photo by Dustin Addair

(from Levon who is listening to An Introduction to Charlie Mars)

At the end of this week we’re heading to Virginia to do a handful of things.

1. The Addair women are going to dinner theatre at the Wohlfahrt House in Wytheville, VA.

2. Running a Spartan Race in Leesburg, VA.  Basically a maniacal obstacle race challenge through the mud while fighting gladiators and climbing burning cargo nets, carrying a tire with one hand tied behind your back.  And other stuff like that.

3. I’m going to paint my Mother-in-law’s living room and anything else she wants at Grace Acres Farm.

4. Recording my fifth self recorded album, the third in the basement of the house on Grace Acres.

5. Going to Virginia Beach to see Dustin and Cortney.

mixing “Hope of the Seen and Unseen” in Vail, Colorado 2011

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In August of last year I released Hope of the Seen and Unseen.  You can get a free download here.  At the same place you can receive a free download of my last four albums.  New music is a considerable investment of time and I appreciate it.

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Going into this fifth album I’m tempted to do a lot of things differently.  First of all, and on a positive note, I’m not busted and broke and stranded while going into the project.  I could probably buy a microphone or get the songs mixed by a professional.  And I possibly may.  But out of habit (from self inflicted poverty and creative energy fueled by anxiety) I’ll probably lock myself in the basement to my rudimentary methods and black coffee.  It’s what I know.

We are as specific with our process as much as our product.  Like painters, writers and plumbers.  Woody Allen has said he wrote every movie on the same typewriter, literally “cutting and pasting” with paper and paste.

I get a lot of tape hiss.  My groves never find the pocket.  I mix in headphones and one should never mix in headphones.  If I didn’t do it like this, it wouldn’t be there at all.

2009

Yet I think it would be better with some help.  Imagine a Woody Allen movie without someone to operate the video editing machine.  You can’t leave everything to the artist, not when it comes to the technological competency that most people expect.  Nope.  Not in the fight for what is meritous work amidst the continued democratization of art.  Kidding.  Or in the case of songwriting which largely doesn’t exist in a “fine” or academic sense and is either “Popular” or it is nothing.  It’s consumable culture.  It is either known and sung by people or it is not.  Songwriting fuels an industry of careful considerations.

That’s why I’ve coined the genre for this music: “Post dem. demo-quality obscure fantastical idiosyncratic anecdotalism”  It’s organic.  If you like,  you can download all of it here for the cost of your time.  The entire genre.  Or get the noisetrade sampler by filling in the banner above to your left.

The next project will have songs written since last November and largely sound like some good ol’ country music about fatherhood and hard work and even a few “good time” jukebox tunes.  I may seek post production collaboration with whatever I bring back from Virginia, I just need to find an engineer I can trust and who needs his house painted.

I leave you this morning with the poetry of Luke Bryan (Clawson, Tompkins, and Kear)

“Girl you make my speakers go boom boom
Dancin’ on the tailgate in a full moon
That kinda thing makes a man go mmm mmm
You’re lookin’ so good in what’s left of those blue jeans
Drip of honey on the money maker gotta bee
The best buzz I’m ever gonna find
I’m a little drunk on you, and high on summertime.”