dear reader,

tomorrow, christmas will be only one week away. (unfortunately, i believe i’ve already missed the one-week mark for hanukkah, which was monday, no? although, if today were the 17th day of kislev, instead of december, i’d be right on the money… .) the solstice will be here even sooner, heralded for me personally by a vague recognition that i haven’t really seen the sun for A Long Time.

and in the category of Feels Like Christmas To Steve, we’ve got snow on the ground here in nj, a couple of nice little fake trees (that our cats insist on eating anyway) lit up in our apartment, and those red holiday cups at starbucks.

what could possibly be missing, you ask? how about a good night, states christmas song! i am not making this up!

in the fall we promised three more internet singles. after the halloween release, “the odd and the even,” our songwriting and recording schedule got a little difficult, so although you’ve seen photos of recording “if i can,” you haven’t heard the song yet. joe and i are still working pretty hard on that one, but we hope to get it to you by the close of 2008.

in the meantime–last weekend, to be specific–we did what any band in our position (one song in the works and one to go!) would do: set up at the hardings’ and recorded something very special for everybody who’s helped to make this a very special year for us.

there are sleigh bells, there’s a glockenspiel, and there is very much the sound of folks singing in the living room. so download the song tomorrow (it will be free! no excuses!), put it on in your living room, pour a glass of eggnog to go with your cookies (and maybe some silk nog for me if i’m lucky) and pretend we’re all together.

merry christmas to you.

dear reader,

happy monday. that’s not necessarily said sardonically, i should note; i’m looking forward to this week for two reasons:

1. the october SAT is this saturday. that means if i can just get through this week (and get my clients through this week with their nerves intact), i will have some very slight respite from insanity. [this is said from the perspective of someone who has worked (either tutoring or playing, and many times both) literally every single day, monday-tuesday-wednesday-thursday-friday-saturday-sunday, for over a month.]

2. we are recording this saturday for the first of three fall internet singles. this song is great. i’m really excited about it. the tentative release date is october 15th, which should carry you through that period between the end of oktoberfest and halloween. speaking of holidays, our plan is to get the other two out for thanksgiving and christmas, because, well, why not. (the real answer is that we hunger and thirst for sleigh bells.)

so that’s me this morning. hope that gives you at least one thing to look forward to as well.

dear reader,

somewhat hilariously, in my last post (one month ago) i stated that i wanted to blog here regularly. where have i been?

of course, the week+ of “rest” i was so looking forward to turned into nearly two weeks of sickness, followed immediately by a frenzy of recording and mixing for “sometimes i see you on the lawn” (have you listened to it yet?), followed immediately thereafter by a frenzy of prep for a summer music program i’m teaching. in fact, my voice cleared up enough to sing “sometimes” literally just in time–the LAST day i had available to track before i needed to begin mixing to get the track out in time.

in short, i apologize.

and that leads nicely into a couple of informal announcements:

1. there’s a new track today, “moonlight.”

2. it’s the last internet release until sometime in the fall.

we’re not 100% on when exactly we’ll start up again with the once-a-month singles. joe and i are going to be finishing “in the impossible tension” on our own time here in nj, but we won’t be releasing the last two tracks individually. all i’ll say is that there’ll be no august releases (except maybe a physical copy of “in the impossible tension,” MAYBE), and probably no september ones either.

don’t cry, tickles. it’s good! i’m sure you all have been postponing your vacations for fear of getting behind in this relentless listening march to the proverbial sea, so… here you go. take that cruise. go visit your family.

in any event, watch for announcements on that.

truth is, we’ve had a pretty great (albeit busy) june and 1st half of july, what with the big summer festival show a few weeks ago, some more glowing reviews of that set and “short films on self-control,” “not come around” getting some play on wyep in addition to “killer of the one,” and a feeling of some renewed drive for playing a bunch more shows. i’m really hoping we can take breathers here and there to enjoy what IS going on, and balance a bit in our hearts the drive to make more happen.

well… i’ve got to get to school. but it’s good to see you again, reader.

try and imagine those three words in a triangle.

dear reader,

“she wrote a letter” was probably the most difficult single yet to mix. hopefully it’s not the most difficult to listen to. (actually, i’m listening to it right now, on our site. i’m always on our site now because i accidentally dragged my gmail bookmark right off the bar, and the good night, states bookmark is now where the gmail one was. imagine the confusion.)

yesterday i had a sudden influx of free time, which in some way, shape or form, is what most of my posts seem to be about lately, and which i knew then to be short-lived, certainly, so i spent it editing this long overdue video. i promise you will either find it charming or absolutely terrifying and not at all funny, in an understated way. anyway, you should watch it and share it, because i’m sure one of my band mates will make me take it down soon.

as is often the case, i was in the midst of mania inspired by mixing last week. i think it’s part of human nature for lows and highs to accentuate each other, mostly because emotions are generally dependent on perception (which for human beans is not real objective on the whole); and if said ups & downs are right next to each other, then you’ve got something really, really special.
again, well-tread ground on this blog is the fact that mixing creates that for me all on its own, regardless of whatever personal equanimity or lack thereof i’ve got, because of the process. unusually, though, the most memorable moment of last week’s blur is one of real euphoria; and like all truly great bouts of euphoria in my life, it was also a moment of great clarity.

(let me take another sip of coffee to really settle into an ironic tone.) that clarity was clearly exhibited last wednesday as i drove down the hills of allendale road quite a bit too fast, singing/screaming “OH YEAH!” on the way to my 3.30 session. it seemed like the only thing to do. you see, “she wrote a letter,” is really about (drum roll, please… ) CHANGE, in all it’s difficulty and destruction and most of all beautiful elation. freedom, people. fo rill.
i’m tired pretty much all the time now. joe’s theory is that no matter how careful we are, the in-between week is not long enough to catch up from the weekend. ever. that’s probably true, and i think it’s also true that a lot of my fatigue is really internal. in any case, the song reminded me just in time that nobody has to stay where they are–if marilee changed her dollars for pesos, her DMs for euros, baby, then man i can, too. specifics will die, nay are even now fading away. embrace the nothing-permanent.

without the details, of course, i’ve got no kind of dialectic, but that’s ok. i traded it for freedom.

ps. ok, SERIOUSLY, watch the video.

We spent the weekend putting finishing touches on our June 1st release and beginning the song you will meet for yourself in July. I had the pleasure of playing a fantastic Baldwin baby grand, thanks to our friends Katie and Martin. This particular piano was perfectly in tune and with an action that I would describe as primly starched collar yet surprisingly easy going, which wasn’t a problem, until we attempted to execute a glissando.

The middle 2 1/2 octaves simply refused to yield to any sideways pressure on the keys.

If you have a piano and a friend at your disposal, you can perform the following exercise to feel as if you were there with us on Friday night: begin at the high end of the keyboard and glissando to the E which is a tenth above middle C. When you reach that E, have your friend depress firmly the sides of your head with the lower part of his palms, at the middle of your skull, to disable your hearing. Meanwhile, you remain glissandoing until the B two octaves below middle C, at which point your friend releases your ears and you continue to ravage your finger down to the very last note on the keyboard. Neat, huh? Anyone who sends footage of themselves performing this act of solidarity with the Good Night, States keyboarding department will certainly receive some great door prize. For example, the piano currently in our living room. If you can get it out the door.

Recording has some significant ups and downs for me, spanning the heights of sheer jubilation that I AM ACTUALLY DOING THIS!! at the age of twenty seven, really playing rock and roll that other people will hear - and maybe even like - perhaps for years and years to come, to the lows of timing my nerve-induced intestinal dysfunction so that it looks like it was Steve’s idea to take a break from the sound board where he has just listened to forty three attempts at the pre-chorus and while he’s having a slug of some hard liquor, I’ll just run to the bathroom, la di da, and be there for twenty minutes attempting to keep my malodorous misfortune to myself so as not to dispatch my compatriots on the other end of the headphones.

I have been in this band just over one year, and it has only recently occurred to me that the constant exposure to the recording process has caught me up on a lot of skills that might normally take much longer to evolve. Were I to play in any other band, any other normal, hard drinking, tattoo laden, good-times-havin’ rock band, instead of our workaholic, long-distance, perfectionist, goal-driven, music mastery focused little family here, I would probably have one album under my belt at this point, and therefore about one week of recording experience to my name. Good Night, States has taught me a phrase on which will.i.am spent a lot of money, but far fewer editing hours than Steve is spending on our upcoming release, to spew, namely: Yes. We. Can.

And. Nearly. Every. Weekend. Too.

My confidence seems to be growing, along with it a distinct sense of hope about my tiny, fragile, late-bloomer musicianship, and also I now take legal amphetamines which certainly make the world extra bright!

Oh Yeah! She Wrote A Blog Post!