A Rose by Any Other Name...

“When the curtains close and the film projector rests

And I’m breathless with my heart stuck in my chest

I’ll throw myself into the waves

It’s a tragedy but c’est la vie

wishing your life away”  - Rose

I shouldn’t be writing this right now.  I should be picking up my guitar and writing the last song I need to write for ‘Ocean Blue, Velvet Skies’.  I know what it will be about.  I know what it has to sound like.  I just haven’t written it yet.  

But!  I can’t lock myself away in my studio forever.

We are nailing down the final structure for ‘Ocean Blue, Velvet Skies’.  When last I blogged about this collection of songs, I mentioned we would release singles towards some sort of eventual release.  For financial reasons, we realized this was a bad idea.  Releasing a song one at a time is all fine and dandy, but without investing in publicity… well, we’ll be doing ourselves and the songs a disservice.  

So we started thinking of releasing an album or EP… and I really feel like ‘Ocean Blue, Velvet Skies’ (as an artistic statement) needs to be an album.  I went back through our demos and drafted a list of 12 songs that I thought would make a great album.  I wrote out the album’s main themes and motifs (which I won’t bore you with) and saw where I still wanted to make certain points… so I set aside a couple spots for new songs and passed the list along to Maddie.  

While she liked the 12-song LP, Maddie thought that recording so many songs was a bit outside of our budget (how dare she be practical!)  So we went through the songs together and settled on a 9-song LP that we think is special and says what we want to say.  “It’s so sad,” Maddie mentioned, having looked at the list.  “I’m not sure I feel so comfortable putting out things so personal”.  We went back and forth on a couple of the more ‘personal’ songs (my argument was that people love to get personal) and settled on the final 9.  

The album has the elements we want and need.  It has radio-friendly singles, which has always been important to us.  We are constantly being played on boutique radio stations, and the exposure we get from those has helped us increase out listeners substantially.  The album also has ‘deep cuts’, with more progressive songwriting (much more to my taste), that I think will hook listeners and intrigue them a bit more than the cotton-candy radio songs.  At the same time, the album talks about life and death and finding our place in this crazy existence.  So the subject matter is near and dear to our hearts.  

…. but enough about the record.  We had an awesome & successful show at Hotel Cafe on the 17th.  Our bandmates - Matt Saba and Carlos Beltran - performed beautifully.  We played a couple new songs (that will appear on ‘Ocean Blue, Velvet Skies’) and enjoyed a terrific turnout.  We won’t be allowing so much time to elapse between shows this time.  We are aiming to put on a special acoustic performance this June, followed by a more rowdy rock show in August.

Music Junkie Press shared an awesome review of the show….  Read it here.

Okay.  I’m going to start writing this final song.  It’s called ‘Hiss’.  And it needs to be a rocker.  Bring out the OCD!