Beauty is Imperfection

Dear readers, I returned to music in the latter half of 2015 and my seventh (!!!) album is coming out this month. It comprises 12 new songs of rock and pop and a wee bit of jazz. The record is called Clam Fake, and it drops in a week or so on iTunes and Amazon (as well as other sites like CD Baby). By “drops” I mean it will be released or issued. I have not physically dropped anything. That’s just slang to make me look more hip and knowledgeable.

Those of you who are fans might be surprised by some of the new territory I’m staking out. After almost 27 years, for instance, I picked up an alto saxophone, an instrument I had not put my fingerprints on since I was a teenager. My new interest in this instrument was sparked partly because I wanted to see what a sax sounded like next to a trivially tuned guitar orchestra. I was also mildly curious to see what I could still do with a dear woodwind so estranged from me. The saxophone is the only instrument I’ve actually been tutored on, but I learned nothing about music theory or chords from it. I gave it up partly because I wanted to learn songwriting on instruments like the guitar that I had taught myself so that creativity, discovery and technique could grow together. In other words, I wanted to be a punk and not know how to play the instrument I was playing.

But I was pleasantly surprised in one 10 minute jam that I could not only squeeze music from the sax but do it for some 10 uninterrupted minutes of long, John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman-inspired improvisation. This jam became the basis of two songs on Clam Fake, one of which is called “Red Clay Moses” (attached here).

The rest of the album relies heavily on guitar, however, and will be more familiar to my fans (such as they are), though I am also very proud to say that I’ve grown as a singer, guitarist and producer, and that Clam Fake is more listenable all the way through than my previous efforts.

You might have noticed my new songs already in the list on the right. The ones at the top are from Clam Fake, and are interspersed with six outtakes (in a hat tip to the nice critic from the Equal Ground who said I should filter more, I have left weaker songs off the album this time, though I am quite pleased to say that I now boast some 95 songs among my intellectual property, all of which are at home here on my blog).

If you like what you hear on this page, you can hear more on my Soundcloud page, and if you like that too, please spread the word!