The CD is finally done and available for purchase. Please buy one. Baby needs shoes!

I am sure that if there was a more backwards time consuming way to have finished this CD that I would have found it.

For those of you who don't know, I recorded 5 of the tracks a couple of years ago with  @ 303 studios here in Denver. It was just an EP to have something to give venues so I could book some shows. The intention was to get some more songs recorded in the next few months and have a full legth CD. Money, schedules, and the fact that the owner and engineer of the studio moved to Austin, TX slowed thing down just a bit.

Finally I got around to recording 3 more song myself last January. In the middle of the mixing and mastering process the guy who was helping me fell off the face of the earth............with the only copies of the songs that I had. I had to start again from scratch.

Most of January and February were spent sick. In April I lost my voice for about a week and the ability to sing for about a month. I did a bunch of shows this summer, started a new day job, and tried to put together a band, which left me with not too much time or energy left to record.

I finally got around to it in October and the learning curve on doing everything myself was pretty steep. I take a lot of comfort in the fact that I've weeded out many of the the wrong and inefficeint ways of doing things, which will make future recordings way easier to get done.

I think I'll start recording the next CD tomorrow, just to get a head start.

Well........  All of the actual recording for the new cd is finished and I am going to start the mixing and mastering process. This means no cd for the 30th, but it should be available by November 10th.

Tomorrow is the 15th and I had hoped to be finished with the CD, but last week was kind of a wash due to being sick. I am also considering adding some more songs than I originally planned. It is looking more like the 30th now.

As a consolation prize. Here's part of an interview that I did on "The Funk Kitchen" up in Idaho Springs with my buddy Alex.

Yesterday I played at the Golden Farmer's Market. It was a marathon type performance. I played from 8-1. It is kind of busking with a guaranteed minimum.

I was just a little apprehensive about whether or not my fingers and vocal chords were going to be willing to cooperate that early and for that long. There was enough positive response to think they did alright.

Much of playing that long is spent looking at people as the go about their business and relishing in the rare moment when you make eye contact or someone actually claps or pays you a compliment. It kind of reminds me of a little game that my friend and I used to play when we would hang out in NYC.

Basically you just walk down the street and as someone else coming the other direction gets near you you do the craziest thing that a New Yorker can do in that moment: you look them right in the eye and say "hi". It really freaks people out. Women grab their purses. Most people don't know what to do. If it is a pretty girl, you throw in a smile that says "hey your cute" There is a subtle difference between this smile and the "hey let's make like our bodies are Legos" smile so some people may need to practice at home before playing this game in public. There's no official scoring system, but any kind of acknowledgment of your existence is good.

That's most of these type of gigs, but occasionally, due either to the pull of the song itself or by being beaten down by the lack of interaction, you wind up sinking into the music itself. What is waiting when you resurface can be pretty interesting.

On one occasion I looked up and there were 3 or 4 women with strollers giving me their attention and discussing the music with their children. I could not for the life of me remember the chords to "I Love You, You Love Me", so I may have missed an opportunity to rope in some fans before they developed any abilities of discernment.

At one point I ended a song and heard the sound of a music playing which left me thinking "has one of the venders become bored enough of listening to me to actually turn the radio on?" I took a break and decided to take a look.

Turns out that way closer than busking edict allows, there was a boy who was about 8 playing his saxophone. He was not horrible, but it didn't matter because every time he hit a sour note someone put a dollar in his case. I made about $15 bucks all day in tips and this kid had more money than his case could hold.

After a while he got done working that crowd and decided to set up about 10 feet in front of me. Apparently he knows that you can't compete with children of animals in this business. Someone in charge came and informed him that he needed to move.

What I learned from this was that next time I am bringing a puppy.