Image: Congress House Studio - Drum Room

The night before I go back in the studio. and I thought I'd start a journal on the making of this new album.

Heading To The Congress House for an Election Album
I just finished a live album that about killed me... seriously. I actually wrote an announcement I was retiring forever from the stage the last week of the mixing process. My wife caught me and persuaded me to sit on that genius idea a few weeks.

I'm heading back to the Congress House In Austin, my favorite studio around. Working again with Mark Hallman, a Multi-Grammy producer. Not that that matters much anymore. I was looking at the sales of Grammy-winning albums compared with just the beginning of the millennium. Used to be Grammy winners were usually close to the millions or way above it. Nowadays, it's pretty common to have someone win with not enough sales to feed a drummer on a tour.

Enineering room, A and B rooms

The Music Game Change

The game certainly has changed.
but everybody knows that. They might not know though, that it's at a point now where it's becoming a truly impossible career unless you dream to live in a van down by the river, which many of us do. And I guess that was kinda true in the past too. Let's say just live by the river now. No van. If you were to know what those guys you hear on the radio and see on TV are making... 'NOT making' better you might be shocked. I say all that, because, used to be, I could make a pretty good profit, at least for a little outfit like me, off of album sales. Now an album is in the red almost always for almost everyone except for maybe, the top half of 1% released. Profit has to come from other places, like t-shirts, donations, concert tickets, publishing.. but even publishing is not paying out much anymore.

article on historic low sales

I don't really care. I know I'll still do music wether I can eat from it or not. I love and breather minor chords.

I like to think that us working musicians were just returned to our original blue collar status. That's where you aspired to be (or lower) all through history unless you landed a spot in the palace. But it does piss me off when people say, just be glad you GET to make music and do what you love... I want to say .. fuck you, why don't you just practice law for me for free ass hole, because you get to. I don't say that.. but don't say that please.

The Studio Obsolete?

Music Production has changed in such a way that it's odd now to GO TO a studio. I don't know many professional or non-pro musicians who do studio stays anymore except for maybe a drum track or an a-la-carte basis. Studios are becoming more of a vacation spot for teen's with parent money so they can act like rock stars for a few days. I personally think, if studios want to survive, they do need to start thinking in the way of 'a destination,' experience. Like a vacation. They can have a bar, a message table, and bring you pina colada, cause it really doesn't matter if your too drunk to sing, there is a plugin for that. Okay now I'm just being bitter...

One monumental way it has changed the effects in a music final product is that the mix engineer in many cases is not even in the same state or city as the recording artist. You now, for the most part, ship your multi-tracks on the cloud to a mix engineer. How it used to be done is more like a daddy waiting in the hallway for his child to be born, or at the bedside huffing and puffing. fights would break out, tense moments and be pleading while the poor mix engineer struggled to do a good mix and listen to all the musician's impossible desires. I was so common to have huge fights, I didn't feel like the part was right until someone had threatened to quit the band, or it came to near blows.

I think I've made around 6 studio albums and then quite a few in the digital home studio era. Use to be, the night before I jump in the van with a band and head to a studio, I was so excited I couldn't sleep the night before with all the dreams of lollipops dancing in my head. Nowadays it seems like an incredible chore. A lovely chore that I'm grateful for, but none the less a chore. I'm really burned out. That's why I'm trying something new and doing this all in-studio with a producer.

With the experience of my last few albums; which started in excitement and anticipation and dragged on for a year, two years, three years, some even getting abandoned–I'm really fighting the feeling of being absolutely horrified to start another big album. That's the biggest reason I'm going with a producer and not self-producing, Me being the sole producer was the common denominator in all the stalled albums, and I about ran myself into the ground.

I'm sick of me stalling things for the elusive ___BLANK____ I had to put a blank there because I never know what I'm searching for, but I can't stop until I find it–sometimes it feels it will bankrupt me before I find it.

My claim to fame in making records is that I had an album project turn out so horrifically hard and long spanning (probably 3 years of every single day on it) that by the end of it, my first wife and I were divorced. In fact, the week before the CD's came in, we signed divorce papers. When I started the project of 2 and a half / 3 year Promise Land Album, we seemed to be doing fine.

This was cathartic ... I didn't even know all that yuky negative shit was in my head until I wrote this. I just felt kinda oppressed. Glad I spilled it out. I'm excited! time to rock!
I'll try to keep a journal going through the album.

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