Random Crayon Notes

This is what most of our band meetings look like. Bunny, holed up in his den in the Valley, with Christina and I here at the beach. We hold these meetings (or, as we call them, "scribbles") as often as needed to keep the ball rolling on our album's development. Some musical concepts are just much easier to communicate verbally than in writing back and forth to each other (as we do daily anyway).

Oh, hi there! I have a blog, don't I? I should probably use it and stuff.

I guess you could say I have good reasons to being an absent blogger. As most of you know, I usually write little reports of my live music shows in Second Life and elsewhere, and 100% of my musical focus lately has been on my band, They Stole My Crayon, which I'll tell you about in a moment. The lack of regular updates is also due to a weather phenomenon that I call "August Sucks and September Sucks Too". I don't know if global climate change is directly involved, but I will say that it's been a crappy, high temperature, unusually humid number of weeks here. Fortunately (and not wanting to jinx it by mentioning this), this Monday morning is overcast, and there's even a small chance of rain, with highs only in the mid-70s. If that is true, it will be heavenly today in comparison to recent days, and so it's high time to tell you what's been going on.

Meet Spencer Crewe, the Crayon Sharpener
I've mentioned Spencer a good number of times previously. But Spencer has always seemed more of a concept than a genuine person, at least in terms of his interaction with The Crayon. He's been a friend of ours for a long time; like Bunny and Christina, I originally met Spencer back in the early 2000s via online forums focused on our common interests in music and audio engineering. I've known him for close to 15 years, and have always enjoyed his personality and obvious wide-ranging knowledge about capturing sound in creative ways.

As we progressed through writing songs and recording demos, it became clear that for a plethora of reasons, it would serve our music better to have it mixed by an outside source. Spencer had mixed Bunny's last solo album, which sounded excellent. Spencer's other recording projects -- he's done many of them in and around his home town of St. John's, NL (that's in Canada, folks) -- all showed that his skills as an engineer were more than sufficient to work on our music.

Spencer has great taste in music and audio gear. Trust me, if your mixing engineer isn't insane, you may have picked the wrong one.

In April of 2014, we first approached Spencer to see if there was any possibility he'd be interested in working on our music, and he emphatically accepted. But since then, there's been very little action for him in regard to The Crayon. It really wasn't until the start of this year that we put the Crayon Car into high gear. As you know from recent posts, we did a couple of sessions at Phil O'Keefe's Sound Sanctuary Studio in Hesperia that essentially wrapped up the last of the recordings for the album... or did it? More on that shortly. In any case, we finally had tracks that we could ship off to Spencer and let him do his thing. Well, a couple of days later, we got back our first mix from Spencer. It was for our song "Underwater Underground". Spencer just wanted to see if he was on the right track in terms of our expectations. Let me say, on behalf of the entire band, that he fucking nailed it. His very first mix showed us that he was going to add something to the band that we could never have done on our own.

Spencer has now received a second batch of tracks, this time for our acoustic/vocal-oriented song "Got Guilt". I'm sure that it's going to be insanely great when we get it back. Working with Spencer has already made a huge impact on The Crayon, and we're now even more excited and committed to getting the album wrapped up and ready for prime time.

Good Stuff Gets Better
One thing that happens when you're getting ready to hand off your tracks to a mixing engineer: you get super focused on making sure that everything is 100% perfect, or at least as good as it's ever going to be. Sure, you can keep making additions and changes to a song after a mix is done... but it starts becoming a waste of several people's time and money. You're much better off thinking through every detail before handing off tracks for mixing in the first place.

Up early and ready to record. When I have a specific musical thing in mind that I want to capture, it's often difficult to focus on anything else until it's done.

We knew our song "River Shallows" had a couple of things that needed to improve before we started getting ready to give it to Spencer. For example, the original bass part was recorded hurriedly, before we'd fully absorbed the song itself, and had some sonic glitches that we didn't love. Also, the rhythm guitar part wasn't doing it for us. On Saturday morning, I opened up the song file on my Logic Pro X system. My intention was to re-do the guitar and bass, but then something else kept popping into my brain. It was the song's intro, and it really was rather pedestrian and boring. We'd done a couple of passes at it, but the phrase "polishing a turd" kept coming to mind. So before I even started on the new guitar part, I threw away the old intro and started fresh. We all agree that the new version is infinitely more in line with the sound we intend to project as a band, and that was inspirational to then go in and revise the guitar and bass parts to our liking. By Sunday afternoon, I had all these revisions complete, and it will almost certainly be the next song we ship off to Spencer for his mixing talents.

Christina and I take a break from recording (and to get out of my sweaty room on this muggy late summer day).

Next?
Much like "River Shallows", I find it likely that every song we'll be sending to Spencer still requires some small tweaks here and there. We have a list of our tunes and what remains to be done on them before mixing. It would seem that the most likely candidates that will next go through the "fine tooth comb" treatment will be "Again", "Bag of Nothing", and "Disarmed". I have no words to tell you how much I'm looking forward to this. No one but my fellow recording musicians will know the thrill of hearing your own music after it's been honed and polished by someone with the skill of a guy like Spencer. It's going to be an exciting couple of months while we wrap these things up and Spencer does his thing. After that... well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

They Stole My Crayon: Recording Session II at Sound Sanctuary

I'm awake and drinking coffee. Nothing unusual for 6:50AM on a Monday, but I feel compelled on this particular morning to tell you about our second recording studio session for the debut album of my band, They Stole My Crayon. In case you haven't been following along on the saga, I'll bring you up to speed quickly: we'd (mostly) finished all of the instrumental tracks for the album, but wanted to record our vocals with higher quality than we'd be able to do with our own gear and ears. So, we booked some time with our super awesome friend Phil O'Keefe at his studio, Sound Sanctuary, located in Hesperia, CA. The first of those sessions was in July and went really well, so we were excited to move ahead on the next one, which happened this weekend (August 22/23, 2015).

Saturday August 22
I'd wanted to sleep in a little, but I think my brain knew that it wasn't a typical Saturday, and awakened me bright and early. By 10AM, Christina and I were ready to roll. After our customary stops for snacks and breakfast, we hit the road. Everything was going swimmingly until we hit one of those completely terrible traffic jams on the 15 freeway, which coincided with my having to pee really badly. Needless to say, we were very happy to arrive at Phil's... and use his bathroom.

Bunny arrived moments later, having been stuck in the same traffic as we'd endured, and we pretty much jumped right into the session. As per our usual process, all of our tracks were on a portable hard drive, and Phil loaded them into his Pro Tools system quickly. We started with "Vendetta", and right away I knew things were going to be really good. It went so smoothly that we were able to wrap up another entire song, "Picked Up Off The Floor", before we took our first break. We had to get checked into our modest but decent hotel, and get some lunch.

After that, it was straight back to work. We recorded vocals for "Blew The Dust Away" and "Favorite Things" in a whirlwind of various singers and tracks flowing by. Later in the day, Christina and I needed coffee desperately, so after a run to Starbucks, we continued our session. Dinner that night, in true studio fashion, was a pizza that was delivered ridiculously late, but still was delicious. After a couple final tracks, we called it a night and drove back up the street to our hotel where we slept soundly. At least Christina and I did; we're never sure if Bunny sleeps or not.

Sunday August 23
After the somewhat late night, we weren't in a huge hurry to get back the next morning. We leisurely got up, met Bunny, and grabbed breakfast before heading back to the studio. We'd saved the most difficult song of the session, "Longing On" for that day, and it actually went much better than I would have anticipated. It still took a good portion of the morning and early afternoon, so after that was wrapped up, we went on a food run. Once back at Phil's, it was time to record "Things Under Trees". Again, to clarify: yes, we'd recorded many of these songs already, but we re-did many of the vocal tracks, and the improvement is simply mind blowing.

We'd planned on making use of Phil beyond his already impressive engineering abilities; Phil is also an excellent musicians and singer, so we drafted him to do some extra vocals on a couple of songs. Only problem: while he sang in the tracking room, someone needed to act as the audio engineer to run the Pro Tools system. While Bunny or I could have easily done it, this was a great opportunity for Christina to gain some experience in this area. After a quick tutorial, she had no problem at all doing the job.

When Phil's stuff was wrapped up, we had a couple of final things to touch up, as well as a track of Christina playing tambourine, and that went fine too. So yes... once again, we got six songs completed. That's a total of 12 out of the 14 songs on the album. We'll likely book one final session at Phil's next month to get any remaining parts completed. It was amazingly productive, and yet we all felt relaxed and had fun, which is exactly what you hope for in a great recording session.

Like last time, Phil ended the session by dumping all of our recorded tracks back to the hard drives we'd brought for that purpose, and then at 6PM sharp, we hit the road. the drive home was very fast, and was only hampered by the act of driving due west into the sunset (which sounds poetic and all, but is much less fun when the sun is going straight into your eyeballs while you're tooling along at 80mph in traffic). Regardless, we made it back in good time, and now we're another step closer to unleashing our album on the world. Good times, I tell you. Good times.

The Islands of New England (08.13.15)

Enjoying a good show with good people at The Islands of New England. Photo by Aurelie Chenaux.

Some people have asked me why I'm performing much less frequently in Second Life than I did previously. There are two main answers, both true and hopefully understandable.

1. Music takes time, and I don't have a lot of it. From 2009 (when I released my last album) all the way to the start of 2015, almost all of my musical activities were centered around SL performances. However, I've been hard at work on the upcoming debut album of my band They Stole My Crayon throughout this year so far. With a finite amount of time I can devote to music (as opposed to my career, my family, my lovely lady, and so on), the fact is that I simply don't have time to also do three shows a week in SL anymore.

2. I charge a fee to perform, and less and less SL venues are capable or willing to pay it. While my fee is very reasonable, it's easy to understand that we artists can't expect that all people who try and host live music in SL can afford to pay artists. That's fine! There are plenty of performers who are happy to play for "tips only"... I'm just not one of them. And I also won't charge one place a fee while playing for free at another, which would be ridiculously unfair. I would much rather perform less often than devalue my music by playing for free, or screwing over the venues who pay me just to play for free at others. That will never happen.

So, again: this is a conscious decision, and I'm fortunate that my great manager Maali Beck has been completely understanding in this regard. Even if it means only doing a couple of SL shows per month, that's fine with me. Despite being a silly and goofy guy, I'm also one who won't compromise his ethics. Staying true to your morals does come with a cost, though: it's harder to maintain a strong presence in any environment where you're only semi-involved. Again, I'm lucky that my hardcore group of fans -- the Zaksters -- are also good friends at this point. I have complete faith that even if I disappeared from SL for years, they'd be back to see me when I chose to return. So, all is well, and I'd also say that the shows I now do more rarely each seem a little more special than when I was doing them every other day.

Rocking New England
So, on to the show. I can tell you right now, I know when I perform well, versus performing with mediocrity. Side note: I never perform badly, because if I sucked at this, I wouldn't do it. So some shows are okay. Some are pretty good. And a small number of others, like the one I did last night at The Islands of New England, are seriously great. Everything worked out incredibly well. I reached deep into my repertoire, doing some tunes I haven't pulled out in ages. My singing voice and guitar playing were working exactly as I liked, which is rare when both happen at the same time. Out of the hundreds and hundreds of SL shows I've done since 2006, very few could be considered better than this one, and the folks who were around to hear it confirmed what I was feeling at the time: this was a fucking fantastic show. I have no problem saying that about myself, by the way, just as I can objectively say that a particular show wasn't up to my standards. After hearing myself play live music as many times as I have since I started playing live as a little kid in middle school, I probably am the most accurate judge of my own performances. This one was outstanding.

Fun jams with fun Zaksters. Photo by Aurelie Chenaux.

I end each performance in this silly pose. If I ever get a new virtual guitar, it's going to be a stipulation that this pose is included. Photo by Aurelie Chenaux.

A couple of notes: first, it's somewhat of a neat coincidence that I played two Pink Floyd songs last night, only to awaken to today's totally unsurprising news that Pink Floyd is officially finished as a band. I almost never play two songs by the same artist at one show (unless the artist is me, or my band). So, I guess that was my sendoff to one of my biggest musical influences. Second, I want to reiterate that The Islands of New England remains one of my absolute favorite places to play music in SL, as it has been since the first time I played there (which was on August 8, 2011, for you Zak trivia buffs). It's easy to understand: the place is run by an absolutely wonderful friend, Christine Haiku, and is frequented by good friends. When I play there, I can feel free to be as silly and fun, or musically adventurous as I possibly can be. I always feel good while playing there, each and every time.

TIONE set list...
Walk On The Wild Side (Lou Reed)
Save It For Later (English Beat)
If You're Into It (Flight of the Conchords)
Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd)
Ziggy Stardust (David Bowie)
Norwegian Wood (Beatles)
Polly (Nirvana)
Our Lips Are Sealed (The Go-Go's)
Falling Down (Zak Claxton)
Little Wing (Jimi Hendrix)
Don't Let It Bring You Down (Neil Young)
Swing Low Magellan (Dirty Projectors)
Fire & Rain (James Taylor)
Nobody Home (Pink Floyd)
You're Like a Cloud (Zak Claxton)

Massive thanks to all who made it to the show, especially the rolling people who helped support it!
Devin09 Dover, RansomTalmidge Resident, Lynne Lowey, RoxxyyRoller Resident, Kiki Utherwurldly, Richy Nervous, Sesh Kamachi, Aurelie Chenaux, my manager Maali Beck, and most of all the lady who makes it all happen at TIONE, Christine Haiku!

Pacifique Park for Relay for Life (08.05.15)

Photo by Triana Caldera.

This report from my show to benefit Relay for Life at Pacifique Park in SL is about five days late. While I'm admittedly tardy, I do have a reasonably good excuse: I've had a medical thing going on. Is it the end of the world? Did I die? No, and no. But I've had a mild sinus infection happening which has kind of sapped my energy just enough to force me to postpone any writing that wasn't necessary for work and other boring stuff. And, even less critical but much more annoying, my ruggedly handsome looks have been temporarily disfigured by... well, see the pretty picture below.

Nice, huh? While it may look like I'm auditioning for the part of Igor, Frankenstein's assistant, that ugly red lump on my left eyelid is merely a stye. I'd never had one in my life until a month or so ago, and now this thing has been recurring multiple times. I can't make it go away entirely, and between that and the sinus infection that I was hoping would go away on its own to no avail, I finally dragged my ass to my doctor yesterday afternoon. A side note to this long side note: I have to say that the folks at Ocean Medical here in my lovely hometown of Redondo Beach, CA, always do excellent work. I've been going there for over 20 years, and I'm still alive, which must mean they're doing something right. So, long story not-so-short, I have a treatment plan for the eye and am on antibiotics for the infection. I should be much better rather soon. And that brings us to the show I did on Wednesday August 5, which was a Relay for Life fundraiser at Pacifique Park in Second Life.

As you all know, I do benefit shows often. In fact, at this point, I do just about as many charitable fundraisers as I do shows where I am paid for my efforts. That's fine with me; the "payment" of knowing I've used my musical skills to help others is pretty great. For this show, Alexis Fairlady (who is a longtime fan of my performances and has seen me play dozens and dozens of times) had politely been waiting for me to have some available time to do a show for her RFL team. For anyone who is unaware, Relay for Life is the official fundraising arm of the American Cancer Society, and a multitude of Second Life events raise thousands and thousands of dollars each year for this effort.

Ready, Set, Don't Go
Live music performances in Second Life are fairly straightforward for tech-minded people. I make musical sounds here in a room. The sounds are picked up by microphones, which go into a mixer, which go to an interface where they are translated into digital signals, sent into my computer via USB. Then, I have software (Rogue Amoeba Nicest on my Mac) that streams the signal to a server, where it can be accessed by anyone who has the address. When we musicians perform in SL, we give that address to the sim owner/manager, who plugs it into their land settings and bada-boom: anyone who clicks the audio button will hear me playing.

It works every time... except when it doesn't. I still have no idea why my very-reliable audio stream wasn't working that day, but it wasn't. There are so many combinations of ways for it not to work, it's impossible to know. But the end result was that for the first 20 minutes (!) of my show, my audience had silence. It's a bummer when stuff like that happens, and I used to get really pissed off about it. I don't anymore. Instead, the DJ who was spinning tunes for the crowd before my show was kind enough to loan me his stream, and once we got it sorted out, I was playing. Thanks Nick!

Photo by Triana Caldera.

Photo by Triana Caldera.

We had a good crowd at the venue, which was quite pretty in an open outdoor park setting. It's amazing to me that 90% of them stuck around during the stream debacle, so hats off to them. Despite the delay, I did manage to get a good number of songs in the rather abbreviated set. And, as far as I could tell, the fundraising aspect of the show seemed to be successful. So, mission accomplished.

Pacifique Park RFL set list...
Pigs On The Wing - Parts I and II (Pink Floyd)
Saved By Zero (The Fixx)
This Afternoon (Zak Claxton)
Comes a Time (Neil Young)
Cat's In the Cradle (Harry Chapin)
Never Run Away (Kurt Vile)
Friday I'm In Love (The Cure)
Man of Constant Sorrow (Traditional)
She's Leaving Home (Beatles)
Pink Moon (Nick Drake)

Huge thanks to Alexis Fairlady and all the people who helped support this great cause (and put up with our technology nightmare for 20 minutes). You rock!

Feed-A-Smile (07.25.15) & Homes For Our Troops (07.26.15)

Music is primarily thought of as an art (for the practitioner) and a means of entertainment (for the listener). And it's fine to leave it as simple as that; even if music had no other purpose, that would be plenty good enough. After all, both for musicians and music lovers, it is often described as an essential aspect of fulfilling and enriching people's lives. Some people regard music as important to them as the food they eat or the air they breathe (though I tend to think of this as hyperbole; you can go ten minutes without listening to a song much more easily than without taking a breath). Regardless, in terms of quality of life, music can stand alone for many people as being crucial to their happiness.

Why, then, should we bother making music something even more important than its already key role? Sometimes, music can be a rallying point for action that's above and beyond the music itself. Think back to the cultural change that was affected by start of rock music in the 1950s, or by the musically-oriented hippie culture of the late '60s. Think back to the mid 1980s, when musical projects such as Band-Aid, USA for Africa, and Live Aid helped raise awareness and money for critical world events. There are plenty of other art forms out there... painting, sculpture, dance, and many more. Music, though, has a common-man, mass appeal that can penetrate through every level of ethnicity, socio-economic background, and more. It tends to unite rather than divide, and also tends to be inclusive rather than exclusive. In other words, it's effective for these causes, because everyone can relate to a good tune.

I can now tell you a little bit about two live shows I did on Saturday and Sunday for the Feed-A-Smile charity and Homes For Our Troops... two very different and yet very worthy causes to whom I've had the pleasure of contributing via my music on several occasions.

Saturday July 25: Feed-A-Smile
So, before you start nominating me for sainthood, my first thought when I got up on Saturday was, "Oh great. I'll be spending the whole weekend playing music and getting nothing out of it." Yeah... nice, huh? In my defense, I was tired and coming off of a busy work week. Regardless of your level of goodness and maturity, everyone has a childish aspect of their persona that rears its head occasionally, and I believe this is true no matter if you're some random musician or an industry leader or a major political figure. Sometimes you go into selfish mode; we all do.

After awhile of waking up and coffee consumption, I remembered what I got out of performing at The Lavender Field for Brique Zeiner's Feed-A-Smile events. I got a lot. First and foremost, there's the knowledge that with Brique's personal, hands-on direction of the Live and Learn in Kenya non-profit organization, I could be assured that my efforts would directly benefit the intended recipients, with no middlemen or big corporations siphoning off the funds we help raise. Second, I am also aware that the lives of kids in Kenya who benefit from these musical fundraising efforts are literally changed by them, via the provision of school facilities and (most importantly) food.

All photos by Kat.

I've played for Feed-A-Smile a good number of times and have written about it often here. No need, then, for many details. I'd like to mention that this show was particularly cool since three of Maali Beck's team of artists -- Sassy Nitely, myself, and Lyndon Heart, in order of our performances that day -- all played, and played well. We had a reasonably good sized crowd throughout the event, and people gave generously. As has been the case at previous Feed-A-Smile shows, it was an honor to take part in the event.

Feed-A-Smile Lavender Field set list...
Hunger Strike (Temple of the Dog)
Bag of Nothing (They Stole My Crayon)
Long Time Gone (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
Carey (Joni Mitchell)
*Pretty Pimpin (Kurt Vile)
I Am A Child (Neil Young)
Things Under Trees (They Stole My Crayon)
Here I Land (Nicholas Stevenson)
Waking Light (Beck)
Got Guilt (They Stole My Crayon)
Pink Moon (Nick Drake)
Peace Love and Understanding (Elvis Costello)
*Improvised Outro (Zak Claxton)

*Indicates the first time I've performed this song in SL.

Huge thanks to my friends, fans, and various Second Life residents who contributed so generously!

---

Sunday July 26: Homes For Our Troops
Every charitable cause needs a champion... a person who makes it their biggest personal priority, and spends time and effort making it a success. Like Brique does for Feed-A-Smile, in the Second Life community, a fellow musician named Frets Nirvana holds that role for Homes For Our Troops at the U.S. Veterans Center in SL. I was aware of Frets via the SL music scene for quite awhile, but it was at the Nashville Jam in May 2014 that I met and got to know him better. Since then, I've done a few of his charitable events, which occur on the last Sunday of every month. He was formerly focused on the Wounded Warrior Project, but then shifted to Homes For Our Troops, which as the name implies is a non-profit organization that builds homes for severely disabled veterans. Here's their official description:

Homes for Our Troops (HFOT) is a privately funded 501(c) (3) nonprofit organization building specially adapted, mortgage-free homes nationwide for the most severely injured Veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of these Veterans have sustained injuries including multiple limb amputations, partial or full paralysis, and/or severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). These homes restore some of the freedom and independence our Veterans sacrificed while defending our country, and enable them to focus on their family, recovery, and rebuilding their lives. Since its inception in 2004, nearly 90 cents of every dollar donated to Homes for Our Troops has gone to directly to our program services for Veterans. HFOT builds these homes where the Veteran chooses to live, and continues its relationship with the Veterans after home delivery to assist them with rebuilding their lives.

So, it's obviously a worthwhile cause, and a topic that's important to me. As a person with a strongly anti-war outlook, it's my belief that the least we can do for military personnel who are put in harms way and severely injured is to make sure that their quality of life afterwards is as good as possible. Sadly, as we all know, that's not been the case. Ultimately, my vision of a world that's devoid of war seems futile at times. Since I can't personally effect the global changes needed for such a dream, the least I can do is help out those who are impacted by their contributions in defending their country.

Another side note: I am not a religious person. I am an atheist. I don't believe in any God of any sort, though I'm always respectful to those who do. Some people wonder why I do things like help charitable causes, since it's not like I'm going to get some special treatment in an afterlife for having done so, heh heh. Simply put, I do it because it feels good to help others where I can, and music is one thing at which I'm good enough to help put it to use for those causes.

All photos by Kat.

Anyway, I was rather unconfident about the possibility of a successful show for Homes For Our Troops on Sunday. I'd just done a charity show the previous day, and honestly doubted that I'd be able to draw a crowd, or have any expectations that they'd be able to give to this cause. You can only hit people up so many times in any time span. Imagine my utter shock when, toward the end of my show, Frets announced that during my hour-long set, we'd raised L$78,000... well over $300 USD. As I said through the mic at the time, it's just insane! The way that was accomplished, as far as I can tell, was through a few very generous people and the matching funds of a few more very generous people. I was astounded.

Homes For Our Troops set list...
Low Key (Tweedy)
This Afternoon (Zak Claxton)
Big Empty (Stone Temple Pilots)
*Gimme Shelter (Rolling Stones)
Blew The Dust Away (They Stole My Crayon)
Pretty Pimpin (Kurt Vile)
Falling Down (Zak Claxton)
Love Hurts (Everly Brothers)
On The Way Home (Buffalo Springfield)
Just Like Starting Over (John Lennon)
Jane (Barenaked Ladies)

*Indicates the first time I've performed this song in SL.

Again, thank you so much to everyone who attended for their wonderful generosity!

Hesperia of Templemore (07.18.15)

I've had a lot of Hesperia on my mind lately. Last weekend, my band They Stole My Crayon were in the city of Hesperia, CA, recording vocals for our album with engineer Phil O'Keefe. Then, on Friday, there was a horrifying brush fire that leapt the 15 freeway near the city, destroying a number of cars (but thankfully no lives) in the process. And then on Saturday, I performed a live show in Second Life at Hesperia of Templemore. While the show itself was terrific, it's unfortunately going to likely be my last there; Templemore's Luis Lockjaw put out the news that the collection of venues there will no longer be able to host live music shows.

Any time that a successful SL venue is forced to close is a shame; Templemore's decision to cease live music is closer to a tragedy. Without being overly dramatic about it, while there remain many great places to experience live music in SL, few venues had the ability to create a vibe like Templemore. The artistry of the many stages that have been created there for various events, right down to the smallest detail, was truly unsurpassed. I will certainly miss playing there, though it should be noted that the sim itself is currently planned to remain open for people who want to wander around and admire the handiwork of the people who created it. However, they will do it without a live performer playing along.

Enough of the sad stuff. I am positive that Luis and the rest of the folks who ran Templemore have valid reasons for not continuing as a live venue, and I respect that. Let's instead talk about my show there, which was great. We had a pretty large crowd, big enough that it wasn't very easy to move around the room very easily. I was okay with that, as you'd imagine... I had plenty of room up on the stage, ha ha. Knowing that it would in all likelihood be my final show there, I was determined to make it special, so I pulled out three songs I'd never played before, including a version of Jose Feliciano's TV theme from "Chico and the Man" that was customized for my friend Luis.

All photos by Kat.

Templemore set list...
*Friday I'm In Love (The Cure)
Blew The Dust Away (They Stole My Crayon)
Northern Sky (Nick Drake)
This Afternoon (Zak Claxton)
*Luis and the Man (Jose Feliciano)
The Man Who Sold the World (David Bowie)
Sour Girl (Stone Temple Pilots)
Tea In the Sahara (The Police)
*Saved by Zero (The Fixx)
Sleeper in the Valley (Laura Viers)
It's Choade My Dear (Connan Mockasin)
Shame Chamber (Kurt Vile)
Bag of Nothing (They Stole My Crayon)
You're Like a Cloud (Zak Claxton)

*Indicates the first time I've performed this song in SL.

Huge thanks to everyone who came out to my last show at Templemore, and equal huge thanks to everyone over the years who made it one of the best live music experiences ever in Second Life!
Sassy Nitely, Geena Carminucci, Ajana Tammas, CHRlSTIANGREY Resident, Aurelie Chenaux, Darcy Kingmaker, Caasi Ansar, my great manager Maali Beck, lovely hostess Bee Blackrain, and Templemore's creative genius and my good friend Luis Lockjaw.

Vocal Recording for They Stole My Crayon at Sound Sanctuary

It's Monday, and it was hard not to hate my alarm clock that rang at 6AM today. Still, there's a smile on my face left over from the weekend, along with some great memories and some undeniably great music. But I'm getting ahead of myself; let me tell you about our recording session for vocals on the They Stole My Crayon album. First, here's a little video recap of the whole thing.


Why go to a recording studio?
You may be wondering how it is that we've recorded the grand majority of the upcoming album in our homes, and yet still had to book time in a good studio for this part of the process. The answer is simple: we needed to do the final vocals for the album, and recording voices is one area where you want to make sure everything is right. That means you don't have to compromise with your mediocre microphone and front-end audio processing gear. You don't want noise coming in from outside so that the perfect take isn't ruined by a siren wailing or motorcycle engines revving. That's why we got ahold of our good friend recording engineer Phil O'Keefe, and scheduled some time in his studio, Sound Sanctuary.

Is this the same place you did the Zak Claxton album?
Yes, and no. The recording gear is basically the same, and the most important aspect of the studio, Phil himself, is still as talented as ever. But Phil and his wife Sandy had to move from their old place in Riverside awhile ago, and this was the first time we've been to his new place in Hesperia. It was great in a number of ways. First, we got to hang out with Phil and Sandy, and even if we were recording, they are old and dear friends of ours. Second, the new place is in an area called the High Desert, and especially for Christina, who always dreamed of making music in the desert due to her love of many "desert rock" bands, I found the vibe there to be terrific.

Saturday July 11
Phil's place is about 100 miles away from both where Christina and I live in Redondo Beach, as well as where Bunny lives in the Valley. We left at 10AM and it took a couple of hours to get there, which wasn't a big deal. We arrived just after noon. Since this was purely a vocal session, we didn't have to worry about transporting and setting up a bunch of instruments, which is always a time suck for any session. Instead, we arrived and almost immediately began recording. We started with an easy one to get rolling: the very short section of backing vocals from "Again". I should say that it was easy for me; Christina had never, ever recorded in a studio as serious as Sound Sanctuary before, and she did a great job on her first time in front of the mic.

Once that was done, we went straight into a much more difficult tune: "Got Guilt". It was difficult because other than some acoustic guitar and some light percussion, it's all vocals. I mean all vocals; there are tons of different parts to sing, and it took awhile to get them down. But the end result was completely excellent.

After "Got Guilt" was in the can, we were hungry, so we munched on the giant sandwich Bunny had brought, along with some chips and fresh-made guacamole that Sandy whipped up. Then we went right back in and kept it rolling. Next up was "Disarmed". This one, as we knew going in, was going to be a little more involved. We wanted to re-record Bunny's entire lead vocal on it, as well as get the backing vocals from Christina and I. I have to say, Bunny's new performance is miles ahead of his last one, which had been recorded before we wrapped up the drums (and hence had some timing issues). Now those issues are long gone, and it sounds fantastic. We were just amazed at how smooth the session was running.

Next up was "Underwater Underground" which had a series of drone-like background vocals from Christina and I. I went pretty smoothly, though the combination of the high altitude and long phrases on that song left me a little light-headed for awhile. I recovered quickly. In any case, by then, we were pretty much starving, and fortunately Sandy O'Keefe had cooked us an absolutely delicious meal of barbecued chicken, homemade potato salad, and a great salad as well. We all devoured that like extreme gluttons. I went back for seconds. Okay, thirds too.

It was getting late, but we still had the energy to knock out one more tune before we called it a night. Next up was "River Shallows", which was another pretty quick one, considering that I had my own lead vocal to do on this tune. You have to understand, we went into the studio extremely prepared, and already knew our parts inside and out, having recorded all of them for the demo versions. I would highly advise anyone going into a studio to be as ready as possible. We also recorded Bunny and Christina on this. After that, we had the banana cream pie that Sandy had procured for dessert. At about 1AM, it had been a really long day, so we departed from Phil's and headed over to the cheap but acceptably decent hotel where we were staying for some much-needed rest. We'd done five songs in one day! That was way more than we'd expected.

Sunday July 12
We got up a little before 9AM, and rousted Bunny from his room next door so we could partake in the free breakfast at the hotel. It was... edible, I suppose. But our goal wasn't to have breakfast in Hesperia; it was to record music. Shortly before 11AM, we were at Phil's door, ready to keep going. We could have probably done another 3-4 tunes had we stuck to the easy stuff, but we knew we had a big one ahead of us, and decided to knock it out. "Bag Of Nothing" was another that required a completely new lead vocal line for Bunny, so we focused on his parts early in the day. After a short while, Christina and I left Bunny and Phil to keep doing what they do, and picked up some lunch and some caffeination.

We also had a bunch of backing vocal parts to do on this tune, and we commenced with those after lunch, giving Bunny a chance to rest his overtaxed vocal cords. We could have moved over to another song, but the decision was made to get this fully wrapped up. Besides, we already knew that we'd be scheduling another session with Phil next month, so we thought that we might as well complete everything we could while we were there. So, all of Sunday was dedicated to this one involved song. It was well worth the effort.

After Christina and I did our parts, Bunny got back into the tracking room to add more vocals to this involved song. Since we'd set 6PM as a good time to start heading toward home, it worked out perfectly. Phil camped out in the control room after we were done, organizing and then transferring all of the audio files we'd done in the two days. Sure enough, right when we'd planned, we were pulling out of his driveway with portable hard drives in our respective hands.

The drive back to the South Bay was super smooth; I couldn't have asked for an easier return trip. In fact, I couldn't have asked for a better anything throughout the session. We got great work done, in the company of very talented friends, and it came out better than anything we could have possibly accomplished on our own. Win!