Tape Deck

Last November I started a songwriting partnership with a fellow named Tim Blaise who plays bass for Oracle and the Mountain. This basically consisted of us getting together playing random sections of music that each of us had written that didn't have a home with our respective bands. It was a pretty interesting exercise and because these sessions tended to be a bit boozy Tim had the excellent idea of recording these embryonic "songs" on a tape deck they had laying around the house so we wouldn't forget the stuff that we should be remembering. Tim christened the new project "Tape Deck" for obvious reasons, and thus our project had a name. Somewhere along the way, my former partner in crime in The Adversary,Josh McClane, heard some of these sessions and the three of us ended up in a room together hammering out definite arrangements and writing set material. It became pretty apparent early on that we were going to need vocals for at least a few of these songs in order for them to reach their full potential, and after a couple of dead ends I decided to own up and sing on a few of these songs, along with Tim taking vocal duties on a few others. Singing in a band was something I've contemplated for awhile, and after practicing singing and playing at the same time in my bedroom for a couple of years I decided it was time. I've only sang lead parts sparingly in bands (anybody remember URSA?)but I have done karaoke for almost a decade. The only problem for me is that I've never really written many vocal melodies or lyrics. Now though I feel pretty confident in my abilities on that end. I've been trying as best as I can to just relax and let the words fall into place, so far they've been doing just that. Besides I've got so many different parts of songs to work on that I don't really get bored much. Tommorrow we play our first show at the P&H, and I'd be a liar if I didn't say I was a bit nervous. I never thought I'd experience that emotion before a show again considering the number of times I've played out in the past year. It's not a bad thing. The odd thing is that the material I'll be playing almost feels a bit dated to me, I've got a bunch of new material that I'm really high on that hasn't quite been finished yet so what we're doing tomorrow really is just the tip of the iceberg. Anyway I wrote this just to clear some random thoughts I have on the new project. Goodnight.