It's good to be back

Hello people who read this stuff that I write. As you may have -- or more likely have not -- noticed, I've been mostly absent for a couple of weeks. This is due to something I do for my job every January called the NAMM Show. In the part of my life that doesn't directly involve writing and performing music, I work as a marketing communications guy for the music and audio products industry, and NAMM is the big annual trade show for that business. It's the West Coast's largest trade show, with over 90,000 attendees, and is the source of much insanity for me each year. In any case, it consumes a good deal of my time and energy in the weeks preceding the show, and during NAMM itself.

Wii-ing
But that's all over now, so I can get back to doing stuff that's more fun and cool than work. I'll start by admitting to you that toward the end of 2011, I slacked on my daily exercises on the Wii Fit Plus, and ended up taking pretty much all of November and December off my exercise routine. I have a legitimate excuse, though: I was dealing with a tendon problem in my elbow, and everything I read said that I should give it a chance to heal via rest. Well, guess what? It continued hurting worse and worse, and meanwhile, I was feeling physically down without my daily exercise boost. So, on January 1, I threw caution to the wind and got back into my morning routine. The result was that a) my elbow actually started feeling much better right away, and b) my entire body is getting back to where it was when I left off. So, that's really good news.

Rocking
For those of you who've been missing my silly shows in Second Life, I'm happy to say I'll be returning to that as well, this coming Monday evening at the Islands of New England. They're hosting a themed evening of "Ugly Sweater Night" starting at 4PM with Sassy Nitely (and me at 5PM), so I'll be doing some shopping in SL to find something particularly hideous to wear.

I enjoy the fact that my first show back after a few weeks off playing in SL is a) at a great venue, b) on a bill with my friend Sassy, and c) has an utterly ridiculous theme that inspired the poster above.

Recording
In other music-related news, now that I'm done with NAMM, I can divert at least some of my focus to getting back to recording. As most of you know, I released my first solo album back in December 2009, and was intent on getting straight back to the studio to start working on my follow-up. However, plans sometimes don't come to fruition the way you expect, and over two years later, I still don't have any new recorded music to show you. The good news is that I've continued writing new music in the meantime, so when we get to the point of seriously recording the new stuff, I'll have a lot of tunes to choose from. In May of 2010, we recorded some of the tracks for "Shine" and "Time Never Waits for You", so as most of the Zaksters know, we have tons of other songs yet to even see the studio. These include:

- Perfect Girl
- The Other Way
- Broken Day
- Go Easy on Me
- Black Phoebe
- Change the Night
- Look Out for Me
- Desert Lily

There are probably another 6-8 songs that are in various stages of completion, so I'm pretty optimistic about how the next album will turn out.

May 2010 was my last time in the studio. You can't imagine how much I want to get back. Photo by Kat.

Relaxing
Well, that's all for now. As I said on top, it's good to be back. It'll be even better after I get to a weekend and enjoy my first two full days off in weeks. All work and no play makes Zak an insane boy, so hopefully by next week, I'm all the way back to my usual fun-loving self.