We had an amazing studio night last night, due in part to some special guests.  Jeff Beam, who we’ve known for years, and who is an amazing bass player, joined us for part of the evening.  He brought along his muse Natalie as well, and we caught up for a bit before we settled into making some music.

The jamming was extra special because K Billy and Jeff played in a Cleveland band in the ’90s called Qynne’s Horse.  This marked the first time that they were writing together in years!

It was a blast.  Prior to Jeff’s arrival Mike, KB and I had written a bridge for an upcoming song called “Today Special”.  We were pretty happy with our efforts, but after Jeff showed up we gave the whole thing another shot and came up with what could be an even better idea.

The idea juice was working last night, I’ll tell you!

BTW, if you’re in Cleveland you can catch Jeff playing out with Calabash, the GeezeCats, Alan Greene and more.  And he’ll be playing in the Mike Farley Band reuinion show at Brother’s Lounge on Sunday July 25.

Amazingly we’re being super-productive as of late.  Despite the fact that Mike continues to forget studio night (even though most of northeast Ohio knows when it is), we’re forging ahead and finishing track after track (okay, to his credit, he did do a Sunday “make-up” studio to track some bass today).

The 11 songs we chose to focus on at the beginning of the year are in the final mixing stages, or mixed.  We’re scheduled to return to Ante Up studios in July to start mastering a couple.  We’ve also been steamrolling through getting tracks laid down for another ten or so songs that have been sitting around for a while.

At this rate we’ll have cleared the pipeline by the end of 2010 (!), and hopefully we can focus on some newer compositions that are already written, as well as getting back to some jamming and idea generation.

Oh yeah, and hopefully some people out there like what we’ve come up with…

I’ve finally resuscitated the Snoozeking Music website.  Snoozeking Music is my music publishing/indie label affiliation, and it covers not only drunkdude69, but other projects like Thomas Reed Smith and my own solo material (if I ever get around to releasing any).  It’s been out of commission for a long time, but it seems like it’s the right time to bring it back to life.

Now that I have an outlet for musical posts not related to DD69, I’ll be able to be a little more focused about my posts here.  If you want to keep up with everything outside the zany world of drunkdude69, please stop on over.

In December 1999 I met @hellpellet, the flaming pill that would change my life.

A little more than a year later, in early 2001, my grandmother passed away, devastating me.  A month after that I (along with about 101 other people) was laid off from my job.

I moved in with hellpellet across town and spent a while with my head deep in the sand.  Then there was 9/11, and everything seemed to be out of control everywhere.

At about that time I wrote this song based on a riff that Mike and I had come up with earlier.  It’s about being able to get through the day because hellpellet and I have each other for support when things get rough.  It’s become an anthem for me, but it’s also a gift for her and anyone else who is just keeping their head above water.

Special thanks to Coach Hanna for delivering the drums that made the song come alive.

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Hellpellet and I had an awesome experience at Podcamp Pittsburgh this past October.  Unknowingly, as I enjoyed various discussions and made some new friends, I was filing away some songwriting inspiration about the nature of online notoriety.

The (interim) end result is “Next Big Thing”. It wound up being a ska-flavored tune that brings up flash-in-the-pan celebrity both online and on television.

Ironically I have to thank Tom Smith for the kick in the ass to finish the tune.  In mid-December I helped him make a quick video, and he wondered if lots of people would check it out.  I told him I was working on a song about that kind of “social media” kind of stuff, and after I wound up sofa-bound I finished most of the tune because it was suddenly on my mind.

I still need to write lyrics for the bridge, and we have to track all the instruments for reals tho (it’s all ACID loops and Fantom horns except for the vocals and guitars), but I’m excited about busting out a new tune.

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