Springtime in the South (Almost)

This May I will find myself in a position that I have not been in for almost a decade. I will be without a band. In the last several months, my bandmates have either left town or are in the process of leaving town. I can empathize. Nashville can be a cruel town. There is a lot of fall out every year...old friends leaving town or quitting the music business or both.

So, as you might remember, last spring and summer I began recording what was supposed to be my third record. By July, I was burned out and ready to hang up my own hat. I had too many irons in the fire and it just got to be a little too much. In August I played my annual birthday show (a few weeks early) and I slowed down. I mean REALLY slowed down. In fact, I don't think I picked up a guitar for the entire month of September. But then, slowly, I began to go downstairs every night and crank up my old amplifier and just noodle away on whatever it was that was on my mind. Nothing came to me in terms of songs, but I did find new inspiration AND I kept it at a slow burn as to not lose the momentum building in my creative mind. Damn that's a chore!

Here we are half a year later and I am coming to terms with being on my own again....a solo act of sorts. When John R Crowder left back in January (or early February?), I gave myself the chore of digging up that 3rd record and beginning where I left off in the summer. The songs sounded good. REAL good. I gave myself the goal of adding to it and mixing it down as an EP. THEN it all came knocking...more songs, more inspiration. The songs have continued to build since going back downstairs in January with those old tracks. I have three or four new songs to add to that EP which will bring it to LP status. Who Knew? I sure as hell didn't!

That gets us up to the present. There are lots of creative efforts going on, but I will not promise a record or book or even a song by any particular date. I am enjoying this slow burning creative process. I am enjoying this aspect of coming back to the process after some time away. Some time, I should add, where I didn't really care about the end result. I have lots of things in mind...album title, cd artwork, song order. I just don't want to jinx the good thing that is going on down there in the studio. The new songs need to be recorded properly and the old songs still need some tweaking. I work on it when I can. I try to write something every day. I guess I can't really do much better than that.

Whatever it is, it feels good and I'm gonna keep at it and see where it goes.

Over and out,
rs