Last year around this time, we were rolling..or rather, SLIDING up to a gig with The Rumours in Creve Coeur, Illinois. Spring was supposedly upon us, yet we found ourselves navigating through a blizzard. Thankfully, our initial forays into 2019 road work have thus far presented no similarly life-threatening conditions, and we seem to have retained our chops, such as they are.
It’s a good thing, because we’ve been applying said chops to the first round of studio work on an as-yet-untitled new record. In fact, we’ve got a few different irons in the fire, with Kenny finally moving into the home stretch on his solo EP, myself and Joshua Ketchmark toying with the idea of maybe releasing a single or two we co-wrote under a new moniker we’ve yet to come up with, and cutting basic tracks for this new TGA release. Kenny was kind enough to suggest we piggyback some drum tracking for the latter on his personal sessions, so we ended up cutting stuff for all three projects just mentioned in one afternoon, emerging with six solid performances that have been getting further treatment at various home studios, depending on which camp it will ultimately reside in.
As tough as it gets sometimes, trying to sort through the material to make cuts, I’m thankful we’ve got all these tunes to choose from. There really are good problems to have, and this is one of them. The other upside is; at least this time around, is having the freedom to go out on a limb occasionally. If I get my way, this album will throw at least one or two curveballs. We kept a pretty rigid stance on the last one, and I think it’s time to loosen up some, with the ultimate goal being some amalgam of our early stuff, and the later, more Rock direction we’ve slipped into over time….peppered with just a touch of the Pop thing I tried to bring to my solo album ‘An Overnight Low’.
Speaking of that record, I helped one half of our videography team: Mr. Nate Moore, with a film project recently. You can view that fruits of that collaboration right here. It was quick acoustic run-through of 3 songs from ‘AOL’, followed by a “commercial?”, and finally a brief interview. No take-backs, no do-overs, no touchups….just a raw performance…1 guy with a guitar, 2 mics, and 3 cameras. Hope you dig it. If you do, maybe you can put some pressure on the guys to let me add some of these songs to our live show. I kid…but yeah, do that.
OK then, I think that about covers everything that’s fit for print. The shows so far have been a blast, and we’ve got a few coming up for April that will hopefully continue that trend, and they are:
Friday, April 5th @ Scruffy City Hall in Knoxville, TN supporting Every Mother’s Nightmare
Friday, April 12th @ Eighth & Rail in Opelika, AL
Saturday, April 13th @ The Blue Canoe in Tupelo, MS
Friday, April 26th @ The Verve in Terre Haute, IN supporting Jazz Metamorphosis
w/Joshua Ketchmark
Saturday, April 27th @ The St. Jude Nashville Rock N’ roll Marathon
If you’re anywhere near any of these spots, feel free to drop in. We’d love the opportunity to fling sweat in your general direction.
Oh yeah, and we’ve got a bunch of new merch available on our StoreFrontier page…new designs for guys & gals, kids…tees, hoodies, etc. Some cool stuff. A few of these you’ll find at shows, but a few are exclusive to this site, so please check ‘em out. Great quality, good prices, and super-fast turnaround on orders.
Cheers…. and as always, be good to each other,
Denny
The Great Affairs