There are two new things to listen to that have me on them!

The first is the song “In the Cellar” I mentioned in a previous post. The 3-Way Singles Club for February is out, and that’s my song on it. Take a listen. It’s infectious, so they tell me.

     In the Cellar (streaming at Bandcamp)

The second is that my band with my friend Laura, A Lady Never Tells, just finished our first EP, and it was just released on our Bandcamp site today! Please take 12.4 minutes to listen to the 5 songs we made! We’re really proud of it, and think it came out great.

     A Lady Never Tells EP (streaming at Bandcamp)

The other, slightly bigger, news: I’m moving to Los Angeles at the end of the month. I was unemployed for a little while when my company laid me off, and was searching for jobs mainly in the Detroit area. But then this opportunity somehow came about to go interview for a job in L.A., and they hired me, and I accepted. This is going to be a gigantic change in life for me, and I’m incredibly excited and also incredibly frightened. I’m excited to live in the same city as two of my oldest best friends and excited to start a new chapter in my career. I’ll still be doing software development there, but with a different DB and backend language (for those that are interested).

My trip to L.A. was pretty great. I extended it a bit past the interview date so I could explore the city and hang out with friends. I am looking forward to having awesome tacos all the time, being able to see my favorite comedians of all time do small sets in intimate bars and theaters, having the bands I like actually come to town for a show, and the constant warm weather. I think it’ll do a lot to lift my mood and that’s a good thing.

I’ll probably keep writing demos and putting stuff up once I move and get my equipment set up. Right now I’m still figuring everything out.

     cover of GN’R’s “Patience” (MP3)

I JUST finished uploading all of my proper releases into Bandcamp. By “proper” releases, I mean the ones I ever made a physical object for, so Tenille, the Low Hello EP, and How Does It Know?. I am not sure still if I will put up the rest of the tracks from this site there, but if I do, I will likely just cram them all into one “release” called Part Time Songs or something. But anyway, take a look. I’ve put How Does It Know? up as a for-pay album, and the rest is free. I need to figure out how to link my actual merchandise (12″ 45 rpm record) with a purchase of the EP up there, but it seems straightforward.

http://sawani.bandcamp.com/

We also put up the A Lady Never Tells Bandcamp page, too… which is here. We’ve got two songs up there so far, with more to come!

http://aladynevertells.bandcamp.com/

First up was my solo song (the second to last song on Disc 1), “These People Aren’t Your Friends, Santa (Claus)”… the other one is by a new project I’m doing with my good friend Laura. Our band is called A Lady Never Tells, and this is our INTERNET DEBUT! Our song is the first one on Disc 2, “Greyhound Bus on Christmas Day”. It’s a sad slow song, and Laura sings beautifully on it. Mine’s more of a pop number in the vein of… well, in the vein of ME.

So go check those out! http://www.suburbansprawlmusic.com/xmas/

In other news, the next song I’m doing that actually has a deadline on it is a single for It Takes A Village To Make Records’ 3-Way Singles Club… which is a really cool project Peter Richards (he’s also the guy who did the layout on my How Does It Know? record) invited me to participate in. I believe I’ll be on the February volume. So I’ve got a couple months to do that.

In other unrelated news, I found out my company is closing within a month, so I will be unemployed. Which has kind of thrown my life into a bit of a weird state, as I’ve had my job almost 8 years. It was sort of a family, a small, hard-working DIY type of software development company. I am SO sad to see it go. It’s obviously been a giant part of my life. I worked there longer than I was married. I worked there longer than a LOT of things, in fact. So I’m also going to be working on my resume and trying to sell myself to Corporate America (or maybe I’ll find another tiny gem of a company out there that’ll have me so I can avoid suits and rat races — that would be ideal). Gonna be a busy month. But with no real WORK to do at work, I should be able to fit in that songwriting by the deadline. I hope!

It’s been a pretty interesting, eventful year, whose events really had not a whole lot to do with music, and more to do with my interpersonal relationships and my job. I guess I needed that time away from songwriting to remember how much I like/missed songwriting. I’ve barely worked on anything solo lately*. Except, I AM writing again now. I’m trying to put together a good set of songs for another EP (or perhaps LP). So I think what I’m going to do is record them when I can and post the demos up here. The intention then, would be, when the writing is complete, to take the songs somewhere and record them with someone good at recording.

The link for the first one is down below at the bottom of this post… It’s a rough mix. I’m finding I’m sort of out of practice in the mixing and mastering department, which is why it seems best to collect songs and get someone good to record them. It’s called “I Don’t Wanna Build”.

The other thing is that I’m sort of thinking about transitioning away from this site, and starting to use BandCamp as my main place to post music. I am still working on uploading all my stuff, but at first I’ll put up Tenille, the Low Hello, and How Does It Know? (with perhaps an option to buy any of them). I’m still working out how I’ll post the one-offs. Probably still here. Such as the demos for this thing I talked about above.

Anyway, take a listen to the song. And check back soon, because I will definitely be posting more frequently from now on.

     I Don’t Wanna Build (DEMO)

* I HAVE been writing some songs with a good friend (that are turning out pretty amazingly), and our internet debut should be happening sometime very soon.

Hey, hey… Long time, no post… Music has been on a bit of a hiatus for a few months, but I did manage to put together something for the Suburban Sprawl Music Holiday Compilation this year. Here it is, packaged together with an instrumental song I did over the summer with my friend Melanie’s Stylophone that I was (and still am) borrowing. Fun thing, that Stylophone.

     ZIP file of all songs (ZIP, 8 MB)
     01 No, ‘11 Doesn’t Have To Be Heaven (MP3, 4.5 MB)
     02 Stylophonics Worked For Me! (MP3, 3.6 MB)

Come check us out! The record is still for sale too, so pick up a copy at the show!