The Tower

Good day to you, here is a little Friday update on Hadder progress. There’s a lot of music floating around my world these days. I thought I would start with some personal things and then dive into the music things.

Little things: My niece Sienna decided to do a little Tarot reading for me earlier this week… god bless her for that, and wouldn’t you know, “XVI The Tower” card was drawn. The old “Change and Shift” card.

The TOWER

“Lightning strikes the tower, and just like that, nothing will ever be the same. Weather it’s shattering a rigid ego, or collapsing a long held dream or relationship…. The TOWER moves fast and the message is clear: Things must change. This card comes with a strict dose of medicine that doesn’t come easy. It will serve you well to surrender to this mighty intervention. Do not fight it or question its purpose. You are here to learn important lessons and release attachments that don’t serve. Sometimes your castle must burn to the ground… in order to for you to see new possibilities. Trust the rebuild will edge you toward a truer self or even enlightenment.”

Something happened to me 2 nights ago… I can’t explain it… but I suspect that the power of this Tower card was in full display. I wrote a rather elaborate story about it that I will share at another time. It’s a long tale about crossroads, choices, flying insects, rocks and ownership. Or perhaps it will just be for me. We’ll see. If you’ve paid any attention to my blog the last year… I think you might understand the significance of this card, as I do. Thank you lady Sienna for this reading.

New Music: Ok, well I’m juggling 3 songs right now. All at various levels of completion… it’s nice to go back and forth during sessions on each. They all serve different projects, each with their own timeline. First, regarding the Stargazer crew… I’m tracking vocals for the Dio cover song “Rainbow in the Dark”. It should take about 8 hours or so I’m guessing… two 4 hour vocal sessions generally will do the trick on a song that is already written. I might do the first session this weekend.

"Kind Winters” is the next installment for the Ramsay/Evermore project… I’ve put a little video clip below. I hope to finish this track within the next week. Wish me luck. And finally, “Long is the Road”, my closer for the Hadder record is still floating around. Between the tower and some other things going on in my life, it’s a slow process through these three paintings I’m working on… but I’ll reach the falls soon enough on each. I see the finish line for the Hadder record in late spring… so as long as I stay on the path… I'll be ok. There’s a lot of details from here to there, changes and shifts, but I’m still drifting down the same stream.

Farewell.

-j

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/77466a_ec7b0de7bfab4d0e8af98876de2a2290/360p/mp4/file.mp4

Some random video to a very early audio sketch of Kind Winters, first takes.

The Final Act: The End of Winter

(image Info: My Sundays best.)

Good morning, it’s almost spring. A lot of music is in the air.

A quick little post today is all, to share some lyrics for a new song I've been working called "Kind Winters" for the Ramsay/Evermore record. It originally had a working title of "Night of the Witch, but as soon as I hit record.... well... that's what happens. You might have noticed those words in one of my posts last week. Shortly after the words came out of my mouth I began to imagine a song with that title. One moonlit night a week ago a poem was born and so that witch became "Kind Winters". Early Saturday morning I completed the "Headless Cross" vocal takes and opened up this new Ramsay track and starting singing... and boom..... a lot of wonderful things happened and so... I imagine a day or two more of singing and that will be done and ready for the website playlist.

I might go wander around some Sand Dunes out by death valley for a quick impromptu video for the track.... it's that kind of song.

I'll keep it brief today... just wanted to share the original poem for "Kind Winters" and some of the "Headless Cross" vocal takes, played along to some of my favorite Kung Fu video. (below)

Farewell.

-j

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/77466a_12aec8b20c7e497a8a521c86ea093a34/360p/mp4/file.mp4

Some random video to some vocal takes for "Headless Cross", Unmixed and unproduced. Enjoy more of the process.

Kind Winters by J evermore

The sand it runs under devils breath

As time she slips today

It never stops.. oh the more it drops

The farther we drift away

Oh the Things we lose

As life it breaks and splinters

And the best we could hope for

Is kind winters

Kind Winters

The clock it rounds the twisted bend

12 past the hour or so.... and then

The spring it brakes as winter takes

But somewhere… there's still hope

Oh such bitter truths

As the rose it dies and withers

And the best we could hope for

Is kind winters

Kind Winters

Day into night they clip our wings small tasks for scissor kings Who sit atop the curtains draw The masters that played us all

And hope she sits on the windowsill

a wooden cat watching the play

It doesn’t move but all too soon

It tumbles too and it breaks away

And the best we could hope for

Is kind Winters

Give me Kind... Winters

Give me Kind... Winters

Headless: The dunes of repetition

Good morning, it’s a headless Friday on the cusp of spring. I found myself wondering around some blossom trees this week… it was a pleasant sight. Ezra came along for the walk… it was like old times. The hills are so beautiful this time of year. Here in BOK it’s chilly in the mornings but once that sun comes up… and the Warmoths start humming… it’s like heaven. I was listening to a song called ‘The Feast’ this morning… it’s a song about alexander the great, it was a piece of music written to commemorate a great battle he had won… apparently during the celebration he changed his mind and decided to kill everyone in the city he had taken and burned it to the ground. In retaliation for all the troops he lost in the battle. Hmmm.. those classical folks sure do pick their song topics. Now that the goat is “Kind of” retired, I can talk about all that’s going on in BOK and the Hadder realm.

New Music: “Long is the Road” is moving along nicely… I’m through the whole song now musically. Fine tuning and re-cutting some vocals. For those who don’t know, “Rivers End”, “City of Fire” and this last song, “Long is the Road” all came from the “TOR” project I was involved in. The songs were just about completed when the band broke apart. Considering all the vocals were recorded in my studio and were completed, and that each track took me months to write and complete… I decided to recut all the music under the vocals rather than let all that hard work sit idle. I’ve done my best to recut and reimagine the music side of things, trying to stay clear of the original riffs note for note… but there’s only so much I can do at times. All I can say is that it was a very conscious effort to somehow reconnect the dots between the vocal lines and key and tempo of the original music from the track without playing what was originally there. It’s a strange way of working and it was quite the challenge to say the least. There were about 8 songs on the TOR record, I plan on doing this to all the songs in time… although I will be closing out the first Hadder record once I complete “Long is the Road”. The next record is looking more and more like some sort of play/opera/conceptual record focusing on the Diamonds Hadder Novel/Field Notes I’ve been writing… so not sure when the remaining TOR songs will be rolled out. Time is an enemy of mine, I just wish I had more of it.

Ramsay/Evermore tracks: There are 3 more songs in the works for the Ramsay/Evermore project. The process for this project is: Ramsay sends me MP3 tracks he’s written, just music, I load then into a tracking app I have and I generally just use them for vocal exorcising, if something starts appearing over the track that I like… it moves into the recording phase on my end. At that point I request the individual tracks and load them into a protools session… I then start tracking vocals and keys and rearrange the track if needed as the song starts taking shape and direction. This week I loaded a song into protools called “Night of the Witch”, we’ll see what comes of it. I’ve also requested the files for two other tracks. For me this project is a great release from all the Hadder work.. it happens without any expectation and I have total freedom to create at will. Not having to write the guitar, bass and drums… is a wonderful treat for me, lets me focus on the things I really care about.. words and vocals and melodies. Anyway, just a little update. These tracks seem to finish quicker than Hadder material, so perhaps ‘Night of the Witch” will show up one day without warning.

The Stargazer Crew: Most of my time this week was spent tracking vocals on one of the Sabbath cover songs we are doing called “headless cross”. I’ve had two long vocal sessions and I’m just about done with it. Maybe a line or two will need recut, but overall headless is complete. Doug still needs to cut a solo, and then we’ll mix it and shoot a video… Doug has been talking about an old church to film in… so my eyes have been peeled looking for a little desert hide away… something spooky and fun. I’ve posted a little clip of some vox below from a running mix I did of some vocals from last night. These vocals were cut in my enchanted living room vocal booth.

“Rainbow in the Dark” is all cued up, I’ll probably go in there and start tracking some vocals this week. Oh boy, that’s going to be fun. I’ll mention this very briefly, as I’m not sure how it will play out, but a keyboard player who played with Dio for many years might be getting involved in this little project as well.. You know, this whole genre of music in general is very particular and special.. it’s hard to explain why it’s so special and why we all work so hard on our crafts in order to even attempt to create this type of music… it has to do with things much deeper than just music, that I know for sure. It will be interesting to see where this stargazer crew goes next. Some original music should happen later in the year and who knows… intensions are good and the path seems clear and honest… we’ll see if there’s some magic still left in that old bottle.

Little lesser deeper things: As you can see.. I’m juggling a few things. It’s busy and it’s fulfilling. Each morning I wake in the city and train… day in and day out… it’s been this way for a long time now. It has to be this way. It started along the ocean and now I’m washed up on a barren parking lot watching “Dawn of the Dead” play out in front of me each day. I feel robotic but well equipped. Protected by the iron gates between me and the world. At times I’m hypnotized by the routine of training… it’s almost like I don’t even have a choice, and that’s a good thing. The pattern is so engrained in my blood these days. I imagine I’ll soon be swept away again… with a better view hopefully… but the patterns will stay the same. I suppose there is a lesson here… the rituals and patterns we are caught up in are little grains of sand on a rocky beach, soon they will accumulate into sand bars and eventually the rocks will submerge below the dunes… the dunes of repetition. I’m walking a lonely beach of my dunes…. And my barefoot steps have a resolve that border on madness. Madness and will combined can be a dangerous sand drift. But…The spring is coming… I can’t wait to see what will sprout this year from all the planting I’ve been doing. I hope your creating beautiful dunes of your own.

I'll leave you with something I heard this very morning, moments ago, from a weary traveler down by the red river.... he said "It's always colder in the shade." So true.

Farewell.

-j

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/77466a_95044ee1c6374411b99432ea2b7126f3/360p/mp4/file.mp4

Some random video to some vocal takes for "Headless Cross", in the shade, listening stage. Unmixed and unproduced. But real non the less. Enjoy the process.