I took the day off from being chained to my cubicle in the MassLive.com office and headed up to Conway Rock City by myself to get together with Mr. Dave Chalfant. It was kind of a marathon day of tweaks and little things added to a bunch of songs.

Dave added bass to Little Black Boxes and I added a percussion part– a mallet on a tom basically. That song sounds spooky now, I love it. Dave also added some rocking bass to Pulverized and an in-your-face fuzzy bass part to The Spires which sounds amazing. We spent the remainder of the time listening and making some notes for mixing.

Really hoping to wrap all this up by the end of the summer, for either an August or October release. Why not September you may ask? It’s because I’m going to ITALY with the wife.

Inspired by The American Widow Project, I wrote lyrics to this song around Veteran’s Day in November of 2009 after this story on NPR caught my attention. The melody came a little bit later, and actually over time I wound up stripping down some of the other parts to keep this more straightforward.

Listen to “Little Black Boxes”

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Little black boxes
Stacks of letters I sent
White car in the driveway
Two men and a flag
Within “The Days Ahead”

And I try to smell him
But they washed all his clothes
And sealed them in plastic
In little black boxes
Within “The Days Ahead”

* “The Days Ahead” is the name of the 3 ring binder the U.S. Military gives to widows. The American Widow Project is on Twitter @americanwp

On my Veteran’s Day commute into Springfield, Massachusetts to start another work day in my cubicle, this story caught my attention on NPR.

It features a woman named Taryn Davis, who her lost her husband, a soldier. She was 21 at the time. Feeling alone and frustrated, she set out to find other women in similar situations. She connected with other widows, and a documentary video entitled The American Widow Project was born. She hopes to include in the binder of information that the military provides to widows.