So after the end of June, I decided to take a little break from recording and sit with the songs for a little while. Kristen and I went on vacation to Provincetown, Massachusetts for the first week of July, which was much needed.  I was hoping to get back to music soon after, but the remainder of July and August was spent doing some renovations to the downstairs apartment in our building in order for us to be able to rent it out to our next tenant.

Then, at the end of August, my appendix ruptured while we were visiting with Kristen’s family in Pennsylvania. I needed emergency surgery and wound up spending a week at Hershey Medical Center. When I got home, I had some complications with my incision that weren’t so great. Needless to say it required me taking it easy, because abdomen surgery kinda hurts I discovered. I was out of work for about 5-6 weeks… So here we are the first week in November and I’m able to finally get back to the music, which is what I love to do.

I headed up to Conway Rock City in the afternoon, and Dave Chalfant and I snaked wires out a window, through the garage, and into the main house where his beautiful Baldwin upright piano lives. I recorded a few songs: The Spires, The Gatekeeper, and Whatever Happened. Later, Greg Saulmon and Mark Schwaber came up to record some guitar and drum parts for The Spires. That song in particular is sounding amazing.

I took some pictures with my cell phone of the setup madness. I also had an old Canon film camera with me and snapped some photes, but I haven’t gotten those pictures developed yet.

Well, I love a rainy night. Especially when there is music-making going on. Last night I picked up Greg Saulmon and Mark Schwaber in Easthampton. After a stop at Local Burger for a quick meal, we headed up to Sackamusic in Conway, MA in order to Schwaberize and Saulmonize two songs, Flowers On The Fire Escape and Fight Or Flight.

I recorded a scratch piano track and some vocals. Then for Flowers On The Fire Escape, Greg added some pretty eerie guitars and Mark added some harmony melody guitar too. For Fight or Flight, they both worked out various guitar parts, culminating with a wall-of-sound noisy guitar finish that blew me away. Greg wound up using a bottle of Arrogant Bastard Ale for part of the scratchy slide guitar stuff. Mark also played bass on both tunes.

I’m taking a little break for the next couple weeks while I celebrate my wedding anniversary, head to Cape Cod for a week’s vacation, and sit with these songs for awhile to come up with vocal arrangements.

Mark Schwaber’s skill on the guitar is evident by listening to the great records he’s put out. But I didn’t know until recently that Mr. Schwaber is also a spectacular drummer. I had spoken to him earlier this year about making the record, and about how none of these songs had been arranged with drums yet. As someone who is not a drummer, I had few ideas. We got together sometime in March and he worked out some drum parts to Fight Or Flight, Flowers On The Fire Escape, and Other States…. AND THEY SOUND AWESOME.

Mark and I stopped at Antonio’s in Easthampton for a slice of pizza before heading up to Conway Rock City to put down the drum tracks for the three aforementioned songs.

Last week I had the pleasure of getting together with Mark Schwaber, who looks like he’ll be playing some stuff on some songs (Flowers On The Fire Escape, Fight Or Flight, Other States). He  brought a lot of ideas to the table. It was refreshing to hear these songs in a new light. We’re getting together again this evening, along with Greg Saulmon whose guitar stylings will be surely welcome. Greg has played along with me for my last couple of shows.

It’s been great for me to think about working with a  bunch of different musicians. One of the challenges, however (for them, mostly), is that I don’t really have many demos of most of my songs. So I setup the dining room last night and recorded a couple tunes so I can pass them around and see if anyone wants to play on them. Also it was my first foray into Garageband recording so I wanted to see if I could act like I knew what I was doing. I used some pretty shitty mics and mic stands and the cats were running around, so I did a few takes.

The Gatekeeper is a song I wrote last week. Not sure if it’ll be on the album, but here it is. I recorded this live while singing along to what I was playing.

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Fourth Floor is a Northernly song I’m hoping to convince Aric Bieganek and Rebekah Dutkiewicz to record with me. I recorded the piano track first, then put down the vocal track.

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You can read all about the process of starting the new record here.

This Friday, I have the opportunity to open for Western Massachusetts singer/songwriter, Mark Schwaber. I’ve known Mark for a long time now as most musicians in the valley do, having common friends and acquaintances. Mark writes a great music blog called Feedback for MassLive (where I work), he ran Night Owl Records in Easthampton where I purchased many a cd, and over the twenty or some odd years we’ve both been making music in the valley, we’ve been on the same bill a few times and attended many of the same shows. Aside from my normal appreciation that Mark is a ‘valley musician’, I can honestly say that Mark Schwaber is one of my favorite musicians anywhere. There are some of his songs that just absolutely floor me every time I hear them… ‘Dignity in Death’ for example.

Mark has been performing with Sara Gomes lately, and from what I hear, it’s nothing short of magic. Sara Gomes is the wife of Tom Gomes, who who used to play drums in a band called Killswitch Engage (and now owns his own drum company). The main guitar dudes in Killswitch are Adam Dutkiewicz and Joel Stroetzel.

Adam and I got together when Killswitch was still in its infancy to record the Smokejumpers album. (more…)