Behind the scenes of my new album 'Rocks and Roots.'

If you know me, or if we are connected on social media-, you know that I have a deep passion for creating music. What you may not know is that this passion was not ignited until my late 20’s...28 to be exact. It started off when I received a guitar as a gift for my birthday, and eighteen years later, I find my love for creating music is greater than ever.  I am proud to say that I am a true “independent musician-” every recording you have ever heard of mine, was me from start to finish. This includes; songwriting, music, recording, mixing, mastering, marketing, amongst many other intricate facets which are involved. The “job,” as an independent musician has been a tedious love/hate relationship, which I am happy to say that I have learned to love much more- (more on this in my next blog). 

I am very excited  to announce that I have created an album called Rocks and Roots, which will be released on 3/11/22. This blog will focus on some of the work that went into creating this album.  Musically speaking, I have probably learned more over the past 2 years, than in all 18 years that I have been playing music. But before I discuss this album, let me discuss how the idea was created. 

I honestly thought that I was done with doing any serious recording, as I had become so frustrated with the process after my album Indie Tale in 2014. Prior to making the last album, I had just begun dabbling with bass guitar, keys, and drums. My limited musical ability on these instruments, combined with my limited audio engineering knowledge, resulted in an album that was a great accomplishment for me at the time, but the audio recordings are far from perfect. As a songwriter, I love all those songs, and I look forward to re-recording them...but the sound quality and instrumentation is not where it needs to be, and I look forward to re-recording these tracks in the future. In any event, I finished Indie Tale,  and over the course of the next 4 years, my recording equipment would essentially remain untouched. I would  go into my studio to jam with friends- maybe once every couple of months. I did continue to play live shows, but recording was no longer  on my radar. Until the pandemic… 

Once the pandemic rattled the world, I naturally wanted to stay indoors. As things began shutting down something instinctively told me this is the time to go for it. Musically, I began to research each piece of equipment that I had. I watched countless hours of youtube videos recording, mixing and mastering. I have always had minimal knowledge with these tools, but now I was taking masterclasses online.  Additionally, I was watching drum,piano and bass lessons online, and practicing 2-3 hours each day.. I began to “dial in” my studio, and I was beginning to hear a much better quality of sound.  I bought a few new instruments and pieces of recording equipment, and approximately one year into the pandemic, I knew it was time to put all of this training and equipment to good use. I mapped out my days around music. I would record in the early morning hours, watch tutorial videos in the mid-day hours, and in the afternoon/evening, I  would hone my audio engineering skills. The pandemic essentially allowed me to temporarily have my dream job as a full time musician, and hopefully this will transfer over to reality now that we are approaching a return to normalcy. I recorded all of the instruments for the 11 tracks on my new album, and as I began mixing them, I ran into a problem that many musicians often do...I listened back and I knew I could do better. While things like this can be incredibly tedious at times, it is important to understand that anything important to us should be viewed much more as a marathon than a sprint.

I truly believe in the music I have created for ‘Rocks and Roots,’ and I hope you will feel the same way when you hear it. Please follow along on my journey, and support in any way you find you are able. Simply streaming my music goes a long way as it begins to “wake up” the spotify/YouTube algorithm which will help to get me featured on more playlists. If you’d like to take it a step further, share my social media posts and videos. Any and all support is greatly appreciated! 

Thanks for reading!

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