In the words of Peter Gabriel, "Hi there!"
What an interesting last few weeks. Summer and fall duking it out. Record-setting heat that felt more like July than October, and now suddenly today we're back in Fall mode with 55-degree weather.
The first thing I should mention is that my brother, Mark and 7-year-old nephew, Blaine were in a car accident a couple of weeks ago. A car went through a stop sign and hit their SUV from the side, rolling it three or four times. They were very lucky. My nephew ended up with a very minor skull fracture and bruise above one eye; he has to wear his bicycle helmet during gym and recess for the next few weeks but should be fine. My brother only ended up with a few abrasions on his arm. Apart from the door that was hit, their Mazda SUV held up reasonably well and protected them. We all breathed a very big sigh of relief on that one.
After mentioning something like that, it's hard to shift gears and move on to other subjects...it really puts things in perspective when you have a near miss with close family members. But life keeps moving forward and we move on with it (perhaps with a little more appreciation for how much every day we're still here means!).
So...what's else is new? Well, I sold my car last month. It was too small for hauling equipment to gigs, so I decided to just sell it and save on the expenses over the winter, then buy something with more hauling capacity in the spring. I do kind of miss the stereo, though - it tended to help me pinpoint certain sonic flaws in my song mixes and get them adjusted. I was seen fairly often shooting up and down US-23 with the stereo blaring testing out my mixes in the car, hehehe.
We've had some equipment changes, too. That Fender bass seen in my last blog is gone; I decided to try one more bass and ended up with an Ibanez ATK that I absolutely love. It has probably the most comfortable neck I've ever used and sounds fantastic...probably somewhere between a MusicMan Stingray and a Fender Jazz. Very warm and full. Mind you, it's a pretty massive thing and is very heavy, but I can live with that when it feels and sounds so great.
Another new (and probably long overdue) addition to the toolbox is an Audio-Technica AT-4047 condenser microphone, which I just bought as a present to myself for my efforts in trying to quit smoking again (doing very well - down to about 4 or 5 cigarettes a day now instead of a pack and a half and think I'll be able to quit altogether before long). It occurred to me that I've made improvements to my recording setup in various other areas, but I was still using a little $150 stage microphone for something as important as vocals. It was time to bring the production values on the vocal tracks up to a higher level. You'll definitely hear the difference the next time I post a sneak preview of a new song.
Speaking of new songs, they're still flowing freely. I think I'm working on the ninth new song now, so I guess this is going to be more like a new full-length album than an EP. I still don't know what the title will be or exactly when it will come out. As soon as I know, I'll let you know!
That's it for now...be good and have fun and I'll talk to you soon!
DV
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