Blog Post 21, December 2nd, 2019: Kiss Me Mama (the CD)
Back to Mark Dreyer’s studio. It’s a little hard to believe this cd came to be. I thought, “Will I ever write anything as good as The Hat again?” I was sure I’d topped myself. I didn’t think I needed another cd to sell. But then...somehow I wound up with a CDs worth of songs to record and what are you gonna do. It’s like being pregnant and not having the baby. I did two of these songs on my old Boss 900 studio, The Texas Song and Spend It On You; two of my favorite songs of mine. If you don’t know what a Boss 900 CDR digital mixer looks like, type that in to Amazon and see what comes up.
Blog Post 20, November 13th, 2019: Country Music (the CD)
Country music. My first country cd. No money. No co-writers. No studio and no studio musicians. It’s a true “recording artist” cd. Not to say that it’s great. Just to say that whatever you think of it is on me. If it sounds raw and homemade that’s because it is. You probably don’t know anything about recording unless you’re a musician. These days CDs are recorded in computer programs, the most common being ProTools. My Country Music CD was recorded on a Boss digital mixer from the 90s with one input at a time. The cd took months and has lots of quirks. The drums are all keyboard drums I played with my fingers. There is no voice pitch correction. If I sound flat I’m sorry, if I don’t, thank you.I had just started trying to make music for a living and needed a CD to sell to put gas in the tank try to get business. I’m proud of it because of what it is and what it represented for my life. Which was belief in myself and hope. There are some good songs on here. Thank you to anyone who bought this and still listens to it.
Blog Post 19, November 3rd, 2019: Looking for You (the CD)
My second country cd. Still working in my living room. By this time I had been performing three or four nights a week for a couple years. Lots of singing. I was putting in my “ten thousand hours.” My songwriting wasn’t quite as introspective and personal as the first CD. There’s a lot more happiness and joie de vivre on the CD. It’s again recorded on the old-school mixer and I played most everything myself. I have a very intimate relationship with this CD and the one before. I remember every single note every single missed take. This is still my best selling cd to date. I wrote a lot of the songs in the car on the way to shows. I was driving all over the southeast playing in any bar that would hire me.
Blog Post 18, October 21st, 2019: Atmosphere (the CD)
My life changed a bit by this time. You can tell. I had made a couple great friends and they poured their hearts into this cd with me. Rusty Budde and Mark Dreyer. I wrote several songs for this cd and picked up a couple. This is recorded in the Marks studio in Hendersonville TN. Some of the players on here have played on songs you’ve heard on the radio your whole life. Buy the CD check out the player credits.
Blog Post 17, October 1st, 2019: Atmosphere (the song)
This song started the way same way FloraBama Time did. I was still asking myself the question, what’s so special about this joint?
I’d wound up making a living in these “atmospheres” around south Alabama. The bars and restaurants where “the locals drink.” Each one beloved by its clientele. And I didn’t feel I’d ever put my finger on why some people stayed in the same bar for a decade when there were other bars five miles down the road. With better food or a prettier bartender or better parking and no cops at 1 AM.
If you’ve heard this song you know the answer. It’s the people. It’s always the people. Everything is people.
It’s hard to talk about this song without quoting it but that would be redundant.
As with FloraBama Time I never could finish this song alone. Rusty Budde and I whacked this out one afternoon in July of 2016 and by the end of the month he’d gotten us into a studio in Hendersonville, TN and we came up with what you hear today.
I was once again going to do a cd at home like I’d been doing, playing everything myself, engineering and producing the whole thing. But this song Atmosphere changed the course of the third cd. Mark Dreyer did such an amazing job working this song up I decided to do the whole project with him. Great decision on my part. Im slapping myself on the back here. As with everything in life, you get what you pay for. I think this cd was worth the money I paid for it. And it was cheap at that. Rusty produced for free, he has a heart of gold. And you can’t put a price on Mark Dreyer. If you’ve ever wondered what a Nashville Producer actually does let me tell you.
They sit in the studio with you day in, day out and make you work your ass off. Rusty spent two weeks of 2016 helping me make this Atmosphere record awesome. And it worked. It’s getting played on radio stations around the country and the world. Are we making any money off that? Well, no, but still….
It’s out there in the atmosphere.