So, here I sit, out on the deck, enjoying what could be described as near-perfect weather conditions for sitting out on one's deck, listening to the early rough mixes of the tracks we worked on last week, and I figured I'd update this page with the latest on what we've been up to, seeing as traffic has been unusually high on this site all month for some odd reason.(Damn, that was one LONG sentence....take a few seconds to marvel at my run-on compositional skills.)
First off, I'm still in the dark as to when my "Hearing Things" blog will be reappearing on The Times' webpages. I'm assuming there have been some additional obstacles in prepping the new portal myself and the other community bloggers will be using to upload our content. Honestly, I've enjoyed the break, and the extra time off has afforded me the opportunity to concentrate on a few other things that were in need of attention. That said, I hope it gets sussed out shortly, and I'll be back to jawing about whatever just as soon as they get their business squared away. In the meantime, I'll try to get all the archived blogs uploaded to this site, since I know I'm a few months behind in adding them here. Sorry.
OK, we played a show and shot a video last month. We have a few more "scenes" to capture next weekend, and that should vault us into the editing phase, so hopefully we'll be seeing some early cuts of "Sherrybaby" in October/November, just about the time we plan on having the new The Great Affairs EP "IV"(actually, it's still untitled, but Roman numerals look badass, and making it to #4 sounds pretty cool, if you ask me.). Here's where we stand with that release. 7 songs, as follows:
Sherrybaby
The Ring
Shame On You
Rock N' Roll Heart
Gone
Fists & Guitars
Dyin' To
Some of these are pretty much finished, save for a minor mix tweak or two, while others are still in need of various embellishments, like guitars, bass, vocals, etc. In other words, the drums are done, and maybe a few other bits, but not much else, SO next week, we're headed back in to do some singin', and whatever else might get us a little closer to having a finished product on our hands.
While I'm there, I'll be putting some semi-finishing touches on a few more tracks for the OTHER record Kenny & I have been collaborating on. This one has a definite name, "Nothing's Broken", and is also a fair distance from the actual finish line, but we've made great strides in closing that gap over the last few weeks, and most of October will be devoted to dotting I's and crossing T's on these tunes:
Nothing's Broken
Crawl
That's My Girl
As Fine As You Are
Let Me Go
Breathe Again
I Am Reborn
A Secret's A Secret
Miss America
Crazy
.....and maybe a few more.....in fact, PROBABLY(see definitely) a few more.
Before we get back to work on that stuff though, we have a show tomorrow night(Friday, 9/21) at The Rutledge, with The East Side Gamblers, and The Decadence. Show starts at 9, you've gotta be at least 18 years old to get in, unless you've got a parent or legal guardian schlepping you around, and it costs 5 bucks. We close this one down, with a nice, tight set of filler-free, shoulda-been hits, but the whole bill is pretty tits, so get there early and soak it in.
Then, on the other side of that business, the studio work, and that final video shoot, we will morphing, for one night only, into ALL STANLEY: A Tribute To The Songs Of The Starchild, at 12th & Porter on Friday, October 5th. We're doing a whole set of relatively obscure(most of which have never been played by KISS live) tunes originally sung by the one, the only Paul Stanley....some '78 solo album cuts, Unmasked, Rock N' Roll Over, Dynasty...even a deep cut from the German & Japanese-only Killers LP. We'll be opening for Spades Of Ace, an all-Ace Frehley tribute set, and you won't wanna miss this, because I'm pretty sure we'll never do it again. In fact, my vocal chords have been pleading with me not to do it THIS time, so please sing along as loud as you can.
On the shows front, we just added a date in Bowling Green, KY at Tidball's for Thursday, November 1st. Kentucky folks, mark your calendars...sorry it took us so long to get back out that way, we've been trying, honest.
We probably won't be doing that many more full-band shows between now and the end of the year, as we try to finish these records up, but I'll be doing the odd acoustic set here and there, and Kenny will be out and about with Bonepony, so keep your eyes peeled for news on those dates. Otherwise, we hope to see you at one of these upcoming dates, and we hope to have some new music to post soon, besides the monthly demo @ http://www.thegreataffairs.com (those will keep coming too though). Stay tuned.
I'm going for a walk...
D.