2009 might have been the fastest year of my life. I feel as though it just begun but here we are at the end of September with only 3 more months to go. It's CRAZY! This year brought a lot of growth and change on the music front for me as well as 2008. I'm having a great time playing with my new trio, Tapestry. There is something really organic and special happening between the three us and I cannot wait to debut this on Playing With Pendulums. There has been quite a lot of back and forth on which songs to choose for the album. It started out as a letter to my brother (before my new band came together), Corey, an album I had planned to dedicate to him as all the songs came from a place of grief from his loss (that's not to say that they are all depressing!). I wrote maybe 30 songs so obviously they cannot all fit on one disc and I think I will be saving 18 for my follow up albums. It's so hard b/c I really feel as though they belong together, they flow in and out of one another with ease and though they compliment each other, they do not blend TOO much in the sense that you cannot tell one song from the other. Some songs I wrote are still in that chill groove genre, as I like to call it, so we are working things out and seeing how we can combine both sounds to share space gracefully on the record. We will see! There is no doubt that Playing With Pendulums will be the title track, a very laid back, dreamy instrumental with a modern classical almost ambient feel to it. I'm really enjoying playing the indie pop upbeat songs with dark underlying themes (The Ground We Lay On, End to Beginning and Happy Guitar). I love cross blending and writing songs that have a lot of ingredients, a strong flavor for the pallette. There's a little something for everyone. I get to play more instruments on this album which is awesome for me. I am an explorer if nothing else. Drums have become my adventure of choice lately, experimenting with rhythm and growing as a drummer has really enriched my guitar playing. I've been listening to a lot of Mice Parade, Minus The Bear, Radiohead and Justin King...oooh and Andy McKee, not that any of these artists are new to my ear, I'm just starting to listen differently. The drummer from Mice Parade might just be my new hero ; ) Well, as we go through the process of recording our new album, I will post pics and rough tracks here and there and share the journey. Peace out!