Hues Of Blue

Behind the music

Background:  Sometimes when you're fresh out of ideas for new songs, you can revisit some old ones that weren't your best and try to improve them, and that can spark new ones to start appearing again.  Sometimes the muse will return when you lower your expectations and standards a bit and try for something easy.  Soon after releasing 2025's "When You Need To Fly," which practically exhausted my back catalog of unreleased material, I still had a few songs no one had ever heard yet that were not too terrible, and they happened to be on the bluesy side, so I decided to slightly rewrite and re-record them, which resulted in improved versions, and this led me to think I could keep going with this type of music.  It spurred me on to write more in that vein.  Since the previous album had a long playing time and high track count, I intentionally thought I wouldn't do that again.  So, I had a genre sort of picked out, which meant it would almost loosely be arguably a type of concept album, and I knew I wanted to keep it fairly short.  Sometimes we songwriters get a tendency to want to try to always top ourselves by writing increasingly complex and challenging music, but once I got on a roll with a couple more blues tunes, I reminded myself that less can be more, and that keeping it simple can take the pressure off.  It also made me remember how much I like blues music and how much fun I have writing it, playing it, and recording it.  2025-2026 wasn't the best of times around here for me, and I know I wasn't alone in thinking that way.  Negative emotions may be the catalyst, but expressing them via this style of songwriting can surprisingly bring you out of the funk you were in.  I realized I needed that kind of release and therapy.  

Writing:  As stated, some were recycled older tunes that had lived in old first take cassettes and in Word documents in folders on my computer with names like "unreleased" or "previously weeded out".  The recycling and sprucing up prompted me to write more, which happened like always:  something gives me an idea, and I would record a first take on my phone's recorder app after typing up the lyrics and chords in an electronic document.  Sometimes it's a lyrical idea first, maybe a title, then the music comes after;  while some other times it's goofing around with my guitar and a cool musical idea presents itself, and the lyrics follow.  Maybe a chord progression first, then a singing melody, then some lyrics come to mind.  Any way, there's always a little back-and-forth between the words and music until a song is finished, regardless of what order the writing happened in.  In general for me, the concept has to be good enough, and the lyrics have to be good enough, all according to my own weird standards, and in the case of blues, the music part is somewhat uncomplicated, but it's important that it be unique - again, that just means some sort of internal judgement call.

Production and recording:  After listening back to a collection of first takes on my phone, all in one listening session, I make up my mind which of those are worthy or deserving of the multi-track treatment.  The best of them I set about recording in Logic on my Mac.  I have the arrangement in my head, but I'll sometimes write in the lyric document which chords to play for the intro, and where the instrumental break solo should be, and how to end the song.  I usually start with a rhythm acoustic guitar track, then while listening to that, record bass, then drums/percussion, then maybe an intro and solo lead acoustic guitar track, then maybe a rhythm piano track, then any auxiliary instruments like organ, horns via midi keyboard, or harmonica, ukulele, or mandolin.  Finally, I'll do two backing or background vocal tracks, then typically several takes of the lead vocal - always my biggest challenge.  All of it is usually fun except the lead vocal.  Then I add some EQ, maybe a little reverb here and there, do the panning and track volume adjustments, and mix it down.  I do this for all the songs, then I master them.  Then for the mastered versions, I'll listen back on car speakers while taking notes, then make more panning & track volume adjustments, and re-master a second time.  I also make adjustments to make all the songs the same volume as each other.  At the very end, I'll do some final EQ and compression.

Musical style:  The style is dominated by acoustic guitar, so I guess it's acoustic music, and I guess it's definitely lo-fi due to the amateurish production quality and imperfections, it would definitely be DIY because I literally did everything involved with what you hear totally by myself.  Beyond that, within the genre of Blues, there might be some blues rock in there, some folk blues, possibly country blues, maybe Detroit blues only because I live an hour north of there, and definitely acoustic blues.  You could use Americana or roots rock perhaps, there's one arguably bluegrassy song in there, and you could call some of it folk, indie folk, maybe even folk rock, and you might say singer-songwriter too.  Because of the use of horns and organ, you might detect a faint hint of jazz, rhythm and blues, or soul.  There's one traditional blues in there as well.  There are so many subgenres and substyles out there that I'm not aware of the definitions of, but this is the best I can come up with.

Lyrics and themes:  Discrimination and oppression can happen to people like me who are not in minority classes.  Email me and I'll be happy to explain how and why I've felt like a victim many times in this regard.  I feel like African Americans started it, and it became the basis of an incredible number of genres of music that evolved from it that people have loved worldwide for many decades now, so I feel no cultural appropriation is happening or intended.  It's out of respect and joy for the blues genre that I like to attempt to write within it.  I touch on some harsh realities, sadness, hardships, melancholy, challenges, and suffering that are typical of bluesy songs.  I've experienced some agitation and depression that I'm sure influenced my lyric writing.  The lyrics on this album cover relationship troubles, the ways lust can lead to being bummed out, the agony of having your patience tried, empathizing with the pain of others by putting yourself in their shoes, unwanted and unplanned annoyances, dealing with poverty and the lifestyle changes it brings, the terrible feelings of loss that stay with you, how people can treat you well and mistreat you depending on your financial status, and the despair of addiction.  Through these themes we all experience, we love the company of hearing of others' misery, as we know there is hope and faith for overcoming them, and this is always followed by an inevitable return to rejoicing in better times.

Packaging and release:  The packaging is simply the album cover, the art for which I "designed" myself using free image editing software.  The release was simply to upload the songs to a digital music distribution service and pay a little money for it to be sent out to download and streaming service platforms such as Apple Music, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Spotify, etc.  As it turned out, I had enough of a balance left over from my last album prior to hitting the payout threshold I set to cover the release cost for this one.

Personnel:  Only me on this one, same as my last album.  I did absolutely everything completely by myself again.  As a solo artist, songwriter, singer, multi-instrumentalist, and engineer - self-taught in all of it I might add - I take pride in being able to bring my vision into reality without the influence or assistance of anyone else.  It's a lot of fun, but I'm not completely opposed to collaboration.  I hope to get my amazing wife Lenore to play accordion for me again sometime, and if so, I will release more music after this album that will include it.  That's the future plan.  

No AI:  I shouldn't have to point this out, but I guess in this day and age I need to state that I made everything you hear myself.  It's all real, nothing fake, no cheating involved.  Yes, the horn sounds were made on a MIDI keyboard as opposed to blowing into actual horns, so I guess I need to fess up to that, but I pressed down on those keys with my actual fingers to make those sounds.  I think I have to admit I also used a metronome click track while recording a few of them too.  No autotune, no quantization.  I wouldn't think I'd be in any danger of people accusing me of using AI to make my songs, but just to be on the safe side, I'm stating it, and you'll just have to take my word for it.  As with all of my music, this album was 100% human made, nothing about it was machine generated, and no AI was used.  I heard about half of all new music nowadays is made with AI, so I guess if yours is not, you should point that out.  In my case, it should be pretty obvious because I intentionally leave in imperfections, so I don't think I need to show documentation of my recording process or pay for some certification mark that somehow verifies I'm a human.  I heard that's a thing now.  Scary times.

In retrospect, if I were reviewing this album, in the context of my catalog, I wouldn't say it's among my best.  Honestly, I might rank it near the bottom of a list of my albums.  I would say it has:

• More of a limited number of genres than usual (less variety)

• More of a consistent theme than usual (subject matter wise)

• Less commonly-used instrumentation (harmonica, horns, mandolin)

• Fewer songs than usual (11)

• A strange track order (with every other song being sort of "blue", with a couple of the best at the end)

• One non-original standard (Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out)

• Three arguably substandard songs on it (Because Of You, Fox Hunt, You Had To Let Me Go)

• One that could've been recorded better (Hot Plate Situation)

• One that could've been sung better (More Than Meets The Eye, arguably all the rest too)

• Three outstanding songs (Scoop, Treasure Trove, Rock Bottom Blues)

Overall, it's like a lot of albums by any artist:  you have three songs you love, three that could've been left off, one interesting cover, a couple that could've been performed and/or recorded better, and the rest being fairly enjoyable.