The difficult fourth album! Part 4

In early 2009, I had enough material for album number three,‘Too Many Damaged Heroes’. I had bought a new computer, allowing for more tracks and better quality processing. And I invested in new monitors for mixing. The stage was set for another album of incremental improvement.

However, for some reason I could not get a perspective on the songs. I seemed so close to them that I couldn’t get the big picture. I was working away in my little hole of a studio, struggling to turn the external improvements into better quality tracks. Also, my collaborations with other musicians dried up a wee bit. I still had a drummer who contributed some guitar and vocals as well, but it didn’t feel like a step forward, more like more of the same.

In May 2009, I played my tracks to a friend who did not comment much on them, but while doing this I noticed that something didn’t feel right. I dropped the songs and didn’t touch them for three months.

During this time I came up with a plan of how to resurrect the album: I needed to breathe life into the tracks, make them more than just recorded ones and zeroes, give them relevance. I decided to do an album release party and play the tracks live with a band. It seemed like the next logical step. And considering I hadn’t played live for more than 15 years, it certainly got me excited.

So I asked people whether they wanted to be in my band for the release. I was completely surprised by the response, and after only three months I had a six-piece band and a ten-song repertoire. I am still in awe about how it all came together and forever grateful to those musicians that made this possible.

Amidst the rehearsals I remixed the album trying to get it ready for the release date, which I had set to 8 December, the 25th anniversary of my brother’s death. While in the end, the songs could have been improved upon, and the album remixes probably were rushed a bit, playing some of the songs live to a capacity crowd at the release party was the ultimate experience. Seriously, I couldn’t think of anything at the time that could have topped it.