Debut single release

Holy moly, I did a thing! The debut release of my music is releasing this Sunday. I’ve been playing music for a while now, recording too, but this is the first one that is ready to play among the world of professional music.

The first recordings I ever made were for my highschool garage band, CfR. Two of my good friends started taking guitar lessons, and they encouraged me to play bass with them. One of them even lent me a bass rig to learn on! We started by learning Ramones songs together, and other popular punk songs of the time.

None of us had written a song before. I think my relative distance from music at the time prevented it from being very intimidating, plus I’m never hesitant to take risks with low stakes, such as writing a bad song. Boy was my first song terrible! That’s all that I can remember about it. My friend helped with the next one by pitching a topic, a gorilla escaping from the zoo. We ended up collaborating, and from then on we focused on making a collection of originals.

I don’t have pictures from then, so here’s the dog!

My friends got an 8-track digital recording device, and a karaoke microphone, and we set to making the album. Looking back, and listening to the recordings, we did surprisingly well for literally just figuring it out on our own! We tried selling some CDs to people at school, and got decent feedback from them. Some people genuinely liked the music, and the rest just respected that we could pull it off.

The DIY spirit of those days carries on through today. The practice of figuring these things out still captures my interest. The musical process continues to be more interesting to me than the destination. One of the guys we played DIY shows with back then even went on to start Fortune Ave Studio and he is making lathe cute records of my music!

Collaborating with Kyler, Fortune Ave Studio founder, really made me nostalgic for those old times. That feeling of excitement from having a vision, using what’s at hand, and making it all work the best we can, all came back to me. I am so happy that I could keep this project’s process within this kind of scope. I couldn’t make physical records myself, but my schoolmate buddy recently got a machine for it, and was excited to use it for my music!

That’s my record being born

All of that said, if I undertake recording an entire album again, I’ll just hire a studio! Making garage band demos is one thing, but making something that can stand up with other songs on top playlists is another one altogether. Then, doing that for 16 songs, by myself? Holy moly.

I want to thank Patrick Hills of Earthtone Recording Campany for applying his mastering process to all of these songs. Mastering is that final step that allows recordings to thrive after their release into the wild world. It requires plenty of experience and careful application of subtle production tools. Earthone’s Ampex two-track tape machine, for example, lends a vintage analog sweetness that pairs perfectly with my songs. Patrick is an important member of the Sacramento music community and I am glad we could work with each other.

I chose this song, Tandem, to be the debut because it my wife’s favorite of the bunch. This one is dedicated to her. I would not have allowed myself to do this without her encouragement and support. Thank you Miriam!