Monday, August 13, 2007

Movement on the Home Front. Literally and Figuratively.

I moved into a new house a couple weeks ago. For this I am pleased. My
new house carries tons of internal and external character. It's orange
on the inside and out, which is unique and brightens the place up.
I've seen several characters mounting these small motorcycles and
riding them through the neighborhood..the strange thing is they're
like dune buggies, but set in a completely new urban environment. In
fact, yesterday, I saw some kids riding these very motorcycles on the
track outside of our house. There's nothing more frustrating than
getting circled while running around a track in 100 degrees. It's
close to being without water for one week and then trying to find your
way into a caged water park. These kids that surrounded me on their
bikes like a tyke gang asked me how many laps i'd been running: this
was extremely important to them. Their inquiring excited my memory,
and I remembered that this is MOST important to an 11 year old. The
MOST important question to an 11 year old boy, or at least to me when
I was eleven, is " how many?" "how much?"....they simply have no time
for people that cannot achieve physical excellence at insane rates.
This boy really cared about how many laps I had ran and the amount of
time that I had been there, because he'd asked the latter question
first. Astounding. Oh..11..where have you gone?

I am about to go into the studio to work on my third release. I cannot
express how excited this makes me. I really feel as if it's my 2nd 1/2
release because ADVANCEMENT only has 7 songs...in the modern age, it's
hard to classify that as purely "a record"... as a matter of fact, I
called it an EP to settle the scores. I'm happy about this particular
record because it's looking much more celebratory in it's own way.
With ADVANCEMENT, it felt just like that in many senses. It felt like
a move forward and that's all. Completely necessary, but more mental
than spiritual in approach and kind of all over the place. I'm working
with a similiar team that contributed to ADVANCEMENT. I've also
co-written tons for it. Don't worry, there are no 'featuring' slots on
it. No Akon or Pastor Troy..anything like that Although...that would serve it in a way...negative or positive, I
cannot say . When I co-write, I leave it there. It's also communal,
this effort, with the co-writes and short story book. There's a label
thats putting it out as well. Rebuilt Records out of Athens, GA. Jason
Harwell runs it, and I think he's the personification of directed,
convicting, underground music...with his principles and all. Stay
tuned.