Four New Songs That You Can't Hear... Yet

Me, enjoying an IBC Black Cherry soda and thinking about new songs.

I haven't written much about the new album I'm working on... mostly because I haven't been.

Yes, we went into the studio last May, raring to roll on the next Zak Claxton album. We recorded a couple of songs I think will turn out great: "Shine" and "Time Never Waits for You". But the reality of the situation is that both of those songs had been written before my last album was even released. Ultimately, while I had a bunch of ideas and snippets going back to mid-2009, for whatever reason, my muse wasn't working with me, and I didn't feel inspired to finish the songs.

Until now.

In the past couple of weeks, I've finished four, count them, FOUR new songs. All of them will be recorded soon enough at Sound Sanctuary Recording Studios, with the same group of misfits and malcontents that we used on the last album (namely Phil O'Keefe, Bunny Knutson, and Ken Lee). I have a session coming up on March 19, and we're in the process of choosing two of the new songs to do that day, and scheduling another session on top of that one as quickly as possible to record the others.

Anyway, by refining some of the musical themes I'd had and writing lyrics, there are four new ZC songs that hardly anyone has heard yet:

• Change the Night
• Look Out for Me
• Perfect Girl
• The Other Way

I'm very excited about each of them. Many songwriters will tell you that songs are like children, and you can't pick and choose favorites. That's fucking bullshit. I know that some of my songs are stronger than others. It's a tangible thing, like looking at two of your kids and realizing one is taller than the other. However, I do like each of my songs for different reasons, and that's as true of these four new tunes as it is of any I've ever written.

That having been said, I really believe that three of these new songs -- I won't say which ones -- are among the best pop tunes I've ever written in my life. As a typical indie singer-songwriter, you don't want to get to excited about the potential for a song's success... there are just too many variables involved to say with any honesty, "This will definitely be a hit!"

But what you can do is put everything you have into each song so that the potential for success is there, and with a few of the new ones, I firmly believe that to be true. I'll probably get even more excited about them when we get into the studio and they take on something new with the addition of my friends Phil, Bunny, and Ken making their contributions.

Writing new songs makes me thirsty.

What Are These Songs Like?
I hate trying to describe music in words. I can tell you that all of them will be immediately recognizable as Zak Claxton songs, but some of my other strong influences from artists like the Police, the Foo Fighters, Nirvana, the Cars, Weezer, and others will be noticeable with some of the tunes.

As I mentioned, we'll be recording two of them on March 19, and at that point I'll be happy to share the songs with you as usual. Also, I'll be doing live performances of these songs at upcoming shows in Second Life and on StreamJam, so be sure to catch me when you can.