Shows/n/Such

I just got contacted by Gene Brown at the Levee here in St. john's, he asked me to put on a solo set next saturday night. I'm really excited to pull out some of the stuff I wrote a little while ago and haven't been playing with a band at all. There's a lot more than just that going on this week though!

Today Braeden, RG and I sat down to start putting together some new songs and talking about what we're doing with Make Mean Everything. This week alone we're doing our first real studio recording (With Bryce Smith from the band RocketRocketShip) and playing an acoustic set at MUN for a Sociology Mixer, going to be a blast. We've also got a few shows booked into february that we're collecting details on right now!

The RPM season is coming up and that means I'll have to go into full production mode, hopefully putting out my own compilation of acoustic material while helping out my buddy Michael-Price put out his first hip-hop album. Each of us are commiting to 10 organic unreleased songs to be released on the last day of February, so everybody keep your heads up for the recordings and video blogs as they come out! You've gotta keep up!

Working this weekend and a full week of school to begin tomorrow, time to put on my Economics hat for a little while and try to be an analyst!

-J

Ableton song list is getting long

I'm so excited that I got to sit down and sort out the pictures I got to take last week, and the songs I've had piling up in my .MIDI folder for ages. For a little while there I was losing confidence in my songwriting ability, just getting through the song-writing process.

It was around Christmas time that I started remembering all those times I would sit for a couple of hours with Adam Dincorn and try to find that one perfect harmony for something. It inspired me to start taking a couple of extra minutes with everything I've been writing so that every song will be concrete and flawless before I put it to record.

As much as I love Herman Li , I'm not going to improvise anymore.

I can't believe Make Mean booked two shows already, just small gigs, but gigs none the less. I'm really hoping we can all balance school and our favorite form of creation appropriately. February is RPM season, and I'm going to try to go into full production mode.

Complete efficiency. Pound for pound.

As long as I can keep up a good spirit and a normal diet I'll be up and running alright. Just running, and running and running and

The Rebirth

I've been writing music like crazy, lyrics and guitar, and I'll hopefully be releasing all of that with a few guest instruments, for purchase at some point in the next two months! Abby Cook has been gracious enough to provide me with some album art for my solo releases, so anyone eager to get their hands on some personal Abby Art will be able to do so by February.

I'm finding the writing process filled with positive emotions and energy so hopefully that will come through on the release. I've been dabbling in photography more and more every day, so maybe I'll arrange some sort of a photo shoot soon to get this blog looking a little more positive and modern like the approach I'm going to try to take for the release.

I'm just starting this blog up again, but I hope to get it rolling like it was not so long ago. Anyone who wants to look back and see what the blog was I encourage you to take a scroll through it's pages and see if you can dredge up some teenage angst (there's probably some pretty bad stuff in there).

I'm still studying Economics at Memorial University so besides sending posts and music I'll also be providing little bits of economic commentary to keep it from being consistently all about me and the music. If anybody has any ideas for artwork or recording collaborations get in touch with me whenever you can so we can hammer out all the little details pre-release.

Thanks so much for stopping in and reading, for all those of you who signed up for Google+ or have a Gmail account, I'm going to rig up a way to get any posts I make here sent directly to your e-mail or to your phone. I'll have details on that soon!
Keep in touch

I've made a decission

I keep trying to start blogging again because I have a couple upcoming releases. I figure maybe this will give me some idea of interest so I can get motivated to put out my video blogs in February during my insane writing and recording season.

If anyone needs a recap of what may have happened since I left Saint John it went a little like this:

I became a university student

Which in all it's glory has made me feel like growing up quite and bit and trying to get on with being a person as opposed to speculating on everything and writing about it. I'm a little more skilled at economics and a little less skilled at playing guitar, but I wouldn't say to any degree that affects song writing, I'd say more on the scale of guitar solos and self-indulgent playing.

I still enjoy music, very much, and try to surround myself with it at all times. I'm playing with a band called Make Mean Everything right now, and we're trying to get as much exposure as possible.
This whole casual blogging thing is probably going to fester into a full fledged overload of material about my life that people may have no interest reading. However, consider this a reintroduction to prose and opinion, the way I write it