My Studio

This is me in my studio working. Oh, wait. No.
It's me giving a tattoo to Lesli Hudson.

It's so nice to be back in my studio. I've been spending an unhealthy number of hours up here in my little loft inputting midi and singing into my microphone. It's like being a monk, except after it's all over, I have music! And when someone else has a studio, it's even better because we can trade music back and forth.

For instance, Devin Richards and I were working our butts off together in his little studio in NY because he enjoys learning my songs (and he's a workaholic -- good god, that boy loves to rehearse). Well, we tried an experiment. One of the songs we worked on was a new one called "My Thankgiving Prayer." We finally sang it at Mark Janas' Salon and then back at Mark's apartment, and it was one of the few songs where we could get our voices to match since he's this powerful bass/baritone and I'm this squeaky little tenor. When we FINALLY, after much work, found the perfect key for both of us (F#), it was too late to make a video, so I got back here and made a demo version on keyboard, sent it back to him in NY, and he recorded his vocals, sent me that vocal track and now I'm working on finishing it here. I love modern technology. It's the first time I've tried doing this -- and it's SO much more fun that just sitting here singing everything myself.

I still have work to do on it, but when it'd done, I'll post it here. Coast to coast collaboration!

I also have more lyrics by Amy Lynn. None of this is easy, but it sure is more fun that sitting on a couch wishing I was back in my studio. As much as I enjoyed performing Big Voice in New York, I was always missing my loft.

I think I mentioned another friend, Wes, who was in NY for awhile with his family. Wes and his mom were volunteering for Big Voice occasionally. Well, they've moved back down to Mississippi and Wes asked me if he could play around with our myspace sites. Since I find myspace's interfaces to be mysterious and impregnable, and since there's NOTHING TO DO in Mississippi, god bless 'im, he has been doing some great work on the Steve Schalchlin Music myspace and a new Zero Hour myspace. If you, reader, have a myspace site, please befriend us. It's the very modern thing to do.

I've also been faithfully running every morning. Yesterday, we discovered that our car had cracked a leak in the coolant tank. So, I drove it to the dealer and walked back home -- walking?? In L.A.?? -- only to discover that the damage would cost $600. Then Jim remembered that we might still be under warranty. He called them and YES! No charge. Thank god we never drive anywhere. That car is a 2001 car and it only has 40,000 miles on it. So, I walked the mile back to the dealership and picked it up.

I also saw my doctor last week. He took gallons of blood. We'll see how my body is doing on that score later this week. I have a feeling I'm going to be doing a lot of running to get myself back to normal. In NY, it was too COLD to hit the streets.