Hotel Chelsea (01.03.23)

Back to my happy place. Rocking Hotel Chelsea on 1/3/23. Photo by Kat.

Well hello there. It's nice to be writing about some music stuff as opposed to the news of the world being shitty, and I have a lot of music stuff to tell you about before we even get to last night's fun show at Hotel Chelsea in Second Life. Let's do this. Let's go.

The Return of They Stole My Crayon

Let's begin with the somewhat unplanned resurrection of my alt-rock band They Stole My Crayon. We hadn't disbanded and weren't on any kind of hiatus. Instead, we were just fucking busy with life. As you may recall, we formed in 2012, created a great self-titled debut album in 2016, and then... well, the aforementioned life happened.

However, we never stopped working on new music. We'd been creating songs here and there the whole time. Not all of them got 100% finished per se, but some did, and some were in reasonably good shape with various additions required.

One day in mid-December, I happened to hear one of our demo songs and shared it with the band in our private chat room, mentioning that it was really pretty good and that perhaps we should consider polishing it up and putting it out as a single. Then, while looking through some music files, I stumbled across several folders of stems. "Stems", also called tracks, are the individual recordings that make up a song... the guitars, the drums, the keyboards, the vocals, and so on.

They Stole My Crayon: Bunny Knutson, Christina Lee, Zak Claxton.

"Hey, We Have An Album Here."

My musical cohort Bunny Knutson started a similar process on his end, and slowly but surely, it became apparent that we had more than enough really solid songs to release a second album. How solid? I loved our first album, but I genuinely feel this one will end up being better. We were never going to put out a new album with 1-2 decent songs and a bunch of filler. But this collection is completely full of songs I really like.

This past weekend, on the afternoon of New Year's Eve, we had a band meeting and spent two straight hours going over our notes on the current demo recordings. It's funny how, while we had come to our conclusions individually, we all seemed to have the same notes on nearly every tune... vocals to re-record, guitars to tweak, song sections to remove or add to, and so on.

Despite there being just three of us, we're a very textured band, and that means there are a lot of tracks to deal with. Like, a whole lot. But the process of putting everything together is part of the fun, and an art form of its own.

So what's next? Well, it's a process, as most recording musicians will tell you. Some of the songs are nearly ready to go as-is; others need a bunch of work. We'll be doing the actual work of recording and re-recording various parts. Once we're happy with everything, the songs will be handed off to our superb mixing engineer Spencer Crewe, assuming he's available for the task. Then it will be mastered, and then released. And of course, there's a lot of stuff to do to help promote the album... artwork, video shoots and all that. But I'm looking forward to every moment. I actually spent about eight hours on January 2 digging out old files and getting set up to work on them. So that's all great news.

How About That Show, Bro?

Ah yes. As usual on the first Tuesday of each month, I had my show at Hotel Chelsea last night. While putting together my set list, I made it a point to pull out a batch of songs that had fallen off my radar for awhile. In several cases, it had been over three years since the last time I'd performed those specific tunes.

And unsurprisingly, since I'm excited about the new Crayon album, I did a couple of tunes from it. I'd done them both before while the songs had been freshly written, but now I had more of a feeling that I was doing them with purpose. Plus, I was newly familiarized with the songs, with all the analysis and planning we'd done the previous weekend.

I often make a point of mentioning during my shows there that Hotel Chelsea in SL reflects many of the great qualities of its real-world counterpart. Artists, poets, authors, and creative people in all forms feel welcome there, as do the audiences that enjoy the inclusive and welcoming vibe of the place. Photo by Kat.

Me, onstage, singing and chatting as I tend to do. Photo by Kat.

I didn't not have the benefit of an opening act at this performance; when I arrived, three people were there, and that included my manager and the venue staff. But by the time I went on and started my first tune, we had a good-sized audience that continued to grow throughout the set. Everyone seemed to be having a good time. I know I was.

Hotel Chelsea set list...

Airport Bar (Martin Courtney)

The Man Who Sold the World (David Bowie)

Loading Zones (Kurt Vile)

Pink Moon (Nick Drake)

Save Me (Aimee Mann)

California (Joni Mitchell)

Abrasion (They Stole My Crayon)

Perfectly Calm (They Stole My Crayon)

Don’t Let It Bring You Down (Neil Young)

Always Tomorrow (Zak Claxton)

Fruiting Body (Goon)

Accidents Will Happen (Elvis Costello)

Blue Skies (Irving Berlin)

Big, big thanks to everyone who came and hung out for the show, with extra-special super duper thanks to the following who helped support it!

DhruvEastman Resident, cristoofarr Resident, Maurice Mistwallow, Alexis Fairlady, Kat Claxton, Trouble Streeter, LeilaNairobi Resident, Varistentia Varriale, Alex Zelin, my terrific manager Maali Beck, and Hotel Chelsea manager Shyla the Super Gecko, and Chelsea's great staff!