January 7, 2007: More Cowbell!

The regular Sunday morning practice (or, as we like to think of it, "The Prince George Church of Rock 'n Roll" revival service) was another solid one. Our technical problems transferring the digital recordings from ADAT to Alan's studio DAW (a sampling rate discrepancy) have been resolved, so now we can move forward with our plan to record basic tracks in the Prince George practice studio, then take them to Alan Alba's studio for finishing touches and polishing.

We spent much of this morning's practice re-visiting "Rhythm of the Radio (Favorite Position)", playing it 'live' a number of times and recording a demo version, complete with the addition of more cowbell (Will Farrell would be proud). We've come to realize that, as a practice discipline, we need to play through our growing inventory of songs at the start of each session before working on and recording our new material. We have found ourselves lately with new song overload (a wonderful problem to have) - spending all of our time on new material at the expense of practicing our existing material. We are fortunate to have so much new original material, but realize that we may have opportunities to perform in the near future, so we need to have an inventory of performance material ready to go when we get a chance to play.

In particular, we're beginning to hear talk of a possible high school reunion (Walnut Ridge) this summer - maybe even a multi-class reunion - that may be an opportunity for us, as well as our friends, the Marquis66, to perform. And even if there is no reunion, it's likely that we'll find a place that can accommodate a live band and throw our own private party, so we need to be prepared to perform live.

Thanks to our friend Pat McGloughlin (Gas Pump Jockeys), we recently learned of a new music distribution site, Tunecore, that makes songs/CD's available for purchase via iTunes, Napster, etc. While we don't expect revenue from our original songs (no private jets and villas in France just yet), anything is possible, so it is an intriguing thought to consider. If nothing else, we are learning quickly that it's prudent to copyright songs and maybe even set up a business entity to at least protect what we create and allow for the possibility that the 'next level' might occur.

The next item on our 'to do' list is checking out the repaired studio version of "Rhythm of the Radio" and finalizing "Bad, Bad Man" (maybe a shortened re-recorded version), so we can move on to some of our other in-progress material.