The more I play this new ToneLab pedal the more I am impressed. I honestly can’t believe the tones this thing can pull off. I recorded a little clip of me playing the intro of Stevie Ray Vaughn’s version of Hendrix’s ‘Little Wing’ just to show one of the many incredible tones this pedal can produce, or re-produce.

This recording is my G&L Legacy (a Stratocaster basically) ran into the pedal, then into an old QSC solid state power amp, then into my Fender 2×12 cabinet. The cabinet has one Celestian Greenback and one Celestian Vintage 30. I don’t remember which is which but I miked the one stage left for what that’s worth. I used an SM57 microphone and the recording is totally dry with no EQ.

My decision to play ‘Little Wing’ does not in any way imply that this guitar tone sounds like Stevie Ray or Hendrix. It certainly doesn’t. It’s just a super cool guitar part and it lends itself very nicely to this kind of guitar tone. This sounds exactly like a vintage Fender Deluxe Reverb to me. And for you guitar tone freaks out there, notice how the bottom end is sort of bloated the same way those old Fenders are when you really hit them hard. That low end distortion is not coming from my speakers, it’s actually coming from the pedal. I recorded this at a pretty low volume. Vox’s attention to detail is stunning. Check it out.

Download the mp3 here.

OK now just wait a second. Hear me out. There is a perfectly good explanation for this. I’ve been looking into buying an electronic kit for a while now. I sold my acoustic kit to my cousin back in December and I’ve been holding onto that money and my money from Santa ever since then to give myself time to make the right decision. I have made it.

Everybody I talk to about electronic drums gives me the usual roll of the eyes. I expect that. In fact I kind of roll right along with them because I can definitely sympathize with their bias. I never in a million years ever thought I would own an electronic drum set. There’s just something so Van Halen 5150 about it. But I have since come around to the dark side and have been so thoroughly persuaded that I’m now singing the praises of this technology.

I’ve put together an mp3 of me giving a sort of demonstration of what these things are capable of. There’s also a bunch of commentary with me explaining what’s going on. So if you’re into that sort of thing (or if you just like to hear me talk) download the mp3 and keep an open mind. I’m pretty certain you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Click here to download the mp3.

Here is a link to the library of sounds I’m using if you’re interested in more information on it.

It’s always good for me after I put a new song on the site because then I actually have something to talk about.

I had mentioned before that this song was a tribute to the Jellyfish style of songwriting but after giving that some thought I think that might be a little inaccurate. I actually don’t think the song itself sounds like Jellyfish at all. I think that if I just played the tune with an acoustic guitar no one would immediately think Jellyfish. I think the song itself sounds more like Rufus Wainwright than Jellyfish or The Zombies or whoever.

It would have been more correct for me to say that the arrangement is in the style of Jellyfish. From using a pick on the bass, to the timpani/marching bass drum punches, to the bells in the guitar solo, to the layering of all the parts at the end. That’s all taken directly from the Jellyfish text book. The horn section stuff is probably more along the lines of The Zombies style of arranging. And the use of the (unfortunately faux) theremin is a little nod to The Beach Boys.

I certainly learned a lot about my limitations as a mix engineer working on this song. Jack Joseph Puig I am not. I kept checking my mix against Jellyfish along the way even though it made me hate myself more and more throughout the process. I had to keep reminding myself that I’m just some local schmuck making music for fun and not a Grammy-winning engineer. I really just need to portray the song the best I possibly can and stop thinking that I can make a world-class recording. Me wondering why my mixes don’t sound like Puig’s is as ridiculous as some dude with a video camera and some editing software wondering why his kid’s birthday party movie doesn’t look like Saving Private Ryan.

I should mention that Brian McClelland makes a cameo on background vocals at the end when the ‘right before my eyes’ part comes in. Brian also let me use his keyboard and his bass I think. I don’t really remember exactly though since some of this stuff was recorded almost two years ago. Thanks Brian.

If anyone is interested in hearing the original demo of this song you can download it here. At the time I was really thinking of going for a hyper-stylized vocal thing as you’ll plainly hear. The drums on the demo are just some pattern on this $25 keyboard Chris Gustave gave me a few years ago. I liked the pattern so much that I did my best to emulate it in the final recording. As with all of my demos the lyrics are different and sometimes just nah, nah, nahs but you’ll get the idea.

OK here it is – finally.

Falling For Me – CD quality .wav file – 35.8 MB

Falling For Me – 256Kbps .mp3 file – 6.6 MB

Hope you like it.

Here’s the latest tune from my upcoming album ‘I Have Walked On The Moon’. The song is called ‘Going to Memphis’.

Going to Memphis – Click here to download the CD-quality wav file. 29.78 MB

Going to Memphis – Click here to download the 256Kbps mp3 file. 5.59 MB

I worked on these lyrics for probably a year or so. I found it extremely hard to tell the story of the last fourteen years of my life in less than three minutes, and make it rhyme. Hopefully they make sense.

This song will (for a while at least) bring to a close the drew’s-like-totally-gone-country-or-something section of the album. The next two songs will switch to the 60s pop genre. Which is going to be awesome and fun.

Here is a very humble little Christmas wish to all my readers.

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

I had about a half hour to record, mix, and upload this so please forgive the amateurishness of the whole thing, including the incredibly noisy guitar amp.

Merry Christmas

In an attempt to get the absolute maximum amount of mileage out of ‘Sin No More’ I want you to hear this mp3. I’ve mentioned before how long it took me to master the fingerpicking guitar part in that song. I practiced it around the house so much that Riley was able to sing the guitar part to the entire song. I thought it would be funny to record him singing it. So I did. And it was.  A couple of seconds of that recording ended up in the final mix but here’s the rest of it.

Click here to hear Riley singing Sin No More

‘My Dancing Days’ is the second song from my new record ‘I Have Walked On The Moon’. The working title for this song was ‘Macarena Shoes’ but I realized that having ‘Macarena’ in the title of a song would almost certainly lead people to assume that the song was going to be silly. This song is not at all silly. Maybe having ‘Macarena Shoes’ appear in the first line of the song is only slightly less risky but I think people will quickly see right through the metaphor. At least I hope so.

I think these first two songs probably mark the far eastern and far western stylistic boundaries of what this album will cover. So not having a context for these two songs may make them seem like they should never appear on the same record together but you’ll have to trust me when I say that maybe you’re absolutely right. Whatever.

My Dancing Days -Click here to download the CD quality wav file – 22 MB

My Dancing Days – Click here to download the 192 Kbps mp3 file – 3 MB

A little less than a year ago I started learning how to do the thumbpicking technique used on the acoustic guitar part in ‘Sin No More’. It’s hard. It’s very hard. It’s so hard and I’m so ecstatic that I can finally do it but I’m rather bummed that the guitar part couldn’t be more prominent in the mix. I worked on that guitar part incessantly for six months.

If I were a film maker instead of a musician this would be the equivalent of me shooting the most expensive and elaborate car chase ever seen only to cut it down to a ten second montage because I realized that it distracted from the plot.

If I were a film maker I would however be sure and put the entire thing in all its glory on the DVD with full commentary and behind the scenes footage.

So that’s what I’m doing – except for the commentary and behind the scenes footage. This is an mp3 of Sin No More with only the acoustic guitar and the vocals. It was mixed with no regard for musicality. I just want people to hear the guitar part that I thought would be so vital to the song and turned out to be more of a distraction from the melody than I had planned.

So here it is. Click here to download the mp3.

‘Sin No More’ is the first song from my new record ‘I Have Walked On The Moon’. I hope I’m not making a mistake by releasing this song first. This song is very different from anything else I’ve ever done and very different from anything else on the record. And it’s super cool.

Sin No More – Click here to download the CD quality wav file – 35.2 MB

Sin No More – Click here to download the 192 Kbps mp3 file – 4.8 MB (Coward!)

For those of you who have never visited the Internet before you may need to right click and “Save target as…” or “Save link as…” to save the file to your computer instead of just playing it in your browser.