Archive for the ‘Studio Projects’ Category

Yeah, you read right.  Free.  Crazy, huh?  “Seven Cities” was always intended to be a loss leader and a vehicle for building my fan base rather than a cash cow, and now that I’ve actually paid off the production costs, I’ve decided to take a page from Jonathan Coulton’s playbook and release all of the tracks from the album under a Creative Commons license.

What does this mean for you, my friends and fans?  For starters, you can now download my album for “any price you deem appropriate” — including $0 — from my BandCamp store.  Any money received goes toward helping me continue to make music without starving.

Next, it means that you are free to– and I encourage you to– spread this album far and wide.  Share the link above on Facebook or Twitter.  Send the tracks to friends or family who might enjoy them.  Put them on mix tapes.  Use them in YouTube videos.  Remix them.  Remaster them.  Mash them up.  The only restrictions are:

• Thou shalt give credit where credit is due (i.e. always include my name and a link to drcommander.com whenever you share or use my songs)
• Thou shalt let people know if you modified the songs in some way (i.e. add “remix” to the title or whatnot)
• Thou shalt not use the songs for commercial (i.e. money-making) purposes

Some further musings regarding why I did this can be read here. Basically, blame Woody Guthrie.

Really, though, I have nothing to lose at this point.  After 8 months of trying to sell and promote my album, including thousands upon thousands of spins on streaming radio, ad buys, you name it … I have made about $100 and spent a lot more than that.  I have had very little success in using the album as a promotional vehicle to book solo gigs.  It is simply not finding its audience.  Art is a form of communication, and thus art without an audience is like a tree falling in the woods.  Whether or not it makes a sound is kind of irrelevant if there is no one there to hear it.  Artists are natural self-doubters, which makes it particularly hard when we, as indie artists, also have to be shameless self-promoters.  When our art doesn’t “hit” the way we expect, our natural impulse is to press the reset button and try again.  In the case of “Seven Cities”, it was a gamble to come out of the gate with a concept album, particularly in a market that is not very receptive to bandless singer/songwriters.  So I understand why it’s not selling well, and from a business point of view, I would rather not throw good money after bad.  From an artistic point of view, however, even though I know that I have a better album in me, I can still be proud of what I’ve done and believe in the concept and believe that there is an audience for it somewhere.  Who knows?  Maybe it’ll be huge in Japan.  Thus, I’m switching from a pinpoint laser approach to a scatter bomb approach, in hopes that by letting the music run wild, it will eventually find its way into the ears of new fans.  Meanwhile, I’ll be finishing up writing songs for my next project and financing it via sideman gigs.  I hope to get started on my sophomore album in earnest this year.

In short, please pirate my album.  I would consider it a big favor.

CD’s are now for sale on CD Baby:

https://www.cdbaby.com/cd/drcommander

For those who bought the MP3 version, you can download the full-sized CD artwork by clicking on one of the following images:

The songs on “Seven Cities” draw inspiration from a number of different sources.  “Jennifer” and “The Blacksmith Shop” are autobiographical, “Hill Country Rain” is historical, and the others are inspired by my travels or by tales told out of school from people with whom I’ve worked in the indie music and film business over the years.  The songs were written primarily during the 2007-2008 timeframe, when I was first starting to perform as a solo artist, in addition to playing and recording with Akina Adderley & the Vintage Playboys (“Dead to the World”, in fact, originated as an AAVP song.)  Having devoted much of my musical energy to that band over the course of two years, it wasn’t until I left the band in late 2008 and subsequently lost my day job in early 2009 that the idea for a solo album really cemented itself.  In early 2009, while still living off of a severance package, I volunteered (in the same sense that Ben Rogers volunteered to whitewash the fence) as the pianist, pit boss, and arranger for the UT School of Law’s annual follies pageant.  Given that the orchestra consisted of whatever volunteers we could get from the law school, I was tasked with arranging a variety of show tunes for one flute, one cello, two guitars, a bass, a drummer, and myself.  To make matters worse, the drummer broke his arm three weeks prior to the show, so I ended up having to computerize most of the drum and brass parts for the Broadway numbers using Logic Pro.  For some of the other numbers, I had to play the drum parts live by triggering samples from my keyboard.

I hadn’t really done much work with MIDI sequencing since high school and college, but this crash course in electronic drums actually proved to be a blessing in disguise.  I had always wanted to do an album that sounded like it was made in the late 70’s/early 80’s and transferred to digital in the early 90’s.  1993, in particular, was the year that, after a 5-year obsession with New Wave, I started to discover 70’s rock and to fall in love with the earlier works of artists like Dire Straits and Steely Dan and Fleetwood Mac.  In early 2009, I didn’t know very many Austin-based drummers, and I wasn’t sure whether the ones I did know could pull off that kind of intricate-yet-understated Mick Fleetwood/Pick Withers/Jeff Porcaro sort of thing.  Not that I claim to be a drummer by any means, much less a good one, but having gained confidence in my ability to create at least a passable rhythm track using my keyboard, I figured what the hell.  Over the last half of 2009, “The Way We Started”, “Dead to the World”, “The American Dream”, “Jennifer”, and “The Blacksmith Shop” took shape in this way, with me first laying down the piano part to either a click track or a drum loop, then laying down the final drum tracks by triggering samples from my keyboard in real time.  I had intended to do this with “One-Way Line” as well, but I got used to the temporary drum loops I was using and never bothered to record over them.

I knew, however, that two of the songs were not going to fly without a real band.  Fortunately, in January of 2010, I met that band.  I had been working off and on with bassist and songwriter Pat Harris since 2007, when he sat in with a Latin jazz combo with whom I was playing at the time.  Pat was good friends with bluegrass singer Anna Mitchell.  The two of them had worked together back in Michigan, and Anna had recorded some of Pat’s songs on her first album.  He brought her down to do a taping of “The Infynit Hour” on the Austin public access channel and invited me to sit in on keys, with Aaron Goldfarb (then a law student) on guitar and Graeme Francis (a percussion instructor at UT) on drums.  Building upon the success of that performance with “The Uninvited Guests”, I hired the band to lay down “Atlanta” and “Hill Country Rain” during the week of SxSW at The Congress House Studio, the studio at which Akina and the Vintage Playboys had recorded our album two years prior.

In the ensuing months, I brought Pat and Aaron into my home studio (aptly dubbed “Spare Oom”, a reference to “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”) to lay down bass and guitar tracks on the rest of the album.  The day before Aaron was scheduled to record, I accidentally plugged the FireWire cable into my Mackie Onyx mixer backwards and completely smoked its FireWire interface.  It nearly nuked my hard drive in the process.  Fortunately, I was able to recover the hard drive and bring up an MBox 2 Pro that I had just purchased.  An MBox, or other DigiDesign hardware, is required when using Pro Tools 8, which is why I had purchased it.  However, the MBox is a less-than-ideal solution for Logic, owing mainly to DigiDesign’s flaky CoreAudio drivers.  Regardless, I had to use it for all of the remaining work on the album, because I didn’t have the $500 in the music till to replace the Onyx FireWire card (it still hasn’t been replaced, as I write this.)

I laugh now when I think back to the many times that a friend or colleague would ask me “how’s the album coming”, and even as early as 2009, I always seemed to think I was “about 80% done.”  At some point during the summer of 2010, I started to realize how unrealistic it was going to be to produce a 10-song album myself, particularly when one of the songs (“Hill Country Rain”) was 7 minutes long and another (an epic two-parter called “Calgary”) was 9 minutes long.  Thus, “Allegheny Sunrise” and “Calgary” were unceremoniously cut and replaced with acoustic mixes of “Jennifer” and “One-Way Line.”  Those two songs would have made the album too long for vinyl anyhow, and had they been included, the album would have actually been about nine cities instead of seven.

By September of 2010, the instrument tracks on everything but “Atlanta” and “Hill Country Rain” had largely taken shape, and I once again naively asserted that I was about 80% done– not realizing that, when recording and producing an album, the instruments are the tip of the iceberg, and the vocals are the rest.  Recording vocals proved to be a “learning experience” (translation: a royal pain in the @$$), because in a large sense, I was trying to teach myself vocal recording from both the vocalist’s and the engineer’s point of view.  One of the things I discovered was that, as a singer, you can get away with a lot of stuff live that you can’t get away with on tape, and I discovered that my songs were actually really hard for me to sing in the studio.  I had already determined that the original key of “The Way We Started” was too low, so I moved it from C to D prior to recording the guitars and bass (fortunately, since I had tracked all of the piano parts using MIDI, doing this was a simple matter of transposing the MIDI data and re-recording it through my Nord.)  However, it wasn’t until I had banged my head against the wall over the course of two days trying to track vocals on “Jennifer” that I realized I needed to bump that song up a whole step as well.  Unfortunately, at that point, the guitars and bass had already been recorded, so I had to use the Elastic Time feature in Pro Tools to transpose them.  Fortunately, Pro Tools does a good job of this, and in the places where you can still hear the artifacts, they sound almost like analog tape distortion.

I personally found vocal recording and producing to be the most tedious and least enjoyable part of the whole process.  I was trying my best not to use pitch correction, so I would record a fairly insane number of takes and go through them with a fine-toothed comb, taking the best pieces of each one.  If I didn’t get what I wanted, on some occasions I would end up recording even more takes of a particular phrase.  I think some of the phrases ended up being recorded 25 or 30 times.  If I wasn’t so fully invested– or perhaps “obsessed” is a better word– at that point, it would’ve been really easy to scrap the whole project or to do like Carlos Santana did and hire other singers.  One valuable lesson that I took away from this:  pitch correction software is often overused and misused, but if used properly and sparingly, it can make the producer’s job tremendously easier without detracting in any way from the track.  By the time I got around to recording and producing the last few vocal tracks (bearing in mind that the album was not recorded in order), I had figured out that it was a lot better to pick the take that had the best “feel” and correct the bad notes rather than to judge the takes purely on intonation.

Another not insignificant reason why the album took so long to produce was simply lack of money.  Working as a contractor for my day job, I was and am living somewhat hand-to-mouth, so I was trying to finance the album from other music endeavors.  Reserving a studio and an engineer for a day is usually in the neighborhood of $500, so I was really trying to do as much as I possibly could myself.  Fortunately, in early 2010, I fell into a gig as the keyboardist for Flounders Without Eyes, a successful jam band in the Austin area, so all of the money I made performing with them was funneled into production of “Seven Cities”.  Additionally, their rhythm guitarist and erstwhile producer, Mike Morgan, owns a studio in Dripping Springs (The Zone) that records a veritable who’s who of acoustic, Americana, and Texas country acts.  As I started becoming more and more of a fixture with Flounders, Mike brought me in to record piano tracks on his solo album, in exchange for future help with mine.

At some point during 2011/early 2012, I got really distracted with the notion of trying to mix and master the record myself, which in retrospect is about the stupidest idea I’ve ever had.  It was partly born out of the desire to keep everything in Logic Pro rather than going to the trouble of bouncing all of the tracks into Pro Tools and re-creating all of the volume and effects automation.  I learned some useful techniques by playing around with mixing & mastering in Logic, but ultimately it delayed the release by at least 3 months.  Ultimately, I just had to bite the bullet and spend the many hours necessary to recreate the tracks in Pro Tools.

As early 2012 rolled around, I had mostly finished all of my vocals– except for the 11-verse elephant in the living room known as “Hill Country Rain”– and had brought Akina in to record the backing vox on “Dead to the World.”  (Since she had formerly performed that song, I was used to hearing the chorus up an octave, and it just didn’t sound right without that part.)  I had worked out backing vocal arrangements for “Jennifer”, “One-Way Line”, “The Blacksmith Shop”, and “Atlanta” and was looking for someone who could do a Fleetwood Mac sort of thing.  Mike knew just the lady for the job:  Andrea Whaley, who had just finished recording backing vocals on Mike’s solo album.  Since I had everything in Pro Tools at this point, we brought Andrea into The Zone in the summer of 2012 to lay down the backing vocals, and I recorded the main vocal for “Hill Country Rain” at the same time.  I was somehow able to do that song with only 5 takes– I guess I was getting better at recording vocals.

At this point, I probably was really 80% done, but there was still a lot of production work left, and I had long since stopped talking about how far along the album was.  As my friend Pedro pointed out to me, sometimes talking too much about a project makes the project real in your mind, and thus, on some level, your mind doesn’t really feel any urgency to finish it.  The other thing I learned is that releasing “sneak previews” of the tracks is even worse than talking too much about the project.  Not only did it waste time by forcing me to temporarily perfect an unfinished product, but it also made the album feel even more real and complete, which made it even more difficult for me to accept how much work there was left to do.  I still had to tame the instruments on “Atlanta” and “Hill Country Rain”, and making real drums sound good is a lot harder than making electronic drums sound good.  Mike saved my bacon by EQ’ing the drums enough that I could work with the tracks, and he also showed me some basic techniques for producing them.  Through the process of bringing in the tracks from Logic, I already knew a bit about Pro Tools, but now I had to spend numerous hours learning it in earnest so I could comp and produce Andrea’s backing vocals as well as the instrument tracks on “Atlanta” and “Hill Country Rain.”  Bear in mind that, while I was spending probably 8-10 hours a week (on average) working on the album, I was also still actively playing with Flounders Without Eyes and holding down a job as a contractor to pay my rent.

Toward the end of 2012, I was starting to finalize production on the songs, but “Atlanta” and “The American Dream” really just needed something more.  Mike came to my rescue yet again, hooking me up with none other than Grammy-winning steel guitar player Lloyd Maines.  Production finally wrapped on March 4 of 2013, and as soon as I let go of the reins, things started to happen very quickly.  Within 3 weeks, the album had been mixed by Pat Manske at The Zone.  Over the course of two days, he took the mish-mash of layered tracks from my home studio and full band tracks from Congress House and somehow managed to build them into a coherent sound.

I was going to have Pat master it as well, but he left on tour in early April (in addition to being the engineer at The Zone, he’s also the drummer for the Flatlanders), and I really wanted to have the album online before Old Settler’s Music Festival.  Thus, I decided to bring it into Terra Nova, Austin’s premier mastering studio.  I had never worked with Nick Landis before, but as soon as we started talking, I knew I had found a kindred spirit.  He suggested foregoing the use of “brick wall” limiters and mastering the album as if it were a direct transfer from analog.  This gave it exactly that 1993 classic rock CD sound I was looking for, and it had the added advantage of allowing the vinyl and CD masters to be identical, which saved time and money (“Seven Cities” is vinyl-ready, if and when I raise enough money to do a pressing.)  “Brick wall” limiters basically shape the sound so that all of the peaks in volume are cut off, which allows the mastering engineer to raise the overall loudness level of the track.  This makes the track sound better on cheap speakers, cell phones, and earbuds, but since it also eliminates much of the “dynamic range” (the distinction between the loud and soft parts of the track), it can make the song sound flat and emotionless.  Like pitch correction, “brick wall” limiters have become overused in recent years, and critics of the practice have come to refer to their overuse as the “Loudness War.”

Nick is not only a fellow dynamic range fan, but he is also a member of the Pleasurize Music Foundation, so he was able to certify “Seven Cities” using their official tools.  The final master of “Seven Cities” received a rating of DR12 (12 dB between the peak and RMS signal strength, for the engineers in the audience), which gives it the same dynamic range as the original CD versions of Steely Dan’s “Can’t Buy a Thrill” (1985), Bruce Hornsby’s “Scenes From the Southside” (1988), Dire Straits’ “On Every Street” (1991), and Bruce Springsteen’s “Human Touch” (1992), all of which were albums that heavily influenced me.

Well, anyway, that’s the story.  I don’t claim that “Seven Cities” is Grammy material, but I’m proud of how it turned out, and I hope you enjoy it as well.  I doubt that there will ever be another album like it, unless someone else comes along who is as crazy as I am.  In the future, if any album I make contains more than just me and a piano, I’m hiring a producer.

Peter Rowan’s Twang & Groove Update

Playing Old Settlers was an absolute blast, and thanks a bunch to everyone who came out to see one or both of our shows on Saturday.  Audience response was amazing.  Here’s a video of our noon show, shot by Ted Branson from KOOP radio 91.7:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZryjUmbyo3M

We’re getting amped up to play Telluride in about 6 weeks, and we’ve announced several dates in North Carolina in July, including the Lincoln Theater in Raleigh and the Crystal Coast Music Festival over in Morehead City.  More info on these is on my gig calendar.

Free Stuff!

In the world of DRC’s solo music, you can now download “Dead to the World” for free from my ReverbNation page in exchange for signing up for my e-mail list.  If you’re already on my e-mail list, just click “Download” under the song, then click “I’m already a fan”, and where it says “I’m on the mailing list”, enter your e-mail address and click “Submit”.  Bada bing.  Free song.

Please share this song with anyone who you think might like it.

CD’s

CD’s are on the way and should be here early next week.  My BandCamp store lets you name your price on “Seven Cities”, and all proceeds at the moment go toward paying off the 4-figure production debt.  🙂  If you pay $10 or more, or if you already paid that amount through BandCamp, then I’ll make sure you get a CD if you want one.  So don’t delay– buy today.  You can pay either with PayPal or a credit card (you don’t have to create a PayPal account.)  If you’ve bought the record via iTunes or another outlet, then I thank you heartily for your support.  I won’t know for probably a few weeks how those sales are doing, because reporting from the major online stores has a significant delay.

Spread the word!

The album is now officially available “everywhere” online, including most streaming sites.   If you know someone who might like my music, please take a moment to tell them about it.

More good stuff in the works.  Stay tuned!

I am pleased to announce that you can now listen to the entire “Seven Cities” album, read the liner notes and lyric sheets, and purchase the whole thing (or individual tracks) at:

https://drcommander.bandcamp.com/album/seven-cities

The MP3s have embedded lyrics that will display on your iPhone or other players that can read MP3 lyrics.  Pretty cool.

The album is also available on iTunes and Google Play (search for “d. r. commander”) and should be on Amazon and every other major online store within the next few days.  A limited number of CD’s will be available within the next couple of weeks (I still have to finish doing the back and inside cover artwork for those.)

If you prefer to cut out the middle man, I will also have download cards available at Old Settlers.

If you enjoy the album, please also consider sharing the link with others you think might enjoy it.

Hope to see you at the Old Settlers pre-party tonight and the festival this weekend!

Lots of big news, so I guess I’ll just go in chronological order:

“Seven Cities” Digital Release

This coming Wednesday, it’s the day you’ve all been waiting for … or, at least, I hope you’ve all been waiting for it … the digital release of “Seven Cities.”  As we speak, I am in the process of pushing it out to digital distributors and setting up the BandCamp.com page for direct sales.  I had the pleasure of working with Nick Landis of Terra Nova Digital Audio, Inc. last week to master the record.  I told him that I was looking for a sound reminiscent of an album that was produced in the 70’s but transferred to digital in the late 80’s/early 90’s (pre-“loudness wars”), and not only did he know exactly how to achieve that, but it turns out that he can issue official dynamic range certifications from the Pleasurize Music Foundation (http://www.pleasurizemusic.com/).  “Seven Cities” received a rating of DR12, which gives it a similar level of dynamic range to some of my favorite late 80’s/early 90’s classic rock CD’s.

I will provide more details on Tuesday or Wednesday regarding the album release.  Stay tuned.

Old Settlers Pre-Party

This coming Wednesday (4/17), I’ll be playing a free show at Camp Ben McCullough (across from the Salt Lick on F. M. 1826 near Driftwood, TX, about 15 minutes south of Austin) with Rhythmic Statues.  RS is a project conceived by Mike Morgan and featuring most of the members of Peter Rowan’s Twang & Groove band (including Carter Arrington on guitar, Mike on bass, and me on keys), but it centers around Mike’s songwriting.  For this show, we’ll have Jenny Mier and Andy Markoff from Flounders Without Eyes as special guests, and we’ll be doing some of the songs that Mike wrote for Flounders, in addition to some new Rhythmic Statues material and some covers of old favorites.  I’ll be playing keys and helping out on backing vocals.  We may also have a couple of other special guests joining us.

Bring a lawn chair, munchies, and BYOB.  Admission is free.

Lineup:

5:30 Tom Vickers
6:15 Chris Baker
7:00 Bob Slaughter
8:00 Three Hands High
9:00 Rhythmic Statues
10:30 Jabarvy

Old Settlers Music Festival

Peter Rowan’s Twang & Groove will be doing two shows on Saturday, a matinee at 12:05 PM on the Hill Country Stage and an evening show at 9:30 PM on the Bluebonnet Stage.  Also performing on Saturday will be Jerry Douglas, Leftover Salmon, The Gourds, Martin Sexton, and Bob Schneider.  Friday’s lineup includes Terri Hendrix, The Del McCoury Band, Michael Franti, and Fred Eaglesmith.  Camping is currently sold out, but 1-day tickets and 3-day wristbands (without camping) are still available at http://oldsettlersmusicfest.org/tickets/.

Telluride!

Yes, indeed.  The good news is that Peter Rowan’s Twang & Groove will be performing at the 40th Annual Telluride Bluegrass Festival on Friday, June 21.  It will be my first time to ever attend the festival, and I’m super stoked to get the chance not only to play but to see some of my idols, including Jackson Browne and Béla Fleck, from the VIP section.

The festival is completely sold out, as is our show at Fly Me to the Saloon in Telluride on Thurs., June 20, but if they’re doing live streaming, I will be sure to send out the link.

North Carolina

For you Blue Ridge folks, we’ll be coming your direction in July.  Currently, the band is not even 100% sure where the festival is, but I’ll be sure to let you know as soon as I find out.

It’s hard to know where to start without burying the lead, so I guess I’ll just flip a coin.  🙂

As some of you know, Peter Rowan’s Twang & Groove will be performing at SxSW this year.  We finally got the deets, and here they are:  we’re going to be at the KCA Artists Showcase (official showcase — wristband required) at The Stage on Sixth (508 E. Sixth, Austin, TX 78701.)  The showcase is on Thursday night (3/14), and check out the lineup:

9 PM:  Rodney Crowell
10 PM:  Ray Rylie Hubbard
11 PM:  The Black Lillies
12 AM:  Billy Joe Shaver
1 AM:  Peter Rowan’s Twang & Groove

No pressure, right?

In other news, I am pleased (thrilled, ecstatic, relieved, Dance of Joy, etc.) to announce that, after nearly 4 years and well into the 4 digits’ worth of hours spent futzing with Logic and Pro Tools, production of “Seven Cities” has finally wrapped.  It’s been a long ride, full of big doubts and bigger lessons and many sleepness nights, but I’m proud of how it turned out.  I want to thank all of you for your support, and I especially want to thank those who lent their various talents to the project.  I’ll be going into The Zone Recording Studio after SxSW so Pat “Goldenear” Manske can work his magic mixing and mastering it, and the current plan is to release on or about April 15, to coincide with Old Settler’s.

Speaking of Old Settler’s, PRTG will be performing on Saturday evening (4/20.)  Get your tickets here:  http://oldsettlersmusicfest.org/tickets/.  We’ve also got a couple of big festivals lined up for summer in various scenic locales, so stay tuned!

I am pleased (read: thrilled, ecstatic, relieved, doing Dance of Joy … Opa!) to announce that, after nearly 4 years and well over 1000 hours of work (maybe even 1500– I lost count) on my part, production of “Seven Cities” has finally wrapped. It’s been a long ride, full of big doubts and bigger lessons and many sleepness nights. It may not win any awards, but I’m proud of how it turned out. I want to thank all of you for your support, and I especially want to thank those who lent their various talents to the project.

Next steps:
1. Final mix
2. Master
3. ???
4. Profit!

Release is tentatively scheduled for 4/15, the week of Old Settler’s.

Greetings, comrades or Commandroids or whatever you think fans of a guy named “Commander” should be called.  I’ve been much remiss in sending out updates this past summer– a lot going on, including GregoFest in June;  a very productive week at Camp Bluegrass in Levelland in July; finishing up all of the recording on “Seven Cities” (including some killer Dixie Chicks-style backing vox by Andrea Whaley);  laying down keys on Mike Morgan’s upcoming solo album, which features Jamie Oldaker (former drummer for Eric Clapton & Bob Seger), Pat Manske (drummer for the Flatlanders), Keith Davis (guitarist w/ the Eli Young Band), Lloyd Maines, Carter Arrington (if some of you remember a band called Larry that used to run in the same circles with The Harmony Theory, Carter was their guitarist), and Jenny Mier from Flounders Without Eyes;  doing a mini-tour with Deadeye and Green Mountain Grass for Jerry Garcia’s Birthday Bash;  and probably other notable events that have slipped my swiss-cheese memory.

I tend to remember to update Facebook a lot more frequently than the e-mail list, so give me a Like at https://www.facebook.com/drcommander if you’re interested in more fine-grained doses of Commander.  I’m also on the Twitter @DRCPianoMan.

The main purpose of this e-mail is to let you know about a great festival that I (we) will be playing on Saturday Oct. 27 (a week from this Saturday, assuming you’re reading this before Oct. 20.  Otherwise, this Saturday.)  It’s called the Halloween Hoe-Down and will be held at Purple Bee Studios in sunny Lockhart, Texas, famous for barbeque and Christopher Guest films.  Flounders Without Eyes’ 20th anniversary show will be at 3 PM on Saturday, then I’ll be joining Mike Morgan, Jamie Oldaker, and Carter Arrington at 11:30 PM for the debut of our new band, The Rhythmic Statues (Mark II.)  We’ll be charging right out of the gate as the backing band for bluegrass legend Peter Rowan, who is headlining the festival.  I learned at Camp Bluegrass that every working musician has a “Bill Monroe Number”, which is basically the bluegrass equivalent of a “Kevin Bacon Number.”  Well, Peter has a Bill Monroe Number of 1.  ‘Nuff said.

I got a chance to play down at Purple Bee for GregoFest, and it’s a super sweet venue.  Very relaxed, no draconian rules or anything.  BYOB and a lawn chair and just hang out (actually, you don’t even have to BYOB this time around, since there will be free booze, thanks to a generous liquor donation.)  On-site pool with a great view of the stage (if it’s hot enough to swim.)  Festival passes are still on sale for $30 but will go up to $35 at the gate for those in costume or $40 without costume.  Everything you need to know, including the ticket link and lineup, is here: https://www.facebook.com/events/120142514798232.  Ticket price includes on-site camping for those who want to go on Friday as well.  Also performing on Saturday will be our old friends The Flying Balalaika Brothers and Deadeye.

Oh yeah, and I’m a 40-something now.  How the hell did *that* happen?!

Signed,
D. R. Commander
Austin’s second most vertically integrated musician

For those who are curious about what I’m working on, in essence I’ve decided to embark upon an ambitious (read: borderline insane) quest to record and produce an album almost entirely by myself.  The project, entitled “Seven Cities”, is a concept album consisting of an eclectic mix of folk/rock, country, and R&B with a decidedly late 70’s flavor, influenced by diverse artists such as Dire Straits, Steely Dan, Ronnie Milsap, George Benson, Fleetwood Mac, Paul Simon, Eddie from Ohio, Waylon Jennings, Gordon Lightfoot, Bruce Hornsby, Alan Parsons, and Bruce Springsteen.  The plan is to mainly release the album on vinyl and on popular download services, with a possible limited CD run for local sales and promotion.

“Seven Cities” represents a sort of musical road trip across North America and back, exploring love and loss against the backdrop of urban skylines, small towns, and scenic western vistas. The name calls back the expedition of Coronado, who searched all over North America for the fabled Seven Cities of Gold but ended up finding only a rich and beautiful land, a treasure which was ultimately more valuable than gold. In the same way, the songs in “Seven Cities” tell stories of our own personal searches for gold and how we rarely find it but sometimes manage to find ourselves in the process.

Track list:

1. “The Way We Started” – a musician falls in love with an actor but discovers that the only way to her heart is through her ego.

2. “Dead to the World” – a pair of film directors burn so many bridges that one of them ends up unable to get any work other than directing porn with actors and crew whose egos far exceed their talents.

3. “Atlanta” – a man abandons a promising relationship, ostensibly because he’s homesick for Atlanta, but really because he’s afraid to commit.

4. “The American Dream” – a woman moves to a Midwest city to find love, but failing this, she ends up in a loveless marriage just so she can avoid living alone.

5. “Jennifer” – a man is afraid to tell a woman how he feels, for fear of losing her as a friend.

6. “The Blacksmith Shop” – during Jazzfest, a pianist partying at the oldest bar in North America is asked, out of the blue, to sit in for the legendary Johnny Gordon.

7. “Hill Country Rain” – a story about the epic flash floods along the Lower Guadalupe River and the people that continue to rebuild in the flood plain despite the danger.

8. “One-Way Line” – a musician ponders the breakup of his marriage as he rides the SkyTrain into Vancouver.