warning: musician living in his head content on deck:

In the midst of all the other stuff going on (college kid home, dance dad duty, new Letterkenny…), I think I have almost all the recording done for the album, and most of the mixing, after getting the eldest to knock out some vocals, taking a quick trip out to Suffolk to do some
“location recording” (needed my buddy D.J. to play a couple of bass tracks on stuff we’d worked together on before, and as much as he’ll deny it, he’s a better pure bassist than I am), and spending a few quality hours with the microphone, the mandolin, and the soprano and concert ukes on Monday afternoon.

I have one more idea I’m going to try and knock out quickly on Tuesday evening (as I’ve got Open Mic on Wednesday), finish the mix, finalize the track order (and update the cover graphics to reflect such), and get “World’s Okayest…” out for duplication by the end of this week, which gives me, ideally, five weeks to get a sample for testing/evaluation and order my initial* stock to have on hand for Atomacon.

I’m really getting to the point where I want and need to get this done (my wife tells me that I’m dangerously adjacent to “keep adding and changing things to the point that I’ll never finish so I won’t have the anxiety of putting this out there” territory). I know it won’t entirely live up to my impossible standards; it’s been a huge learning experience, doing the whole thing basically by myself (other than picking the brains of many of my more experienced peers), both to keep this endeavor affordable, as well as to develop the skills to do it better next time**.

Also, a friend dangled an interesting proposition in front of me and a bunch of other folks recently; he’s currently working on a very ambitious multimedia project and wants us to contribute to it. The stuff I’ve heard so far is intriguing and exciting, and I’m really looking forward to working on it, though I need to clear this one off the decks first, because I know my limitations and all the other life stuff on my agenda, and I just don’t have the time or the spoons to work both of these projects concurrently.

All that said, I really am way more excited than anxious about getting my work out there – everyone else tells me routinely “it’s about time”, because my creative friends/musical family are all wonderful, supportive, and encouraging. That said, even though I’ve been putting these songs out in front of audiences, in some cases for years, making a “permanent” record (ha, puns!) of my creative output is still a bit intimidating.

But yeah, it’s almost real. And that’s cool.

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* – This, is, of course, somewhat optimistic of me, because it’s quite possible I will sell no more than a handful of these things and be stuck with leftovers for years…

** – Again, optimistic that this will be successful or rewarding enough that another crack at this sort of thing makes any sense at all***.

*** – This is where sense and self confidence tell me to stop thinking like that and just be excited about the energy and support I’m getting, and stop sabotaging myself before I really even get started.