Music

  • New Project Update

    I’ve just posted an update to the Kickstarter page about where we’re at with mixing the new record.  You can check it out here. In the meantime, here’s to rallies in the rain: April 15th, 2015 at Shaw University.

  • The Core is Getting Soft.14: Bang a Slate

    One of the digital tools I threw in the mix of my new record is SSD4, the drum sampler made by Slate Digital.  It was the first time I used something other than an electronic drum machine to program drums.  The closest I’d come to fake “real” drums was the time we sampled a drum…

  • Monsanto in the Classroom?

    I spent the weekend editing vocals after reading an article that bore close relation to the subject matter of one of the songs I was working on.  The track is called Contamination in the Grass and it deals with Monsanto and other similar agribiz corporations such as Dow Chemical and Syngenta.  The lyrics takes many…

  • Top 40 over 40.19: Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali Live in Concert

    In this series of posts on musicians doing high quality work after 40, little has been said about their audience.  Today’s post will start out with them first.  Last October, I went to see the Pakistani group Rizwan-Muazzam perform at the Reynolds Industries theater at Duke University.  I knew little about these performers from Pakistan, other…

  • Top 40 over 40.18: Peter Hughes and Dipa Ma

    I was once listening to an episode of Car Talk on NPR and heard a woman call in to Click and Clack with the following dilemma:  she had a Honda that was running perfectly, and that had proven to be very reliable over the years. Nevertheless, she found the car boring.  She found herself eyeing…

  • The Core is Getting Soft.13: Trackball Runs Over Mouse

    People who are interested in gear like to thing big.  Big things, big bucks, big sounds, big….balls, implicitly. But sometimes it’s the little things that get used the most.  While working towards completing my new record with producer Scott Solter, a frequent theme of our conversations has been poking fun at gear hounds who elevate…

  • Top 40 over 40.17: A Different Kind of Swans Song

    Most of the musicians I’ve written about in this series are ones that were important to me when I was younger because of work they did themselves when they were young.  I’ve written about records they did after turning 40 that either came close to or equaled the quality I heard in their earlier recordings.…

  • Coca-Cola loses one in India

    One of the songs on my forthcoming record is called simply “Coca-Cola.”  Mark Pendergrast’s book For God, For Country and For Coca-Cola reveals that this is the most widely recognized group of syllables on the planet, except for OK, which holds onto the top spot for now, but perhaps not for long.  Back in 1971,…

  • Radio Rescheduling: WXDU 8/24 7-8 pm

    I’ll be doing an interview on WXDU, (88.7 fm in Durham, WXDU.org online,) from 7 to 8 pm on Sunday night August the 24th.  This was supposed to take place on 8/17, but had to be rescheduled because the DJ was involved in an accident.  I’ll be playing some rough mixes from the record I’m…

  • Meet the Octopus

    I just uploaded a rough mix of one of the tunes I’m working on for my next record on the page of the Kickstarter I’m running to support it.  You can check it out by clicking here, or on the photo above. It’s called El Pulpo, a handle I got from the book Inevitable Revolutions…