It’s cold. Turns out we still have multiple seasons after all, I guess. It figures our last scheduled show of the year has us traveling north, to Chicago this weekend, for a hit & run engagement at Mickey Finn’s in Libertyville on Friday.
Pizza? Yes.
Actually, we booked a slightly less mileage-heavy trek to Clarksville, TN in early December, for a show with The Hollywood Kills at Wicked Good, before we’re set to go our separate ways(worlds apart) for Xmas, and I pick up a quick acoustic show back home in Central Illinois, opening for The Valentines and them Bogart Jones boys. These were both recent additions to a calendar previously declared closed, so as to allow for wrapping up the last of our actual tracking duties on the new record. But, as is our custom, we adhered to these restrictions about as well as a fat kid on a diet around Halloween.
Once we get through the Holiday season, we’ll post the mess of 2018 shows(AL, IN, GA, KY, IL) that are being penciled in at headquarters, and start looking at actually releasing this new LP. In the meantime though, we’re gonna drop a little double A-sided single via digital conduit in November. You can scroll down our news page at TheGreatAffairs.com to read up on what inspired this detour, and you can listen to one side of that platter right here..>>>
Both halves are regulars in our live set. In fact, here’s a clip of us playing the flip-side at The Country in Nashville just a couple of weeks back.. >>>>
It’s Monday morning as I type this…well, up to this point…I’ll close the entry out later this evening, or early tomorrow, because Kenny & I are hitting the studio this afternoon for one last round of vocalizing on a couple of tunes, and who knows what might transpire while we’re in there? Assuming we finish up according to plan, we should be left with only Patrick’s lead guitar contributions, and a dusting of Michael Webb’s magic on one or two numbers before we can dive into the mixing process and give serious consideration to when this thing is going to appear fully realized, ripe for public consumption.
>>TO BE CONTINUED<<
OK then, where was I? It’s now Tuesday morning, and we walked out of The Switchyard last night with everything on our list that required a check mark next to it now having said check mark in place. Vocals are complete, and the baton will thus be handed off to Mr. Miller, who will most assuredly be on the job within the next week or so of knocking out his remaining guitar tracks.
As for the “Last Good Memory/California” digital single release, the mixes are in(courtesy of our longtime engineer and audio North Star, Michael Saint-Leon), and the material submitted to all the various outlets for distribution, with a release date of Friday, November 10th. I know it’s not a whole record, but in the interest of making this next one worth the wait, we felt it prudent to take our time. We did things a little differently this time, in terms of how we chose the material, AND how we recorded much of it, so there has been a bit of adjustment necessitated by the inherent learning curve of unfamiliar turf. Hell, I thought we’d settled on a title two titles ago, and we were yet again debating that last night, having come full circle and possibly returning to the first name we’d given serious consideration. So, as you can see, we’re still sussing out a few of the finer points.
While we haggle over mixes, album handles, running order, artwork, and who did what where, please know that this is all part of the quality control process that we at TGA Inc. feel is critical to the delivery of the top notch product you, the consumer, deserve.
OK then, that’s about enough b.s. for one update, I think. Be good to yourselves and each other, and well see you when we see you.
Oh yeah, and don’t forget to hit up your digital portal of choice on Friday, November 10th for the new single. Stuff a virtual stocking with that thing.
Peace,
Denny
The Great Affairs