A Decade Of Song
Post date: May 3, 2014 6:41:04 AM
The new album is done, dudes!...and dudettes! Recording is complete, and I even have the album cover and liner notes finished. For complete details, see Used To Be Good Looking, which is its title. "Used To Be Good Looking" is also the title of the first track. A noteworthy thing about it is that it marks a span of a decade of official album releases that are still currently offered for sale, spanning the years 2004 to 2014, and consisting of 6 albums in total. 10 years of being an independent recording artist. That's kind of a milestone, for me anyway. I never thought my passion for writing songs would take me to a situation like this, where I have 6 full-length albums people can buy online.
It has 14 brand new songs on it, all of which I wrote, sang, played all the instruments on, and recorded myself. Lovely wife Lenore played accordion on the last song, "Smitten With The Mitten," which you can download for free right now by signing up for my Mailing List. My opinion is that it is a strong candidate for consideration of being designated as a state song for the state of Michigan. Yes, it might sound weird, but I wrote a song for and about my home state. The inside CD booklet has a cool picture of Lucky (R.I.P.) in Black Lake with a tennis ball bone in his mouth swimming to shore, which serves as a background overlaid with the lyrics to Smitten With The Mitten.
I'm now in the process of distributing the album to online stores, and barring some catastrophe, it will be released as planned on my birthday (June 21st, 2014), just 49 short days from now. I might even try to send it to a few places to see if anyone will review it or play it on a radio station. Having never done any pre-release promotion, I'm thinking of looking into it to see if there's anything free I could use to help this one reach a wider audience and sell more copies than the last one. It will be available from the store page of this site, and through Amazon in CD format, as well as a bunch of the MP3 stores like iTunes and Google Play for you downloaders out there.
It has the signature sound my fans will be expecting, which includes my singing, acoustic guitar, acoustic bass, harmonica, marimba, drums and percussion. It has the subject matter of love and relationships like my past albums, and a couple humorous songs, but it also gets a little more serious on some songs, which is atypical. Imagery of the great lakes region is perhaps more prevalent on this one. It also has the expected blend of styles, with acoustic garage rock, folk, and blues, with a few surprises, such as a song that has a habanera feel, a song that has a jazz feel and another with a bluegrass feel. It's more bluesy than usual, and features several really long songs, which is a little different than other albums. The lyrics are strong, which is a normal thing for me, if I may be so bold. I like every single song, and I know you will find something you like about it.
Here is the official press release: UTBGL Press Release Check back here again between now and June for information about the CD release celebration and more details about the availability in your favorite online music store.