This happens to me all the time: I’m insanely busy, working to a deadline that can’t be broken. Working late, getting up early, you know the ritual. Then I notice a song bouncing around the inside of my head. I try to ignore it (okay, not so very hard) but eventually I have to arise, grab my guitar, and start the process of fidgeting around until I’ve successfully extracted the thing from my brain. It’s not unlike trying to remove a deeply-embedded splinter. Even the relief and pleasure when it’s all over is the same!
In coming months I’ll be doing very rough demos of new songs and sharing them with you. Is that a smart thing to do commercially? Actually, yes. Research by anyone other than the moneygrubbing RIAA (don’t get me started!) shows that people are more likely to buy an album if they’ve had the opportunity to listen free to bits and pieces along the way.
I’ve also got a fairly extensive folder of songs that will never make it to an album. They’re too odd or too awkward or remind me of something else, so they don’t make the grade. So I’ll dig through and share one of my oddities every now and then, too.
Okay, the first demo is called No Anodyne, and I recorded it this morning into the mic of my iPad. Yes, Virginia, that does mean that it’s not sparkly studio quality. It’s going to fit nicely into the next album, Small Things @ LightSpeed. Although you’ve got to get more of your friends ordering F-35 first, right? Get cracking!
Pop over to the LISTEN page to get your free song. And if you like it, Like it – that’s payment enough for me.
I’m pleased that it’s become acceptable within my extended family to call up and say “bring your guitar with you” when I’m attending a family event. My sporty family has done me proud with their support and appreciation in the wake of the album’s launch. Not only did my uncle and aunt attend the launch, but they really seemed to enjoy themselves and were happy to hear more at the family Christmas event. Yesterday we made the big drive south to visit some cousins, a trip that was made well worth it by the opportunity to re-connect with my oldest cousin who lives just outside Perth. We’ve seen each other only fleetingly over the decades since we were kids, so it was wonderful to catch up. I even sang a few songs for the assembled family and friends, a raucous bunch who astonished me by being silent and attentive when called for by the song. That’s a rare pleasure for a solo performer used to the rough-and-tumble of pub gigs; when you’re up there with your acoustic guitar and mic through a couple of thousand watts of public address system, often you still can’t beat the conversation and the clinking glasses. Thus I was thrilled to play Don’t Follow Me Now with all the sensitivity it requires, aware of the eyes that saw and the ears that heard it all.
Families can be a pain in the arse sometimes, but you’ve gotta love ‘em, right?
The last couple of weeks have largely been occupied by work when by rights I should be doing nothing but rehearsing. To be fair, we also did a 36 hour, 2200km road trip for a family Christmas gathering. And I spent a night in Castlemaine with Steinbecks luminaries Josh and Joel, rehearsing our collaboration songs for the launch. But otherwise, it’s all been work. Well, work and sleeping…
The reason I really need to rehearse is that I’m going to be playing songs from my entire ‘career’ (note the ironic quotation marks), which entails some re-learning of ancient works. And a good number of the songs on the new album haven’t been played live before; in fact it’s a challenge to work out how to play them on a single acoustic and still capture the intent of the song. Also, I’m going to be telling the story of my 35 musical years, and I’ve got to do a lot of work on trying to remember what that story is. No, there’s no drug-induced memory loss, it’s just that I generally don’t do a very good job of organising my own history in my mind. The benefit of that is that if someone catches me out on a tall story I can safely say I mis-remembered it.
We’ve been selling some CDs. but I feel I need to do more promotion. Some promotion, maybe! There’s going to be an article and photo in the local paper, maybe this week. That’ll help. And we did circulate disks to community radio stations around Australia. But I haven’t sent any copies for review yet … partly because I want to wait until the album shows up on iTunes. That should happen in the next couple of days.
In the meantime, I’ll be writing my set list and rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing.
We’ve been busy over the last week, since we started selling the album for real. Suddenly part of our house has turned into a fulfilment centre and my wife has been applying her rather significant smarts to the challenge of getting a bunch of disks mailed out to my extended family and a few collaborators. The real sales and marketing push hasn’t occurred yet, which is good because we’re still fine-tuning our processes. I had worked out the costings for everything to the last cent, but I hadn’t counted on Miss Lee’s canny thinking. She discovered that Australia Post gives around 60% discount off the padded bags we use – when you buy ‘em in lots of 100. That tweaks the bottom line very nicely. Clearly we’re not in this to become millionaires, but it would be very nice to not lose cash on the deal, and it looks like we’ll achieve that outcome.
Meanwhile I’ve been thinking through what the launch at Rocky Passes might be like. It’ll run from 12:30 until 2:30pm on the day, and I don’t want to disappoint. My idea is that I’ll recap the Adam Dennis story in words and music, throwing in some examples of songs good and bad from all of the last 35 years. Where possible I’ll get collaborators on board, but it’s always a challenge to get people up to the country, especially as we get closer to Christmas. The very exciting news today (aside from installing my event widget to the left of this copy, that is) was that Josh and Joel Meadows, who I helped out during the Sugargliders days and collaborated with on The Steinbecks Mark I, will be joining us at the launch to play some of their material and join me on some songs that underpinned a significant part of my life. I am really stoked about this, and it’s going to make a fun day even better.
Don’t forget to RSVP if you’re coming (via the widget at left), and of course … buy the album!
I just discovered a really interesting site. It’s called Discogs, and it contains discographies. The weird thing is that I’ve got my own page. Divided into Vocals, Instruments & Performance, Writing & Production, and Production. It’s got a remarkable number of entries, but neither of The Jordans’ albums, and unsurprisingly not the new album either. I guess I could join the site and edit the info for accuracy, but that feels a bit like editing your own Wikipedia page.
I did find a reference to a couple of Jordans’ tracks on the Airpop releases, but when I clicked that link I found myself on a page for the 60′s band of the same name. They sang in Spanish, so I’m thinking there’d be no confusion. Maybe in a few weeks I’ll join the site and try to sort it all out.
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Heads Up! My new album, "F-35", is now available for your purchasing pleasure. Get it now for the low, low price of AU$16.00, delivered to your door! If you're wondering whether you'll like the album, just pop over to the listening post for some samples. |
