I had the unique (only because it hasn't actually happened in several years) opportunity to write with fellow Secret Agent T band-mate David Hopkins this weekend, and though short-lived, it was good to write a little Rock, no lie. That being said, I got back into town just in time to see the most pitiful snow (we got more here on Halloween), and lay down another folk track :).
I have made more progress on these than I could have ever hoped, and should have this weeks track picked and posted by Wednesday evening (I'd like to make a few small adjustments), as well as a superior mix for Wrecking Ball.
Since I have (twice now, anyways) approached the idea of writing a blog with a small amount of trepidation, I've decided that one thing I can always talk about are the songs themselves, and I'm going to start today with Wrecking Ball.
It's always a matter of jamming around on the guitar. I throw shit at the wall over and over again just to see if it sticks. With Wrecking Ball I remember having the chorus, and once I had stumbled on the right chords for the verse, I went back with the melody and lyrics. If there's anything I could tell you about the song on a personal level, it's that I wrote it with two specific relationships in mind, and that they happened to end similarly (big surprise there). Having a personal stake in the songs I write is inevitable, but this one got a bit of juice simply from a genuine want to not bore the listener to death -- Allow me to explain:
For a long time I either did not know what a bridge was, never thought to include one, or just didn't know how. Either case, I have learned a few tricks in the last ten years, but I thought Wrecking Ball would suffer with too many changes. This, of course left me with a distinct problem: how do I keep the repetitiveness of this song from boring/annoying the listener to death without inserting the changes conventional songwriting wisdom has established as the norm?
My answer: Make your song escalate emotionally.
Verse1 - Genuine remorse at relationship's end.
Verse2 - A glimpse of the couple in questions dynamic. Here's a hint: it rhymes with Shmishfunctional.
Verse3 - An appeal for recognition for the attempt at making the relationship work.
The refrain holds the song together, as well as aids in the escalation. You see that the self-loathing exhibited isn't entirely deserved, and then you see that maybe the singer knows that as well... And then maybe you see that no matter how much a person blames themselves when shit goes down, they still want to save as much face as possible. Go figure. Or you see a guy lamenting being an asshole over the course of a relationship trying to justify his short-comings as having been the result of choices made for the good of the relationship... Or some other shit. There's a fair amount of room for interpretation even on my end of this :).
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Joseph Gearheart / Blog
Site Updates/Akimbo
One song left! Barring the worst possible B.S. imaginable, the album should be dropping soon! I know, it's a little trite to say so, but I'm more than just a little excited :). To be clear: I have been playing in a band(Secret Agent T) for many years. I have performed a good deal of the writing for S.A.T. (and I'm proud to say that what I didn't fully write I had a hand in), but then there's everything else -- Material that doesn't fit the band at all usually just ends up fading into memory, or even worse: relegated to latchkey solo ( and I mean solo) performances in my bedroom. If nothing else, this album marks the end to these song's days of sitting around and gathering dust.
Alright, now that my preliminary outburst is over with, let me say the following about "Akimbo:"
I wrote Akimbo to be a part of a small project involving keyboard (usually organ), and acoustic guitar. You may notice the brief spans of time in which the chord progression comes to a hault -- That's where the organ cued. If you're interested in hearing what that earlier take sounds like, shoot me a message and I'll e-mail it to you, but personally, I prefer this new one.
I wrote Akimbo's lyrics after having solidified the guitar part from an improv. It's about a couple that functions, although not in the traditional sense, as well as stereotypically happy couples do. Relationships without conflict are boring, however, so I open the song in verse one with the singer not even knowing when his significant other is coming home. It may seem odd that the chorus is so jubilant and loving even after the first verse is so dismissive/bitter, but he's not being bitter. He's being realistic. He knows his partner; the way she is and the way she acts. The never ending sarcasm and testiness are things that he loves about her, to the point of bursting into amorous chorus over it. So I guess, if you want to super-simplify it, this song is about how opposites can/do attract.
I'll be laying the final track of my upcoming album this coming week, and then it will be down to 100% mixing/mastering/production. I'll keep everybody posted, and as I have mentioned before I have another album that I will send out free of charge to those interested (I'm still working on the logistics, but we're going to make it happen).
I hope to set up my store here soon, so look out for that as well as this coming week's song upload... RAWK.
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BS/Recording/From the Deathbed
Ok, so I'm on vacation now (if you've liked my page, I'm sorry. I've already mentioned it several times), but my sleep schedule is so mangled from running audit shifts that I slept through half the day. When I woke up I figured I'd update the page, so here I am.
First, a quick update: recording has been going great, and I'm incredibly close to rounding off this album. I'll keep posting songs up weekly, but I'm fairly sure I'm going to post some of them early :).
Second, a little bit about the new track, "From the Deathbed." This isn't the oldest of the songs on the album... It has to be sometime within the last three years, because I know I wrote it after I had moved to Harrisonburg. I remember a lot about this song in particular because I wrote it directly after getting my acoustic guitar out of pawn, mostly as a reaction to not having had access to a guitar (I didn't own an electric at the time) for two months. I got back to the apartment, sat down, threw a capo on and the progression came out of a jam. The concept from the lyrics came directly from the first verse I improvised, which was split in two and used to create the first and third verses. I always get a kick out of having two separate refrains and then combining them for a third... It's the little things, I guess. Since I already new that the singer was telling someone to get away because they were sick, I just had to decide who they were talking to. I decided it would be an interesting contrast loving someone so much you feared for their safety that greatly with wanting nothing more than for them to stay away from you... And telling them so in a cruelly detached way.
Anyways, I hope you guys dig it. Soon I'll be adding the reverbstore, and once I've got the original "Folk" album sussed out, I'll see about setting up a way to get it to you guys for free.
This vacation thing is hard :). More updates soon.
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Exciting News
Well, I've made light mention of it before, and sense I don't have many "fans" at this point, I suppose it hasn't mattered, but I'm 5 tracks into an 8 track release, and the production is promising (even though I am, as always, the reluctant producer). What this means is that for the first time since 2006 I will have completed a solo album. One small step for "guy," one giant leap for "guy-kind." Given the implications, I am inordinately excited, and want to offer that older project (Folk [clever, no?:)]) as well.
As a form of disclaimer (a word that never means anything good), I thought I would point out one more time that I did the recording and production on "Folk" myself, same as I am doing with this upcoming release (I'll cement the details of the album upon completion, of course). The difference is that I was a lot younger in 2006, both as a human being, and a musician... That being said, "Folk" is being offered warts and all, and if people seem to like it, I'll rerecord it later. There's something about the old recordings that have a charm though, and other than my own sentimentality for the album, that's the principal reason I want to release it anyways.
I'll make an announcement when the new album is coming out, and I plan on offering "Folk" as a free download beforehand.
Keep stopping by, and if anybody ever reads these things, I appreciate your time :).
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A Brief Ramble/Black Sea
So yet another track in the bag, another one slowly headed that way. I guess luck abounds in even the dingiest of studios -- Mine consists of a two-plank blind,a couple of microphones, a multi-colored comforter (you can't make music without one), and a couple pieces of egg foam... An impressive sight, no doubt. It's because of how ridiculous the whole thing is that I'm so surprised how well it works.
A little more background: I got my first recorder in 2004, and promptly made it the only thing I did besides work and school. I've spent years bumbling around, gaining and loosing some awesome equipment, and it's taken up until now to have a good setup for recording acoustic guitar. I'm planning on offering up my earliest actual album effort for free here soon, so if you're interested, you'll get to see the difference.
Earlier today I uploaded a new track titled "Black Sea," and I've decided to run with providing background here on the blog until either a better idea comes around, or a mob of readers complains (If I'm ever contacted about these posts I will most likely faint from surprise, as well).
Black Sea is one of my favorite tracks, and also one of the younger ones on my recording list. I believe it reached it's finished form no more than 6 or so months ago, and even then it hasn't been heard by anybody except through my bedroom door. Per my usual writing process, "Black Sea" was born out of improvisation, the guitar and the first verse, to be more specific. I hadn't written very much in drop D in a long time, and I remember that I wanted to do that specifically. After I had gotten that far I sat with a pen and paper and slung the other verses.
I fell in love with this fucking song after I wrote it, and it takes a lot for something I've written to do it for me. I was just so happy with the lyrics. It isn't like I actually consider them to be terribly good, but that they're different. A lot of my songs are written from a first person narrative, but too few of them tell stories from it. The mood of the song always felt really good as well, and I suppose when you're comparing two people growing apart and scared about it to being shipwrecked on two separate islands miles apart you want to make sure that it is.
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Here We Go Again/ Wrecking Ball
I had the unique (only because it hasn't actually happened in several years) opportunity to write with fellow Secret Agent T band-mate David Hopkins this weekend, and though short-lived, it was good to write a little Rock, no lie. That being said, I got back into town just in time to see the most pitiful snow (we got more here on Halloween), and lay down another folk track :).
I have made more progress on these than I could have ever hoped, and should have this weeks track picked and posted by Wednesday evening (I'd like to make a few small adjustments), as well as a superior mix for Wrecking Ball.
Since I have (twice now, anyways) approached the idea of writing a blog with a small amount of trepidation, I've decided that one thing I can always talk about are the songs themselves, and I'm going to start today with Wrecking Ball.
It's always a matter of jamming around on the guitar. I throw shit at the wall over and over again just to see if it sticks. With Wrecking Ball I remember having the chorus, and once I had stumbled on the right chords for the verse, I went back with the melody and lyrics. If there's anything I could tell you about the song on a personal level, it's that I wrote it with two specific relationships in mind, and that they happened to end similarly (big surprise there). Having a personal stake in the songs I write is inevitable, but this one got a bit of juice simply from a genuine want to not bore the listener to death -- Allow me to explain:
For a long time I either did not know what a bridge was, never thought to include one, or just didn't know how. Either case, I have learned a few tricks in the last ten years, but I thought Wrecking Ball would suffer with too many changes. This, of course left me with a distinct problem: how do I keep the repetitiveness of this song from boring/annoying the listener to death without inserting the changes conventional songwriting wisdom has established as the norm?
My answer: Make your song escalate emotionally.
Verse1 - Genuine remorse at relationship's end.
Verse2 - A glimpse of the couple in questions dynamic. Here's a hint: it rhymes with Shmishfunctional.
Verse3 - An appeal for recognition for the attempt at making the relationship work.
The refrain holds the song together, as well as aids in the escalation. You see that the self-loathing exhibited isn't entirely deserved, and then you see that maybe the singer knows that as well... And then maybe you see that no matter how much a person blames themselves when shit goes down, they still want to save as much face as possible. Go figure. Or you see a guy lamenting being an asshole over the course of a relationship trying to justify his short-comings as having been the result of choices made for the good of the relationship... Or some other shit. There's a fair amount of room for interpretation even on my end of this :).
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The Coming Weeks/Months
Well Hell. I've got a blog :).
If you're reading this, you've seen my page, so I'll skip introductions and give you a breif description of my music the way I see it. I write songs, and they usually end up falling wherever the hell they want genre-wise -- Usually Folk, but sometimes Blues, or Swing. Sometimes all three mashed together. This has the potential to make for some interesting performances, and hopefully this year will be the one that I start to actually do so.
Since I've finally got a decent recording set-up, and more than enough material... I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this :). My goal is to post a new demo every week (starting with Wrecking ball earlier this week). How long will I go? Well, if I record everything I have and continue to write... Well I could theoretically go forever. Due to certain equipment limitations/operator inexperience (I'm good with the engineering, but just now getting into production), I'm going to focus mainly on my folkier material. Unfortunately that means The Rat (if you have no idea what I'm talking about, hopefully you will sooner than later)is going to take longer to put out than I had originally planned, but as I've said, I'm not at a loss for material.
Also I'm going to attempt to keep this blog up to date...
Incidentally, I'm still entirely new to the idea of working solo gigs and trying to offer quality solo material, so if any of you guys out there in the 'Nation' happen to read this and have advice/tips, I'd greatly appreciate the feedback.
So a new song a week, an up to date blog, more shows... It's going to be a good year.
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