news some Brad Sucks songs will be on the Co Main Event Podcast next week, which is my favorite podcast.
Hey all, how have you been? Post-album it's been upgrade season around here. New gear, better health, hopefully more positive attitude. I'm getting ready to start finishing up some new music. Still not sure what to do with it yet but I'm excited (& nervous) to get back at it after such a long break. Some of these upgrades: New monitors (Event 20/20bas -> Focal CMS 65's), new bass guitar (Yamaha RBX260 -> Fender American Standard Precision), new amp (Tech 21 Power Engine -> Surf Green Fender Blues Jr), better audio interface (MOTU Ultralite mk3 -> Focusrite Scarlett 2i4), new self help strategy (CBT -> ACT), new drum skills (couldn't play drums -> can sort of play drums now), better guitar skills (could not play 7ths all over the neck -> can now play 7ths all over the neck).
I drink these smoothies now. They have bee pollen in them. And the color green.
Well, if this isn't lovely I don't know what is:
Hey, we did that show in Toronto a while ago and it was good I think. I lost my jacket and gloves, I remember that part. Since then I've been reading about and practicing cognitive behavioral therapy (my favorite cognitive distortions: magnification and jumping to conclusions). I've been working at jobs for money and also working on music and recording and looking for fun new projects. Some of what I've been up to:
1) I have about 18 Brad Sucks demos I'm working on. Not sure what'll happen to them just yet. Post them online? New album? Singles? I don't know what the right thing to do is in this crazy new future.
2) I helped record a live performance of Chef Bruce and The Burning Sensations at his cool place called The Branch in my home town. On Saturday I saw Jim Bryson there and his lyrics and songs made me cry a little. Uggghhh emotions, why do they exist, what are they even for.
3) I helped my friend c.layne do the Dodged a Bullet Songfight which is apparently still in progress. c wrote and did all the hard work on the song, I just gussied it up a bit.
4) Today I'm wrapping up a quick last-minute song for Astroloco -- an upcoming adventure game about space trains (trains in space!!) that you can vote for on Steam Greenlight here. I was really into adventure games as a kid, particularly the funny ones like Space Quest and Monkey Island, so it's fun to be involved in that even only slightly at the very end.
That's all I can remember. Catch you later.
I'm still playing in Toronto on Saturday. I'm pretty sure the album's available everywhere it's supposed to be. iTunes, Amazon, Bandcamp, CD Baby, Spotify, Rdio and now finally Jamendo (thanks to everyone who helped out with that). Oh and I'm slowly getting it on Soundcloud. Also a big thank you to everyone who's been buying it. For a while I wasn't sure if I'd get to still be a musician but it looks like I'm OK for now.
By the way, the source/stems for the album are here. Send me anything you make with my stuff, I'll be featuring some things in the next while.
I've been neglecting this blog in favor of Facebook and Twitter. I have some confusion about where to channel my Internet energies these days.
It's -28C outside right now. That's cold.
It's been 2013 for like two days! Happy New Year, everybody. 2012 was a tough one but overall good. With the album out the door I'm excited about working on new stuff and getting better at writing and recording music. It's been really nice, I forgot how much I missed it while I was in album finishing hell. My first step was to upgrade my monitors. After a lot of research I bought a set of Focal CMS 65's and oh my god I'm happy with them. I feel like I can hear everything in the mix now. It's actually a little horrifying because there are all these recording choices I didn't realize I was making but it's exciting, it feels like I can control sound better now.
Meanwhile, I'm getting ready for our Toronto show on the 26th.
Hey, the new album's on iTunes finally. That took longer than I thought it would. It's also on Spotify and most other digital services now and you can of course still get it on this here website. I posted track #5 to Youtube because did you know that's where kids listen to music now?
Me? Oh, I've been busy filling orders and I turned 36 yesterday. Trying to do what I can to promote the album but I'm excited to get back to work on music. It's a big relief no longer being creatively jammed up with this thing. My plan is to never do that again. It's gonna be great.