Can we just all be happy 2020 is over, and then never speak of it again?

Despite being… well, the WORST… I am somehow managing to end this year as alive as I started it, and despite being, again, the WORST, this year did bring something of a creative burst or two.

In the early days of the lockdown era, I played a living room concert broadcast on the fantastic rsuradio.com. It was so much fun that I later released two more living room shows of my own: Live at San Quarantine, Volumes 1 & 2.

You can stream, download, and purchase both volumes of Live at San Quarantine over at Bandcamp. New stuff – old favorites – new versions of old favorites, including a milestone update to “Pushin’ 40 Mid-Crisis-Life Blues” – and the Medley to boot. Will there be a Volume 3? Only 2021 can say. But frankly I don’t trust that guy just yet.

I also managed to find a little bit of time to knock out two new issues of the loooong-running zine News From Around the Bend, which you can go download and/or read for free at your leisure at nfatb.com. (How long is “loooong,” you ask? Our 30th anniversary is coming up in February 2021.)

And finally, I also managed to finish writing all the songs for the long-awaited CARDIAC ADVENTURE piece. The last two songs’ lyrics were finished written on a plane the second week of March. Just under the proverbial wire. I also worked on writing the connective-tissue talking bits for that set, and the visuals, and I’m hoping to end the live-performance hiatus by debuting that show sometime in the coming year. (If the coming year decides to allow such things.) At the very least, the “album version” will be in the works VERY soon.

So that’s my year and a quick look at the coming one. If you’re still here, or even if you’re not but you were for a while – thanks for being here. Hang in there and maybe we can do this in person again soon.

The story so far: After a 4-year hiatus, we are approaching The Coming Out Of Some New Things, so in the coming months, I’m releasing odds & ends that fell through the cracks during that gap.

Today’s entry is (FINALLY) our first original track in this series. It’s a demo of a track I’ve been playing live for a while, and it’s also a somewhat shocking true story.

In early 2006, Russia finally revealed that late one night, more than 22 years earlier, their missile defense early-warning system (named Oko, old Russian for “Eye”) reported five missiles coming in from the US. The supervisor on duty that night, Stanislav Petrov, read the warnings and determined it was unlikely to be a real attack. Had he followed orders (as most of the military folks who rotated on that shift would have done), it could have meant the end of the Cold War in explosive fashion. Fortunately, he was right to ignore what turned out to be a false alarm. (Which falsely alarmed repeatedly that night.)

Stanislav Petrov saved the world, and you never even knew about it. The whole story around it is nuts, and Wikipedia is a good place to start digging into it.

So my love of history gave me the idea, the blues gave me the structure, and the Beatles and the Russians gave me the title. Check it out here: The Ballad of Petrov and Oko.

The story so far: After a 4-year hiatus, we are approaching The Coming Out Of Some New Things, so in the coming months, I’m releasing odds & ends that fell through the cracks during that gap.

Today’s entry is another cover: “Whipping Song (Who’s Gonna Whip You),” originally performed by the CRIMINALLY underrated Sister Double Happiness. I worked on a handful of covers and originals for what was to be a sideshow/carnival-themed EP, including this, “Two Headed Boy” (our previous entry), my own “Make It Crispy!” and feat-of-strength medley, plus a number of other original & covered goodies. That EP never materialized, but a few things did get completed, so here’s one of those nuggets.

It was a great excuse to break out my old MATH LAB growl. That’s me on all instruments here, including the acoustic bass I had just snagged from a pawn shop right before recording. I was a bass player long before I played a 6-string, and it’s always nice to let that guy out again for a bit.

(It was also fun to bash the crap out of that hi-hat.)

Check it out here: Whipping Song (Who’s Gonna Whip You).

Hi folks!

After a long hiatus (4+ years), we are finally approaching The Coming Out Of Some New Things. Over the next few months, I’ll be releasing some odds and ends that fell through the cracks during the gap.

First up is a cover of a Neutral Milk Hotel classic, “Two Headed Boy.” Recording was pretty straightforward, other than a double-mic / bounceback / reverb thing I did on the vocals. I sung into two mics, adjusted differently, at different distances (one of them in fact moving throughout), in a corner behind a door and a pair of Zappa posters. Those vocals were smoothed out and blended by doing sort of a double-wide mixdown, some layers with and some layers without a slight room reverb.

It all seemed like a good idea at the time, as did recording it a half-step low. Over time, the downbeat sounding flat started to get on my nerves, so I finally pitched it all back up that half-step, and here we are.

Check it out here: Two Headed Boy.