Nearer the Water

Mark your calendars, folks: Linden Tree near the Water is scheduled for release on November 4, 2017. Details on the CD release show coming soon. I'll be playing a ton of music that night—the album, some great new songs and a choice selection of my favourite covers—on guitar, dulcimer, mandolin and harmonica.

With the help of artist and photographer friends who wish to remain anonymous and the fine folks at Indie Pool and Bandzoogle, I've been immersed in designing the CD package and ancillary stuff (website, one-sheet and so on). Releasing an independent CD, even on a small scale, is hard work. But it's been fun, too, as I find myself having to stretch in unexpected ways. Why, this week I even did a sketch in Microsoft Paint in an effort to point my designer in the right direction. "Kindergarten Klimt," I've called my naive style, and believe me, I hope to retire after just the one drawing. (Artist and designer were hired for a reason!)

This week's breakthrough: I've found my font, the typeface I'll be using on the CD and promotional materials. Not giving too much away other than to say it's been used in a music-related context before (many years ago) and you'll love it when you see it. I sure did.

A little teaser for you: yes, there will be a single and yes, it'll be released on 7" vinyl, just like we did in the good old days. The songs are "That '70s Lifetime" b/w "Lady Air." For now it'll be a (very) limited run—short-run vinyl being quite expensive—also released on November 4. To whet your appetite, here's my video for "Lady Air." Featuring captions because, well, that's my day job and whenever I encounter a video, I can't help but caption it.

One for the Designers

A friend recently donated a Vostro1000 notebook (thanks, Dan!), and it's given me enough hard-drive space to enable me to make more music. I've yet to record on it but have completed several rough mixes of a new song, "After You," and so far it's performing superbly.

Here's where the design kudos come in: the laptop has a line in and line out jack, side by side. I had a devil of a time with these on my desktop because they were too close together. I needed to use at least one mini-to-1/4" adapter in order to monitor using headphones while singing, banging on a tambourine or what have you, and had to seriously wiggle one of the plugs to get them both to fit. Recording direct and monitoring through headphones proved impossible, as that would require two adapters side by side.

Today I tested the latter scenario on the laptop and was able to plug in said adapters without having to wiggle anything, leading me to suspect that the ample space isn't accidental. Yes, folks, some designer actually sussed out that end users might use mini-to-1/4" adapters—maybe even two at the same time—so perhaps we should allow sufficient space for that when we design the jacks. Huzzah!

By the way, "After You" is the fourth song completed for what will be my solo album, recorded right here at Grinning Zone Studios (my apartment).