Life is funny.
We struggle. Try. Fail. Get up. Try again. Move forward. Sometimes things turn out exactly as we planned. Sometimes we get to where we wanted to go but the road there is very different than we envisioned. Sometimes we end up somewhere completely different and that is the perfect place for us to end up.
This album has felt like that. All of that.
When I first started working towards a new record my plan was to make a stripped down acoustic quiet pretty album. I had just finished 'Ria' which was lush and full with lots of production on it. I stripped back in a certain kind of way with 'February Sessions'. This time just trying to make a big dumb loud guitar record. There were very few added effects or sounds. Generally, if I couldn't get the song to work with what basically is a 'band' set up: guitars, bass, singing and drums, it wouldn't be added on those songs. That was fun.
Those 2 albums came out 6 months apart as well. It was a lot of work.
So--yeah. I thought I'd go further back to my 'roots' as a solo acoustic performer and release an acoustic record.
Eventually I wrote many many songs. Certain ones floated up and got finished quickly. Others didn't. Some of the ones that didn't sadly enough were some of my 'favorite' ones. I mean favorite in that they were great yes, but also they fit my 'vision'. The stripped down acoustic sound. As the songs took shape I kept certain songs in the rotation no matte what else was going on. And I stayed stuck. The ones that didn't get finished got harder to finish. I also started leaving other songs OUT of the mix because they didn't 'fit' the overall sound I had going on with the ones I liked 'better' (again this really only means they were better suited to my original plan)
So last week---I looked at my 'final' list. Four songs. Fours songs still sat there basically in the same form they had been in some case for 6 years. These 4 songs. All I had to do was finish these four and I was done. Then I had a long conversation with a good friend and realized--it wasn't the songs stopping me. It was ME.
I immediately went back through songs I hadn't considered for the album in a long while. I took those four songs out. Put one in.
There it was.
My album.
It had been 'done' for awhile.
Life is funny.
Also, when I listen to it, it isn't an acoustic stripped back record. It's actually quite upbeat and happy. Joyful. Hopeful. There is ONE stripped back acoustic song. ONE. ha
My friend also reminded me that for some time I'd been saying this would be 'Volume 1' which of course means there will be a volume 2. Those songs I was hanging onto will find a home. Probably sooner now that I let them go. And let THIS volume be what it was supposed to be.
Soon soon it will be finished all the way. Mixing, tweaking. Stuff like that happens now.
Get ready. It's good.
peace
Mike