No Dragonfly for now

I guess we'll be back at Dragonfly sometime soon- but for now I have Fridays free. Anybody know of a good Friday jam session?

New Vocals at Spiritrax

Vocals have been recorded for two more Spiritrax ditties:

Do You Hear What I Hear
In case you're missing Christmas as much as I am.

Were You There
Blatantly gory lyrics like this make me see Christianity as a superstitious cult that tells horror stories to children. But it was fun doing all the rain and thunder.

More Gigs!

I guess we've been a hit at the Dragonfly. The owner wants us to start playing Thursdays as well- I don't know if Thursday will be another night at the Tempe location, or if it'll be at their Mesa location. And we got a visit the other day from Bart Salzman from Jazz in AZ, who said he liked us and wanted to book us at the Chandler Jazz Festival! I'm looking forward to being busier.

[PS Looks like Thursdays will be in Mesa, and not starting just yet. Until then I'll probably be playing with Dennis Rowland's band on Thursdays at the Kazimierz in Scottsdale.]

The New Privas

Privas' regular keyboardist, Dave Henning, coaches lacrosse in the spring, and has a game every Friday night, and our regular bassist, Harald Weinkum, is on tour for the next six weeks, so our drummer Nick found another bass player, a recent Phoenix transplant named Toby Curtright, I've been playing keyboard, and that's the trio. We're at Dragonfly on Mill Ave. and 4th every Friday night, 7:00-11:00 PM.

Is Christmas finally over, forever?

I spent most of the last three months filling up Spiritrax with Christmas carols, and I'm SO GLAD "the holidays" are finally behind me for a little while at least. Most of them don't have guide vocals yet, but I thought I'd mention them anyway, since a lot of people would know them. You can now see all my tracks at Spiritrax by clicking the Spiritrax link in the "Recordings" box on the left.

MoreBork

Local video producer Mark Bork called us a few weeks ago to write some music for "A Magical Valley Christmas", a Christmas special that he produces every December for his old hometown of Twin Falls, Idaho. He asked for original classical Christmas-y music, and my boss was busy with some other things, so I wrote it, Mark said it was perfect, and I'm psyched! My first original music used in multimedia! I can't wait to see the completed video. I joined ASCAP, and now when that sucker is broadcast, they'll send me a little check in the mail that they get from the broadcasting TV station- my first residual. Does AOL send them money when people download (or stream) it? This I don't know.

Anyway, I can't play that music for you, since it belongs to Mark now, but you can listen to the discarded 60-second sample that he didn't use. It's not too bad either, though I think he picked the better one.

The Bron Tapes Tapes

A few months ago, we got a visit at the office from a video producer named Mark Bork, who had recently moved to Phoenix from Idaho and found our name in the AZ Production Association book. Mark hired us to write music for a promotional video he was producing for a tape company called Bron Tapes. We wrote a few samples for him in different styles. They ended up picking my boss David's first inspiration, a techno track which works perfectly. To see the video, just click here, and then on the bottom of the page click on "New Promotional Video".

Anyway, I finally got around to posting my two unused samples on Productiontrax, so enjoy:

Funk Factory
Mark asked for "industrial" music, which means "slick, motivational, and corporate" to people who do a lot of these. I thought he meant "sounds like a factory". Oh well, I have to make every mistake once! I kind've wonder what's supposed to happen on the bridge, since I stopped writing just as it got there.

Stadium Rock
This has a fun vibe, but again, wasn't right for the project. I had fun tweaking the digital guitar amps, getting the distortion just like I wanted it.

See, this is why my job is so great. I can make all the mistakes I need to, and still have a job the next day. That's a luxury you don't get freelancing.