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This is the second of two Christmas songs I’m releasing for 2016. Interestingly, it is also the older of the two. I started work on this piece for LAST Christmas (2015), and was just unable to complete it in time due to it’s ambitious arrangement.

This song was not part of my original planned track list for my Christmas project, it was simply something that captured my imagination. I considered throwing an homage to “Little Drummer Boy” into it as well, given how rhythmic the early part of the song is… but in the end I decided that the song didn’t NEED more complexity. It was better as it was, being true to itself instead of making callouts to another song.

The song was written By Noël Regney and Gloria Shayne Baker in 1962, as a plea for peace during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Though we aren’t currently living in the shadow of a potential nuclear exchange, I still thought it was especially poignant now in our turbulent world. The writers have stated that the lyric “Pray for peace people everywhere” was especially emotional for them, and so I made sure to emphasize it heavily with my arrangement.

From a recording standpoint, this song breaks a lot of ground for me.

First of all, it is much larger than anything I’ve ever recorded, in terms of the number of distinct elements contained within it. This song features full strings, woodwinds and brass, layered vocals, multiple guitars and rock instruments and even some tubular bells. It’s a much larger endeaver than I’ve ever attempted, probably brought on (at least in part) by my recent infatuation with the symphonic metal band Nightwish.

I wanted the piece to begin very simply, and then gradually work it’s way into a full, symphonic rock crescendo at the end. In that regard, I think I got exactly what I’d hoped for.

As I alluded to earlier, this song’s sheer scope made it extremely difficult for me to get mixed and mastered properly, but I am extremely happy with, and proud of it. I hope you enjoy it and take it’s message to heart.

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men”

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I didn’t release a Christmas song last year (2015) because the project I started turned out to be a much larger endeaver than I expected. SOOOOO… I’ve decided to release two Christmas songs this year. The project from last year, will will be released shortly.

I hadn’t given much thought about what to record from my Christmas Album track list, when this song asserted itself. I was driving home from hockey very late one night, and was suddenly struck with the overwhelming knowledge that I NEEDED to record it. I’m not sure why exactly… perhaps there is someone out there who needs to hear it. If so, I hope this song finds you where you need to be found this Christmas season, or whenever you’re listening to it.

This recording is very different from the way I usually approach my music projects. There are minimal punch-ins to correct missed notes or odd phrasing issues. I didn’t build in a guide music track to adhere to a particular chosen key (for the record, I think it’s more or less in the key of Fm) or a click track to adhere to rhythm and meter. There are no instruments other than my voice, of which there are total of four vocal tracks.

It is very real, and very imperfect (uncomfortably so for me). For some reason though, it felt to me that to do it any other way on this project would have been fake… insincere.

This song was written during a dark period of Jewish history, during the 400 years between the Old and New Testaments. There’s a strong sense of melancholy that permeates it, even with the triumphant chorus of “Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel has come to thee, O Israel.”

And with the coming of Emmanuel, nothing would ever be the same for anyone.

Merry Christmas everyone, and God bless!

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One of the many projects I’ve got bouncing around in my head is a Christmas album. In fact, I’ve held onto the longing to do a Christmas album for 20+ years now. I’ve got a track list, a brief description of the style/characteristics of each song, full lyric sheets, partial album credits and even some original music written for the project. About the only thing I don’t have planned out yet is the title/cover art for the album… pretty out of character for me, actually. ANYWAY…

In contrast to my planned method of recording & releasing albums one song at a time to eventually flesh out an entire album, I’d entertained the notion of recording this unrealized Christmas album in it’s entirety, and releasing it as a completed project.

Yeah, right.

I am nowhere near patient enough to sit on completed recordings while I work on the rest of the album. When I do something, I’m pretty proud of it. And I want to share it with the universe as soon as possible. I’m funny that way.

So realistically, I’m looking at a year-long recording project to do this Christmas project AT BEST.

With that in mind, about two weeks ago I got a sudden urge. I REALLY wanted to crank out my planned version of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. And release it on or around Christmas Day. Insane? Well, considering the amount of time each project has been taking me, absolutely yes. But since you never know until you try, I loaded up the DAW and had at it.

I did several things differently on this recording, and I’m pretty thoroughly thrilled with the results. The rhythm guitars are a blend of my mic’ed live rig (as described on the equipment page) with Native Instruments’ Guitar Rig. I used a new plugin for mastering called Kotelnikov which dramatically reduced my mastering time.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy my recording. I am totally in love with Christmas music, and I hope this reflects that.

Merry Christmas, and God bless!

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Galactic Cowboys are THE best band you’ve never heard of. They flew pretty far under most peoples’ radar, which is really a shame. The Cowboys combined the melodic and harmonic sweetness of the Beatles with more progressive metal music elements. While they never had massive commercial success, they developed a rabid and fanatically loyal fan base, of which I am a part.

Monty Colvin has a huge bass sound, the product of a bi-amped setup in which he runs the lower frequencies through a traditional bass amp and the highs through a Marshall guitar stack.

One of many interesting things about this song is that there isn’t a single lead vocal, the entire lead consists of a stacked choir vocal the whole way through. The effect it gives is quite distinctive and really adds to the overall ambience of the song.

Capturing both of these elements was vital in attempting to pay homage to the Cowboys’ sound. Without either of them, you just don’t have Ranch on Mars.

Sonically speaking, this track is a beast. When I got to mixing and mastering stages, I very quickly realized that I had a huge challenge ahead. The recording itself is very thick… there are a lot of layers of guitars, vocals, bass, etc. When you start to combine these elements, you begin to realize just how much of your aural bandwidth is being spent in thickness rather than in overall output. In the end, I finally started to realize that in order to get the song to an appropriate ‘volume level’ (average RMS… probably the easiest way to explain it without getting into engineering-speak) I needed to start dialing things back. As I brought levels down, the overall headroom I had for improving the signal level increased. Ironically, this also cleared up a lot of muddiness and made each individual element sound clearer and more defined – especially the tracks I’d lowered in the mix.

Eventually it came to the point where I couldn’t finish mastering it without losing my mind, and my good friend Wes was more than willing to step in and finesse the last little bit of tastiness out of the project.

Very special thanks to Pudge for the harp solos, and Wesley Perdue and Lance Scott for their mix/master expertise. This recording could not have been brought to completion without you.

Monty Colvin continues to record a quasi-regular podcast called “Monty’s Rockcast” and has a band called Crunchy.

To the Cowboys: Monty, Ben, Alan, Dane, Wally… Thank you. I patiently look forward to the reunion album and tour someday.

“We are brothers in our hearts”

Dedicated to the crew of the 25th Space Shuttle mission and their families.

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This song was written and originally performed by Dokken, and released on the 1984 Album Tooth And Nail. The original recording of this song can be purchased digitally from iTunes and Amazon. The compact disc can be purchased online from Amazon. I strongly encourage you to purchase it to support the artists who gave us this wonderful music.

Alone Again is the prototypical power ballad, a solid blend of heartbreak, strong melodies and raging guitars. Although many great artists used this same template to great effect over the coming years (the decade I lovingly refer to as the “Musical Renaissance of Hair Metal”), I still believe that few did it quite as sincerely and powerfully as Dokken did in their early years.

When I decided to record this song as my first covers release, I started without taking a ‘review’ listen to the original. It wasn’t until I’d already made a large number of the creative choices for the recording that I went back and listened to Dokken’s original rendition of the song.

I was surprised by the sparseness of the original recording. The bulk of what you heard in the Dokken recording from 1984 consisted of acoustic guitar, drums and vocals. In addition, I discovered that several of the things I’d thought I had heard over the years were not, in fact, in the original recording. This had the neat result of giving my take on the song my own special flavor, rather than being a carbon copy of the original.

Hope you enjoy it!

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The lyrics to this song were written by my friend Doug Boemler Wareing, and handed off to our circle of college friends in 2004 as a songwriting/recording exercise. My take on it was much more aggressive than the others, though I thought it matched the intensity of the words quite nicely.

“Tetelestai” is a Koiné Greek word, translated loosely as “Complete”, or “Paid in Full.” The word itself was frequently used in the business connotation of a bill being paid in full. It appears exactly twice in the Christian Bible, both times referring to Christ’s words on the cross and what they signified, “It is finished.”

The payment of that bill isn’t something that I deserved, nor was it something I could’ve ever earned. And yet it was paid anyway. That thought makes me feel like I should be a better person; like I need to love others more like *that*. Perhaps they don’t deserve it, but neither do I, and it was given to me anyway.

Tetelestai
VERSE 1:
I am an empty earthen vessel
I am a dry and dusty land
I am the son of Cain and Jezebel
I am the blood on Pilate’s hands
I am salt that deeply seasons
I am light unto the lost
And I have killed the unrepentant
While I pretend to count the cost

CHORUS:
There’s nothing I can do
And nothing I can say
To make you love me even more
Than you do today
I don’t deserve your kindness
For I’m filled with so much blame
But I am not why you have loved me
And why you called me to your name

VERSE 2:
You knew me in my mother’s womb
You knew the paths I’d take
The choices made to bring you joy
All the horrible mistakes
And you always run to hold me
Though I often walk away
You were the cost to bring me home
The debt I could not pay

CHORUS

BRIDGE:
May grace abound that sin should die
May blind receive your sight
One man’s choice has brought us death
One death assured us life

CHORUS

Welcome to my site. This is where you’ll find all the release notes for each song as it is completed and unleashed upon the world. Perhaps there will be the occasional commentary on something music-related, but most of what appears here will be limited to the release notes and lyrics for my song releases.

Listen loud!