New/Old

So we went swimming tonight... trying something new... thinking about working towards doing a triathlon or two next spring. Two years of marathon training with very little time away from running has left me feeling I should find exercise that puts less (or different) pressure and impact on my body... and swimming seems to fit the bill. Although... even just our informal 30 minute foray into the water left me with an appreciation of how much work I'll have to do on the swimming portion of the triathlon to be successful.

Anyway... The record is more or less done... Jay and Manny are making a couple changes to the mixes and we should have the finished product back from mastering in the next two weeks or so... I heard a good chunk of the nearly-final product and it sounded amazing... just amazing. Now I'm busy putting together the packaging and the release plan... for The Things We Would Rather Lose.

It's so nice to not be starting from scratch with this record... I have a substantial media list, the business is already up and running... but most importantly, I have all the things I learned from the first release, and I have a (I think) fairly clear plan as to how this new record (and what comes after it) fits into the big picture.

Because I have a hard time sitting still artistically, I'm considering trying to do a short acoustic EP in the near future... I spent some time listening to the left over songs that we didn't record for TTWWRL... and some of them are really, really good... and I don't know if the subject matter will lend them towards being part of the next record... so they may be more suited to their own little quiet interim project... something along the lines of 5 Songs in Search of a Record...

One tune from the rejects has been especially sticking with me... called Analog Dreams... I've been playing it on our recently acquired piano and really been digging it as a piano tune... I'm also starting to wrestle with writing new material... I've got all sorts of lyrical ideas and music seems to be sitting just below my skin... waiting for some attention.

I'm right at the end of one writing book and have a beautiful new one ready to go... So... things are new and old at the same time... which is how it usually works out. And my fingers look like prunes.

So there's also that.

jbg