New Years Eve 2020 to 21
(Subtitle, “WTF was that?”)
So I know that this is coming a little late. It had been intended as a New Years message, but…
I’ve been on vacation.
Seriously. No schedule. In my case this means my panic attacks have very little structure upon which to hang themselves, so… there’s that. But I have more time to sleep (though the actual sleeping remains an elusive goal) and my achievements in Sea of Thieves are through the roof!
And then I wasn’t on vacation anymore and I needed to re-enter everyday life. I should mention that I also let my present employer know that I’ll be leaving my position at the end of January so that I can go ahead into the studio to cut a new album and then do a North American tour in the late summer once the vaccine is fully distributed and we can do such things again.
And while the second part of that statement is a lie, the first part is accurate. I have decided to change day jobs, and that may affect the amount and type of travel I do (again, once such things are safe again). I also will be (and have been) recording songs for singles that will be released individually and eventually collected into an album.
But, let’s do the things I’d originally intended to do. Here’s what’s been accomplished in 2020:
94 live performances
- 8 in person
- 86 as livestream
9 new songs fully written and tracked in the studio
- 4 fully recorded and mixed
- 4 in process
- 1 discarded after initial recording (it was a fun song, but not really something I wanted to hold onto)
28 blog posts (not including this one, because 2021)
A name change (now using my own name, rather than my old Tunnel 18 band name)
A revised website (cleaned up, and it’ll be even a bit cleaner later in 2021)
More cooking, baking, and home improvement than I thought possible (recipe swaps available).
Also a few new pedals on the board. Built two myself to add to the long list of effects I’ve built: a new boost and then my eighth Tube Screamer replica*.
And I know I keep promising you all a blog post about my pedal board – and I will do that, but not today. I will include some nice video about how all these neat pedals affect how the guitar sounds, but let’s keep this to itself for now.
I do want to tease out a few songs that I have neither posted to Spotify, nor put in CD projects, but that I’ve been playing live a lot (acoustically). I regard all of these as demos, but have lately been thinking that they might be good additions to my current polishing, mixing, and release projects.
I’d love for you to take a listen to these and for you to let me know what you think – what works and maybe what doesn’t. While I love songwriting and playing, I love it even more when this music finds its audience.
Thanks, and I hope you enjoy.
-Chris
*General Guitar Gadgets does a great kit for a Tube Screamer, and their latest iteration has a great option for selecting a variety of diode pairs (and hence distorted tones). The one I did this Summer went to my friend Lee McIntyre. We’d spent a few weeks at the beginning of the year (pre-covid) jamming and helping him keep his mind off some upcoming events. The man plays a great version of “Here Comes the Sun” and is a hell of a novelist/philosopher as well. Hence, Lee has the first ever (and only) Post-Truth Screamer.
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