It's funny to feel return to yourself after a hiatus. Where did you go anyway? What is returning to yourself? Is it letting go of a distraction?
The chance to share weekly all of the music I've recorded to date, somehow orients me in a way that never existed before.
I can see all the years of distraction in the form of real and imagined lack of self confidence in the work, in my voice, in my playing, in the inability to fit into a genre.
I'm glad there's some corner being turned.
The practice studio you see in the videos, our lodge, is pretty cold at night. Sometimes going in, it takes a awhile for my voice to warm up, and since I'm coming back to this after years of not really having the daily long tone exercises, I've had moments of wondering if my voice had degraded from the lack of practice. Like degraded permanently. I'm going to promise myself now that whenever that does happen, I won't go into mourning or something, but just observe it and even use it. But I'm also happy that a half hour of long tones in my warm kitchen before heading out to the lodge, definitely made me feel like the core is still there, and that there will be some exciting sounds coming out at the show on the 31st.
If you haven't set your calendar to it:
The set will feature me singing and on Fender Rhodes, Tim Bulkley on drums, and John Wiitala on bass. (Note this show photo is from a Brooklyn show with Ben Campbell on bass. Ben is featured on the How to Love album and whom I played with for many years. He is great!)
Tonight in the lodge I worked out one of the first songs written in the residency at Red Poppy way back in the day.