Living local

The AT HOME project is an extension of our lifestyle, which is to keep things simple, hands-on, and close to home. It's good for mind, body, heart, creativity, livelihood, family, community, and planet. Music is just a part of this life. Here's the food part - 

In addition to our backyard "kitchen" garden, Jesse, Jane and I have a 2000 square foot community garden plot just north of town at the Ignatius Jesuit Centre. Ignatius is run by some very hip people who also have a huge organic CSA. My "Not There" CD was released to raise funds to keep Wal-Mart from encroaching on this land. 

In the photo above you see Jesse picking away. The leaves in the bottom right corner are from the parsnip patch; he's in the chili pepper patch; behind him is the onion patch, and further to the left are the cabbages under row covers. The structure to the upper left supported 64 tomato plants (already harvested), and at the far side are eggplants, broccoli (finished), sweet peppers, carrots and potatoes.

Here is our winter squash and beet harvest with the parsnip patch behind them. We got 72 squash and a good pile of beets that I'll keep in tubs of moist sand in our garage food storage area.

The CD is being manufactured, Jane and I are redoing my website—and we're all eating well!

The back

Here's a peek at the back of the CD package, with the song listings. The tracks with lower case letters in orange are outtake sections, the ones with caps are the songs. It's a fascinating ride over 20 tracks!

It's off!

The At Home CD is off to manufacturing! It's been a long haul, but as I did a final listen to the master in a soundproof space at Silverbirch Productions in Toronto, I had a big smile on my face and I was grooving in the chair.

Here's a rough jpg of the front cover -

This was a scene shot by Jane from the second recording day. Nik is setting up the mics, and Adam is hangin'. The mirror is there for Tannis and Jane to see my cues from upstairs. The curtain was closed across the window to dampen sound reflection. Very cozy.

Mixing and mastering crunch

I haven't posted for a while because I've been in the vicegrip hold of final mixing and mastering. Deadlines - gotta hate 'em, gotta have 'em.

This CD is more work than many because of all the extra material on it, amounting to 20 tracks—15 songs, 4 segue sections and one 9-minute outtake track.

Anyway, gotta run—Nik is here for an adjustment session on the master!

Here's the new video!

Enjoy!

New video

Jane worked most of the day on a new video. She took still shots from the very first recording day—when she was documenting the destruction and revival of our house—and added music from the sessions. One was an out-take jam from Hound Dog and another was an instrumental from Just A Little Bit. It's a blast watching Adam setting up the kit with his drumming as the soundtrack!

When Jane sets her mind to something she always does an amazing job, and the final version is excellent, and may end up on the extra features—who knows!

Song order

Having grown up musically when record albums were considered art, the order of songs is important to me. I remember June 1, 1967, the world release of Sergeant Pepper's. My buddy Steve Lambert and I rushed to the record shop, got a copy and went home and listened reverently. As the songs unfolded, one to the next without spaces, it felt like entering a mystical trance or an exotic journey. The order was significant—and still is—as the Beatles introduced the listener to people, stories, feelings, and ideas about life and society.

I approached the song order for "At Home" with the same idea. I did an initial list that made sense theoretically. Then Jane and I hooked up my laptop to the stereo and proceeded to listen—and feel—the transitions of one song into another.

It was amazing how things I thought would work simply didn't. The transition was either too much of a stylistic leap, too abrupt a sonic shift—or too much the same. Sometimes we would notice a discordant feeling because the new song was in a slightly different key.

We attended to stylistic movement, tempo shifts, mood changes, and subject matter. There are very quiet, sensitive songs and also very light-hearted, raucous songs. We discovered that rather than bounce between these moods, we had to have the courage to stick with an atmosphere for a number of songs in a row and give the listener time to fully experience that.

It took us about four hours to get something that felt right. By that time our brains were so tired we had to leave it to the next day!

Yesterday we had a final listen and approved the order. I burned a CD with that order and listened to it in the car today (Tuesday), as I drove to Toronto to pick up Jesse at the airport. He just came back from two weeks with his musical cousins Virgil Muir in Halifax and Ashley Condon in PEI.

As I listened to the rough mixes of the songs in order, I started to feel happier and happier. It's working, and I can't wait to share that journey with you.