Writing and recording Waitress Blues on Deep Salvage.

Please use the player below to listen to Waitress Blues while you read!)

When I first read these lyrics, I liked them but I was a little bummed. Given the title, I figured Dave wanted a blues riff, and I have no desire to write a blues song. What's to write besides the lyrics? I mean, maybe if could play the guitar properly, I would be more into the blues, because then I could stretch out record some sort of blistering solo. But I can barely play the guitar! After a few days of mulling over what to do, I finally wrote to Dave and just straight up asked him if he wanted a blues pattern. He wrote back immediately and said no. He also commented briefly on the lyric structure, in which the verse and chorus are the same, and simply said that this was what made the song interesting. I, of course, had completely missed this!

Anyway, at first I was very relieved to not be writing a blues pattern, but then I started thinking to myself, does a blues have to be I/IV/V over 12 bars? Maybe not. So I picked up the Maton (hallowed be thy name!) and starting futzing around. I had been noodling on the riff that starts the song, thinking I would use it for one of mine, but I went ahead and hummed some of Dave's words to it and they seemed to work. And then, just like that I was stuck. Where to go? After much noodling, I hit on the idea of verse being in the V key of the chorus. To me, this is cool, as the song has a nice bit of tension that sneaks up on the listener. For the solo, knowing I had a monster guitar player in Tim, I went ahead and made that a standard 12-bar blues, complete with some old riffs I'd learned back in the eighties, and it was time for some drums and bass. Andy Korn went first, absolutely pounding out a beat and coming up with the KILLER idea of the flammed snare hits in the verse. Next up, Sam swung by Hyde Street and, wow, watching him play this song was just incredible, especially for the 12 bar blues bit. With guitar, drums and bass in the can, it was time for a little throat. I knew early on in creating this song that RodDamnit would be the perfect singer, and sure enough, he came into Hyde Street and BELTED the vocal. I had Josh add harmonies, plus I had Larkin Gayl do one line and it was time for a little mixology!

To read Dave's notes on the lyrics, please click here.

Paul McCartney, SF, CA, June 11, 2010

(Note: taking a brief break from Deep Salvage posts to write about Macca!)

Go ahead, you music snobs, get it out: Paul is cheesy, he's sappy, he's no John Lennon, he wrote the stupidest Beatles songs, he's shallow, he's a fool for trusting Michael Jackson, he's a moron and a sap for not signing a pre-nup with Heather Mills, etc., blah, blah, blah.

I confess, I've always had some less than favorable views of Paul, too. But in 2004, I saw Paul McCartney at a Neil Young Bridge School concert and my view began to change. He opened that show with Drive My Car and my jaw hit the dew soaked, landfill-coating grass of Shoreline's lawn, where Catherine and I had been sitting for hours. His voice was impeccable, not the hoarse rasp of 70s/80s Wings shows, and his playing was simply the best I have ever seen (there is no better bass player in my book).

Then, just last year, I read that McCartney had performed with Dave Grohl at the Grammy's. I googled the show immediately, found it on YouTube (it has since been removed) and watched it something like ten times. Again, McCartney sounded great and his band, with Grohl on drums, was positively on fire. (Note: McCartney's touring drummer, Abe Laboriel Jr., smokes Dave Grohl.)

So this year, as I was casually reading about McCartney's 2010 Hollywood Bowl show on Pop and Hiss I was stunned to see that he would be coming to SF. Could there be tickets? I surfed off to the evil Ticketmaster and, presto, got two tickets no sweat, great tickets, lawn tickets, right-in-front-of-the-stage-only-50-rows-back-or-so tickets. Then I remembered how miserable I am at concerts these days and therefore almost never go anymore and I thought to myself "I am not going to miss this." Sure enough, in the days before the show, I started going through a down period and was sleeping poorly and getting lots of headaches and on the day of the show I woke up feeling positively horrible. I slept most of the day, but still the headache and heightened dizziness persisted.  Again, I told myself I could not miss this show.

At around 6:30 PM, off Catherine and I went. About one hour and 30 minutes later, McCartney hit the stage and I knew I had made the right call. The show was so amazing I even started to feel better. Highlights? The whole thing. Truly, there wasn't a dud number, not one. Any remaining musical snobbishness of mine toward McCartney disappeared into the night (a typical SF summer night of fog, arctic wind and zero stars) as he belted out number after number. Every musician on stage was mind-bogglingly great. Could I nit pick? Sure, but I'm not going to. It would be like complaining about a little chip on a frame around a Picasso. Yes, he was that good.

Writing and recording Borderline Love.

Borderline Love (player below) was the first Deep Salvage song. Dave sent me the lyrics and I remember grabbing The Maton (say it again!) and writing the verses quickly. I had been wanting to do a song in F#, because it's a great key on the electric guitar, so I started there and just continued on. And on. And on. At some point, I wrote to Dave and asked for more lyrics as the song grew to epic proportions. Then, following the Deep Salvage recording method, I recorded a demo with my drum machine, bass, guitars and vocals, sent it to Tim Young in L.A., we worked on the guitar parts over the phone and then Sam put down a bass track and Andy pounded out a great beat (he had the idea for the clapping, which I love) and I had RodDammit (in photo) come into Hyde Street to sing and then, for harmonies, I called Josh Fix and… well, Josh started doing his thing and about half way through the session, he stopped, looked at me, and basically said, "What the hell?" He was reacting to the overwritten nature of the song. At first, I was mad, but I knew in my heart he was right. We stopped the session, and I re-wrote the second half of the song (from the second guitar solo) and re-recorded everything except the lead vocal. Josh, if you're reading this, thank you again for having the smarts and guts to speak up and point out the original song's flaws!

One more quick note on this tune: just before I wrote the music I watched a TED talk by Benjamin Zander titled Music and Passion. His main point is a great one, but what really struck me about his talk was the use of tension in a Chopin piece he plays during the talk. Chopin never resolves the song until the very, very end, so as you listen, you start to crave that resolution. Now, I have always struggled to create enough tension in my songs, I tend to sit pretty close to the tonic, a habit that creates SEVERE BOREDOM for the listener. So, for the end of the chorus of Borderline Love I purposely went to a weird chord (Dbm) every time the chorus comes around until the very last chorus, which resolves to the F#. Huh, just realized, after years of feeling indifferent toward classical music maybe it has more to offer than I care to admit!

Read Dave's take on the lyrics here!

Remembering The Forgotten Place, part two, production.

(To hear The Forgotten Place, use the player at the end of this post. To download Deep Salvage, please visit http://deepsalvage.bandcamp.com)

As with every other song on Deep Salvage, except Waitress Blues, I finished the demo of The Forgotten Place with no idea of who would sing it. Musically, the song is complex, modulating from minor to major and covering a decent melodic range, so it needed an accomplished singer. Trouble is, I hate most "accomplished" singers, with their over-emotive delivery, "horse factor" vibratos and tendency toward improvisation at all the wrong moments and in the most cliché way. I also wanted someone who sounded weathered, someone who had lived hard and could deliver Dave's words as though he, not Dave, had written them. After listening to several folks, I was beginning to give up hope, but Tim Young, the guitarist on Deep Salvage, told me not to worry. He had The Guy, a soulful singer named Dave Brogan (see photo above). Even better, he said he and Dave would be playing a gig soon in SF and so I could go hear him live. The gig was at The Connecticut Yankee and though I was only able to stay for one set (clubs, the music kind, cause my brain problems), I left feeling pretty certain about Dave's voice, but not totally convinced.

Parallel to my Great Search for a Singer, Tim and I were hard at work on the guitar parts. Only one teensy challenge: Tim lives in LA and I live in SF. So everything was done over the phone and over email, starting with me sending Tim my demo and then talking on the phone a bit and then Tim sending me his demo and so on. The guitar part is tricky, because it's a pattern, but not. In other words, there are a few things that repeat, bust mostly it's random. After several back-and-forths, Tim finally said to me, "Freedom rock, right?" I wasn't sure what he meant but it sounded cool so I said, "Exactly!" The tracks that came back are what you hear on the CD.

Sadly, my memory of the recording the drums and bass is murky. I know the drums were recorded at Hyde Street Studio C, with Andy Korn pounding the skins and Jaimeson Durr twisting knobs. But I can't remember where Sam Bevan laid down the bass track. Was it Hyde Street? At his house? Thinking… nope… can't remember. Damn, I feel bad about this because Andy's and Sam's playing on the song is great, and I wish I could recount the details. I'll try to call them.

My memory is also murky regarding the vocal sessions. I'm sure Dave Brogan was first, and from the earliest takes all my doubts vanished. He was born to sing this song.

Then, I think I had Larkin Gayl come into Hyde Street to record harmonies. (I remember she was pregnant at the time, so she did not imbibe in her usual nip of bourbon!) But even with these two great voices, I felt one more voice was needed, especially in the middle 8, where I was after a sort of CSNY-type thing. I called Josh Fix and he came in and sang like a bastard. God, he was great, laying down layer after layer of vocals to fill out the middle 8. For the final take, I told him to be the drunken idiot who always over emotes and he delivered in spades. Lotsa fun. I even stepped behind the microphone for a take!

And we were done. Mixing, mixing and more mixing followed.



Remembering The Forgotten Place, part one, writing the music.

If my memory is correct — and that's a big if — The Forgotten Place (use player below to hear) was the second track Dave Tutin and I worked on for Deep Salvage, right after Borderline Love.

When I first read the words, I saw the story of someone who had traveled so far he was unable to get back home, not just physically but mentally. For me, this unquenchable longing inspired a chord progression and melody that together are meant to evoke the feeling of a person trying to get up a hill to some idealized place, but never quite making it. The progression starts on a major, which is full of optimism, and climbs upward, but ultimately slides back to a minor as hope and optimism dissipate. The chorus reflects a mood of "well, I may not be able to get back home, but I've sure had a hell of a journey".

When Dave heard the first demo he said he liked everything, but struggled to be able to remember to final notes of the chorus melody. To me, however, I liked the way those last notes for "called home" are hard to remember how to sing, because that is what the song is saying, I think, that home has become hard to remember. But there were other, bigger problems: one, I could not think of good music for the middle 8 and two, when I played the demo for Catherine she instinctively felt that the verses wern't quite right. * Once I calmed down, I realized she had a point, and I put off solving the middle 8 issue for while to noodle on ideas for a fix. This must have been happening around the end of 2008, because I remember working on the song when we were in Hawaii (see photo). In fact, I'm pretty sure I remember being in our Kona coast hotel room with my Steinberger guitar and playing Catherine the new chord progression I was thinking about for the verse – actually, it was the same progression she'd already heard, but with one change – and she said she liked it. Mai Tai!

Back home from Hawaii, I started working on the middle 8. This went on for months. I would sit in the living room at night with the lights off and the harbor lights outside the window flickering on the water and The Maton (hallelujah!) in my lap and a lyric sheet and just noodle and noodle and noodle. I can't remember the exact night, but at some point I honed in on the notion of a strongly church-going chord progression, one with a couple of good "amen choruses", or movements from the IV to the I (D to A and A back to E, in this case). This meshed with the confessional feel of the words and seemed to be the missing bit for the song. Still, I had to get to the middle 8 and then get out of it! Argh, so much to do! Again, after much additional noodling, I hit on the groove you hear before the middle 8 begins and the outro from the middle 8, which was somehow Beatles inspired (from the Abbey Road period). Then I had the harebrained notion of ending the song with a verse and chorus that are different from the verses and choruses at the beginning of the tune. There was method to the madness, though! After all, the song is about never being able to go back home, so why should the song go back home?

In part two, I'll do my best to recount how this song came together in the studio and over the phone, on the Internet and even at a bar. Till then, please visit Dave's blog to read about lyrics to The Forgotten Place.

* The original progression was E, B, C, B, C, D, Em, with the offending chord being that first C. I'll talk about the new progression and the music in general in the next post.



Announcing Deep Salvage. Redux.

Let's try that again.

Last week, I posted that Deep Salvage, a four-song collaboration between me and my friend Dave Tutin, was finally available. What a fool was I. Not because the album wasn't ready (it was), but because I chose possibly the very worst day of summer to launch it. Yup,  despite all my years in marketing, I opted to launch Deep Salvage on Thursday before the 2010 4th of July weekend. In other words, just as everyone was frantically making preparations to spend some quality time with family and friends, I popped up and basically said, "Hey, stop what you're doing, listen to my new album and pay me some money." Chalk it up to impatience. Truly, I have been DYING to release some music for so long I just couldn't wait any longer, and I wasn't thinking clearly.

But enough with the lame-mentations. So one more time, Deep Salvage is out! You can needle-hop it using the player below, and if you like what you hear, you can download your very own copy at http://deepsalvage.bandcamp.com

To thank you for your support, if you choose to download the album, Dave and I will send you codes for two free songs, one from Dave and one from me.

To give you more background on the album, Dave and I will be posting about the songs all week. In fact, Dave already has a post up about The Forgotten Place, so check it out here!

I hope you enjoy Deep Salvage. It was made with a lot of care and enthusiasm, not to mention blood sweat and tears, and it has a very deep meaning for me, as it is the first album I have ever released, something I have wanted to do since I was teenager, maybe even before that.

Deep origins, or the very abbreviated story of how Deep Salvage came together. Part two, writing and producing the songs.

The very first song written for Deep Salvage started as an email from Dave. In it, he described how he had a lyric that seemed to by crying out for rock music and since he didn't write rock music, he asked me if I give it a shot. I was totally flattered and went for it, but I was concerned too. I mean, even though my brain injury was nearly two years old, I was still in bad shape, and I didn’t want to promise something I couldn't deliver. I expressed all this to Dave but he replied and told me to just do what I could do, no pressure.

When the lyrics arrived, I grabbed the Maton (can I get an amen?) and very quickly, maybe only 10-15 minutes later, I had some music for the verses and choruses. I emailed Dave asking if he wanted to weigh in on the song before I went further and he wrote back and said no. And in that moment, the pattern for Deep Salvage was set: Dave would dig up an old lyric, sometimes complete, sometimes not, and we'd trade a few emails on what kind of song might be lurking in the words, and then I'd just go off on my merry way, sometimes asking for small phrase changes to match a melody, an extra verse, one less verse, etc. All of our discussions were over email, we never even talked on the phone. We also never talked about making an album, but before too long, we had four songs and I wrote to Dave about how four songs was an EP…

Every song on Deep Salvage was subjected to the same production approach, more or less. I would complete my Pro Tools demo, which would feature my trademark, slightly out-of-time guitar and bass work, simplistic drum programming and truly painful singing. Then I would send the whole mess to L.A.-based guitarist Tim Young,* and he and I would get on the phone  — guitars in hand — to discuss what he should play, specifically, which bits of my takes were cool and which were lacking. We would also talk guitar tone and playing style. A few days later, Tim would send his tracks back to me (he records in his own home studio, mostly), we'd get on the phone again to discuss what he had played, maybe do one or two more rounds and then, with Tim's glorious groove as a foundation, I would head to Hyde Street Studio C to work with engineer Jaimeson Durr* and drummer Andy Korn* to create The Thump. Next, Sam Bevan* would add his bass, sometimes from his home, sometimes at Hyde Street. And finally, I would decide on a singer, which was easy for Borderline Love and Waitress Blues but murder for The Forgotten Place and Easier Said Than Done. All of which means, all of the players were never once in the same room.

The name for the album came from a photograph I snapped while I was out in Madison, Wisconsin, in 2009, getting some innovative therapy for my ailing brain.

I posted the photo on my blog, and Dave commented that it would make a good cover for our album. I asked him to suggest a title and presto, Deep Salvage it would be.

Stay tuned for track-by-track notes.

To download Deep Salvage, go here. To thank you, I will send you an extra track by Dave and one by me.

 * I will profile Tim, Jaimeson, Andy, Sam and a few other folks more completely when I finally release my album, but suffice it to say they are all Rock Gods.



A fine day to rock the nation.

San Francisco has cursed many a US birthday with thick fog and gusting winds, but today looks like the city might actually behave for 4th. As of ten this morning, the fog was lurking, but over on the Marin side of the SF Bay and the wind, while typically thuggish in its ways, seemed to be feeling a little less sadistic than usual.

Still, no matter what the weather holds, you can't keep a good party down, so come this evening, there will be thousands of revelers watching the sky go BOOM (as their coutry does the same, thanks to Obama's love of spending money we don't have!).

And no other country in the history of the world is so deserving of an annual fest. Despite my negative views of the current situation, I'm still a major fan of the US of A.

Happy birthday, America! Oh, and because it's the American thing to do, I'm going to try to do a little business today. Yup, I'm going to ask you to give Deep Salvage a spin, my first album ever! Check it out below. And if you want to download the whole thing or just a few songs, please visit the Deep Salvage site. (Note: the riffage of Waitress Blues would go nicely with the act of throwing meat on fire!)

Deep origins, or the very abbreviated story of how Deep Salvage came together. Part One, meeting Dave Tutin.

Note: On Thursday, July 1, Dave Tutin and I released our first album, Deep Salvage. Dave wrote the words, I handled music and production. To listen to the album free, please use the player above. To purchase a download of your very own, please visit http://deepsalvage.bandcamp.com

Deep Salvage is a collaboration between Dave Tutin and me. Dave writes the words, I write the music. If you've been reading this blog, you probably know a fair bit about me, but not Dave. Here's a brief recap how we met and started working together as songwriters.

Back in 1996 or so, I got my first copywriting job in a big ad agency, McCann-Erickson San Francisco, and for my final interview, I had to meet with McCann SF's Executive Creative Director. Before that fateful day, I had been in the building several times but never to the all-black corner office of the ECD. And I do mean black: the carpet, the Le Corbusier chairs (4 of them), the desk chair – everything. The man I was to meet was also a study in black, with his black leather jacket, black t-shirt, black pants, and black shoes. On entering the office, I noticed the awards on the floor all along the base of the walls, as if to say, "Whatever, there's more where these came from."

I don’t remember much about the interview with Dave, but I do remember feeling it hadn't gone very well. And why should it have? My portfolio was a mix of spec work and business-to-business ads, and even though I had once taught English to former East German border guards in East Berlin, I was intimidated. Many months later I learned that my gloom and doom instincts were right:  Dave had not wanted to hire me, but relented because he figured he wasn't going to have to deal with me much, as I wasn't going to be one of his direct reports.

Flash forward about 7 or 8 years and now I'm working directly for Dave, he in New York and me in SF, and we're at the cafe in the alleyway outside the agency. Dave sips his cappuccino and casually asks me if want to hear the album he's working on.

I feel my stress levels rise.

Here's the sad truth: I have had so many people play me their music and I am almost never impressed, so when Dave handed me his B&O headphones, I was worried I was going to have to lie. But put them on I did. He pressed play and… from the very first notes I knew I wasn't going to have to lie at all. In fact, I probably held back my enthusiasm a bit because I didn't want to risk being seen as total sycophant!

Jump forward again several years to 2007-8 and now I'm home recovering from my brain injury, while Dave is still in NYC, but busy launching his own business instead of working for someone else's. His first album is done and it's phenomenal and now I'm starting to make an album of my own, albeit very slowly, given the brain injury and all. By this time, I had probably sent Dave a demo or two of stuff I was just starting to work on, I might have even finished Here Comes the Weather, I can't recall, when one day an email from Dave arrives with a lyric sheet attached. His note says something about how the lyrics seem to be crying out for a rock song and since he doesn't write rock songs maybe I could give it a go.

I did. And that song – Borderline Love – would become the second song on our first album, Deep Salvage. (Use the payer above to give it a spin! Just click on the double arrows to advance to song 2.)

Looking back on it all, I'm amazed by so may things: that I got the job, that Dave and I ended up being a good team in adland, and, most of all, that the Man in Black, as Dave was known in those McCann days, has gone from being a distant boss to a close friend and songwriting partner.

PART TWO.



Deep Salvage is now available. Finally!

Today is the day. Deep Salvage is out! It's a four-song EP that I co-wrote with Dave Tutin and it's available now on bandcamp. Just use the player above to listen to the tracks, or go directly The Deep Salvage page on bandcamp, where you can download the tracks and read the lyrics while you wait!

NOTE: When you download, if you already have a PayPal account, you will be asked to enter your PayPal login. If you don't have PayPal, you can use a credit card, just hit "checkout" then look for the "don't have a PayPal account?" box. Click that and off you go! Sorry about this, but getting the tracks up on iTunes takes MONTHS, so this is the best I can do for now. To ease the pain, just know that bandcamp takes none of your money, it all goes to the artist! Please let me know if you have any problems.

You'll also have to select a file format. If you go with MP3, you're getting a much higher quality MP3 than you would get on Amazon or iTunes, but if you really want the Deepest Deep Salvage experience, I would go with ALAC, which stands for Apple Lossless Audio Codec and offers the full sound quality of an uncompressed CD, but in a smaller file size. ALAC files play fine on iTunes, but not on a Blackberry, because RIM sucks.

Over the next few weeks, Dave and I will be posting about the making of the album. Stay tuned.

It's the wind-up and...

Deep Salvage will be released tomorrow!

Check back here for details on where to listen to it and (gulp!) buy it.

Converting a hotel room into a recording studio.

Over the weekend I headed up to Seattle to spend a little time with one of my very best friends, Jeff Tuttle. He was there to run a half marathon, I was not. Nope, I was just there to spend a little time with Jeff and catch up on all the goings-on in his life and offer him as much support as possible as he finalizes his divorce. We also had plans to work on some songs.

Originally, Catherine was going to join us, but she had to bail, so it was just Jeff and me. We checked into our rooms on Thursday, Jeff ran the race Friday morning and then on Friday, we converted my room in to a recording studio.

So, how the hell do you create high quality recordings in a hotel room? Honestly, it couldn't be easier, provided you remember to pack what you need. I, of course, spaced on something kind of important: the DAC, which is a box that converts analog signals to digital for the computer. Luckily, Guitar Center had a cheap one ($100), so I bought it and we were ready to ROCK. (Sort of, the tunes were all pretty mellow.)

I set up the laptop, DAC and mic and we started with Jeff laying down harmony tracks on Indecision, the song he sings on my upcoming album. In short order, we were done, and then we turned our attention to one of his songs, which is called Here and Now. It's a great tune about how he's coping with changes while trying to stay super present in his kids' lives (he as two). We decided to start with a simple drum machine groove and… DOH! Forgot my drum machine. Luckily, I was able to download Doggiebox, a beat sequencer I bought years ago but still have the download code for, and we were back in business.

Over the next few days, we mixed some sightseeing, a visit to an old friend of mine from my guitar school days and some good food – along with more music. Honestly, we weren't that productive but we did finish the basic arrangement for Here and Now. With any luck, the song will be done before the sun goes nova!

A good trip. Tomorrow I'm back in SF, where I will dot the last I's and cross the last T's for the release of Deep Salvage, which will commence on Thursday.

Deep Salvage update.

A few weeks ago, I posted about how Deep Salvage, a collaboration between Dave Tutin and me, would be available soon. It will be! Everything is done and now I'm just waiting to receive CDs from Oasis CD. They shipped yesterday, so I imagine they will be here by Friday or early next week. I'm going to be out of town from Friday morning until Tuesday, so the earliest anything will be available will be Wednesay of next week. Once I know for sure what the release day will be, I will post.

Stay tuned!

10 Tips For Songwriters: an e-book I contributed to.

I've been kind of quiet on the blog front, I know, but it's just because I am waiting for physical CDs of Deep Salvage, so I can upload final mixes to bandcamp and start The Media Blitz.

In the meantime, here's something super cool I took part in. It's an e-book of songwriting tips written by 18 different songwriters, me included. It was put together by Tom Slatter, who writes cool tunes and a cool blog called Songwright. 

To download the e-book, click here.

Let me know what you think of the book!

In preparation for the launch of Deep Salvage, a blog upgrade!

Next week will see the official release of Deep Salvage, a collaboration between Dave Tutin and me, and I am STOKED to announce a new "pop out" player with which to enjoy the music.

To give the player a test run, just look to the right on this page, and below the player, click on "pop out player". If everything works as it's supposed to, the player will "pop out" in a pop up window, and you can stream tunes while you browse further on the blog or cruise off to read about the World Cup. Use the arrows to jump to the next tune (there are four) or back.

A MASSIVE thank you to Dana at Vuela Design, who coded the pop up ability for the player.

Dana, you rock!

Why I wish I could be like Rick Rubin.

Every time I see a picture of record producer Rick Rubin, he looks like he has all the time in the world. He radiates calm and confidence. And he is either listening or observing, almost never talking. To me, these are qualities I try (but often fail!) to emulate because I think they are the keys to being creative. First, whether you’re a leader or a doer, if your goal is to be creative, you simply cannot create in a situation in which every one feels intense pressure. Sure, limits drive creativity and deadlines are good, but no one needs to be reminded of them ad nauseam. Look at pictures of Rick Rubin. Do you ever see him sweating? Looking all stressed out and unhappy? Head in hands? Never. Because if he did these things, he wouldn't be able to work his magic, which is to consistently get great creative from everyone who hires him. Now, speaking for myself, I can safely say that I am not always so calm, cool and collected. And every time I lose it I regret it, and I pay a price in that the creative output I'm hoping for is not what I get. Which brings me to Rick Rubin's other magnificent quality: he listens. Not only have I never seen a picture of him yelling at anyone, but also I'm 99.9% sure I have never even seen a picture of him speaking. Obviously, he's not totally silent. He just waits, observes, takes in information and calmly, but probably fairly quickly given his output, forms his opinion and expresses it. And people return the favor; they listen to him. It's a beautiful thing that results in beautiful things. And it's why, every day, I try to be more like Rick Rubin.

Waiting for the starting gun.

Last week, I sent the mastered tracks and artwork for Deep Salvage to OasisCD and after dotting a few more I's and crossing a few more T's, everything is now "in production". According to Oasis, they will be done with printing and packaging on June 22, which means I'll get my discs around June 24 or 25, so I expect to release the album a few days after that. 

I'm excited, but also strangely melancholy. Actually, it's not strange, I've been this way my whole life, always a bit down just as I'm about the finish something. I think the reason is self-doubt, a pernicious pang of uncertainty that never fully quiets down.

Regardless, here I am, committed, ready, just waiting for the signal. A few more weeks…

Enjoying my last days of anonymity.

In just a few days, Dave Tutin and I will release Deep Salvage and we will surely rocket to superstardom. I fully expect appearances on Letterman, even on Oprah. A tour with the Stones is likely to follow, plus a possible cameo on Californication.

To feed the sure-to-be-insatiable public appetite for all things Deep Salvage, Dave and I are prepping notes about how the album was made. Dave will be posting about the lyrics, I'll be writing about music and production.

The media blitz will commence sometime next week, just as soon as factories in China have built up enough inventory and the gods of bandcamp have added some extra servers to their infrastrucure. AT&T's network will most likely crash, but Verizon's should hold up. Google is cool, mostly; but to be 100% ready, they've agreed to set aside an acre of data center power to handle the coming torrent of queries and the download deluge.

Stay tuned!

Good lunch, good read, bad feeling — at Zebulon in SF.

I headed over to Zebulon for lunch today. It’s a funky little sandwich/burger place located on a hip ‘n gritty alleyway in SF’s SOMA district. I brought my lyric book with me because Zebulon’s walls seem to hold ideas, but I also brought the new issue of Uncut, which features Kate Bush on the cover. Uncut and Kate won my attentions.

As I read about the making of Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love, one of my very favorite albums of all time, and munched my sandwich, everything was cool. But on finishing the article, I made the mistake of flipping to Uncut’s reviews section. I flipped the pages… and flipped… and flipped some more.

I began to feel the way I do when I enter a bookstore: hopeless. I mean, how does anyone ever stand out from these crowds? There are so many people out there creating art. I should feel good about this, I think, because what better evidence is there that humanity isn’t a complete waste of molecules than art? But I don’t. Instead, I feel like giving up. I won’t, of course, but, man, it’s daunting, you know?

I wish I could just enjoy the journey. I wish I could not care a whit whether I have any commercial success. But I do…

Deep Salvage masters have arrived!

Last night, around maybe 9:30 PM, I remembered I hadn’t checked the mail at all. WHAT, you might be wondering, WEREN’T YOU DYING TO SEE IF THE DEEP SALVAGE MASTERS HAD COME? WHAT THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH YOU, FOOL? Well, um, fair enough, but I was SURE that nothing would arrive until Thursday at the earliest. After all, Monday was a holiday, which means that anything shipped USPS would be getting underway on Tuesday and, well, there is just no way in hell that USPS is gonna do cross country overnight, right?

Right. Turns out John Cuniberti, who mastered the songs, is just across the SF Bay in Oakland (why I thought he was in NYC, I don’t know).

So when I got to the mailbox, there it was, an unassuming envelope filled with dreams. I tore it open in the kitchen, poured myself a very small glass of H pinot* (their low-rent stuff, but still, a great wine) and then walked to the living room, where I popped the CD in the stereo and hit play. Schwing. Wow, the songs sound so much better. They are warmer, clearer, richer, punchier. They sound pro! I’m going to send the tracks to Dave and Jaime today and get their take, but I’m sure they’re going to be pleased. Next up, I tell Mr. Cuniberti to go ahead and ship me the official, properly coded CD for duplication and then I’ll send everything off to Oasis, who will press the CD run and do the packaging.

Rock superstardom awaits! Or not…

* I would have had Wellington, my friend Toby’s wine, but I’m out!