Masters, licensing, upcoming concerts and nostalgia...

Just finished in the studio with my man Julian over at On Air Mastering yesterday.  The tracks sound great and I was incredibly eager to push through my copyright registration and send them off to Parma Licensing.  So, naturally, I took care of that right away.

They've received them as of this morning and should be reviewing them soon.  So, now I wait.  I'm truly excited about the opportunities this could open up for me but not without a healthy dose of impatience.  Healthy because it's motivating me to devour this list of other music licensing sites.  The idea being to spread my music out over the internet to get more simultaneous exposure.  After all, my contract with Parma is non-exclusive.

The article, which I can't remember how I stumbled on it...might have been one of the LinkedIn forums that I'm on, has been invaluable and whoever spent the time compiling the information, I thank you.  Now, I'm just trying to parse it all out and figure out which ones are worth my time.  Some do not offer royalties on placements, others require a minimum upload that I can't fulfill at present, while still others have a crappy payout split.  The list isn't necessarily exhaustive but I may just pick two or three good ones for now and delve into their terms and conditions and start making profiles if they're worthwhile.

So, that's keeping me busy.  But so is Lacy's music, which is nice.  We're trying to rehearse much more now because we're gearing up for a few shows.  I'm getting extremely excited about that actually.  Now, we have three shows planned, two of which are the CD release parties.  And I have my Behringer pedal cooperating with Mainstage and my Mainstage concert set up so that I can flip through the sounds for each song as well as turn on and off some of the effects with my foot.   All that remains for me to do is to get Mobius (my software looper) set up so I can start doing some of my own things with looping and layering.  Gah, I love playing live!

The first show is this one, performing at Caffe Vivaldi with the inimitable Tania Stavreva, who is in the process of completing her debut classical album (about which I'm so excited for her!).  That should be a good show.  Lacy and I are playing electric, too, so it'll be different from our open mics.

Next up is the Philly CD release party on the 17th of February at L'etage on Bainbridge and 6th in Philly, followed a few weeks later by the NYC CD release party on the 28th of February at Drom on 6th and Ave A in the E. Village.  Some of the players from the album have signed on to play with the band already so we're almost at a full band for this.  Both of us are really excited to rock out and can't wait to bring the new tracks to life.  Also being featured at both parties will be the premiere of the video for the song "Old Languages," directed by my good friend and colleague Mohammad Maaty.  So, if you can make either show watch out for that.  It's pretty awesome, I must say.

Now that all that's out of the way.  Some thoughts.  Just the other day, I received a piece of mail from my brother that was a rare memento he had dug up from the days of my first high school band, Buggstar (one g, two r's, no spaces).  A hand written history of the band by yours truly.  I read it back to back cover to cover (okay it was about five sheets of notebook paper), and I actually got a tiny bit wistful.  Just reading the way I talked about things back then, life seemed so much simpler.  It was before my dream of having a career in music had ever been tarnished by the harsh realities of the world.  And I talked about it as though it was a sure thing, as though nothing could stop me.  It was great to remember that I thought that way at one time and that somehow despite everything that came in way between now and then, I somehow got to where I am now.

It also made me miss my old band mates, hence the wistfulness.  We had such good times back then.  Throughout my parent's garage in boxes and probably amongst my brother's things are all these notebooks filled with songs and set lists and lyrics, chronicling our entire journey just about.  That was my first experience playing with other musicians.  It really came down to me, my brother and Jeremy, our singer...oh, and the six drummers we went through.  We recorded a bunch of stuff too, which is still around, on demo CDs and cassette tapes.  Cassette Tapes!  Boxes and boxes of cassette tapes.  I used to have a four track recorder that I would use to overdub tracks onto our demo recordings and come up with all kinds of stuff. While it wasn't the height of my composing career, I still like to go back and listen to them sometimes.  The songs were complex for what we basically were: a garage band.  But, nonetheless, I figure, what the hell?  Why not?

Here's one of my favorites from my sound cloud page.  Guitars: Tim Daoust, Vocals, Rhythm Guitar: Jeremy Shaner, Bass: Paul Daoust, Drums: the elusive Russell Foley...where are you kid?