R.I.P. Dennis Hopper

Apple Finally Comes Through... ish

With some prompting from CDBaby, trainwreck is FINALLY listed on iTunes!

"I never rock da mic wit da pan'yhose..."

Steadman taking a break to pen some lyrics.

Tracking David's vocals @ North River Studio, engineer Charlie Farr.

R.I.P. Ronnie James Dio.

News...

I just got back from Salem, NH... picked up 102 copies of The Cry of a Bird of Prey...

Jynxing My Muse

As I prepare the third Eutoxita album, I find that song ideas are just pouring out of me. I pick up the mandolin... a few minutes later, there's a song. Grab the old Kent acoustic... a song... another. Sit down at the piano... chords flow like rain.

I hope my title is wrong.

Cracker

When I grow up and learn how to write songs, I would love to push out some gems like Cracker's "Hey Bret (You Know What Time It Is)".

Bits 'n Pieces

Hey there, fearless readers...

Sometime in the next two weeks, the second official EUTOXITA album, The Cry of a Bird of Prey will be released. The duplicator approved the audio masters (it’s a double-disc set) and should be notifying me soon with approval on the graphics. The second disc includes enhanced content. It’s a little clunky; I bought an old version of Macromedia Director 8 but couldn’t get Flash stuff together in time, so I fell back on an html interface. The disc includes a low-quality mov file of Nosferatu with my soundtrack embedded. It also includes my stop-motion short, Midnight Double Feature. I plan on selling it at a single-disc price, so all five of you who actually paid for a copy of trainwreck should be happy.

I have officially started the new EUTOXITA album. An acquaintance loved trainwreck but said, “Hey, where’s the country? You’ve got every style on there but country!” I offered that “When I Was a Child” is country influenced, but to no avail. I also explained that I can’t stand modern “country” and that brought us into talks of “the outlaws”—Cash, Hank Sr., Willie… Long story short, the first new song specifically written for this record* started as an old-school country waltz… and then got fed into the EUTOXITA filter. No Rascal Flats, mate. Think “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” meets Peter Gabriel.

I’ve made two other major decisions for this album. The first is that the record will, whenever possible, be a mixture of cinematic-soundscape-like textures and acoustic or rock-based instrumentation. This is where my voice (the writing one, not the singing one) has been going anyway; I’ve simply decided to be more intentional. The second is that a good portion (a third? half?) of the record will feature guest vocalists. I have, for example, already started writing a song for David Steadman (Floodwatch, MFG) to sing. It is neither Floodwatch nor MFG like in the least...

The working title of the album is voices inside outside.

*There is already one completed song that will go on the record. It was not, however, written specifically for the record.