What I Learned From This Album

My band Pawnbroker recently finished the recording process for our second album. One song is up in the "Band Profile" section of the Facebook page as a preview. Buy the first album here.

Stay tuned for when it drops! Things I learned:

- My singer lives in the same house where Death Cab For Cutie lived in the 1990s. I know this because my friend Chris also lived there. When Chris moved in, a quick search of the attic yielded the detritus of Death Cab's "side gig"--clippings, fertilizer, reflective sheets and various other weed-growing paraphernalia.

- It's cool to look at my Shure SM7B and be like "I OWN THAT."

This is a bar mitzvah for musicians. I finally own a nice vocal mic!

- It's not that cool that it weirds out the pitch correction function in Logic Express. Our singer Nicole doesn't need pitch correction, but I'm not so good with the whole staying in key thing...

- Don't try to record an album and have a baby within a few months of each other.

- Unless you magically can live without sleep.

- I need like, five more guitars to be happy.

- I still don't know how to describe our music. "We want to put the 60s and the 90s together" is my best. Someone smart said, "sweet driving in the rain music."

- HEY! Readers! If you can come up with a better description in the comments, I'll send you a prize! (What's that? The prize that you want is for me to stop spamming you with my band stuff? Okay, wiseguy...)

- One can put songs together just through the process of recording. Two of the tracks did not so much have endings or arrangements. We kind of invented said arrangements, in our drummer's basement, during the recording sessions. Yeah! It's like free-form funk inspiration. Or possibly like the part on Spinal Tap where they decide to become an acid-jazz band.

- "Like the part on Spinal Tap where they decide to become an acid-jazz band" is not quite a good description of our music.

- For the last album, a lot of the material had been in heavy rotation for years, through the last two projects Nathan and I were involved in. For this album, we wanted to root our music in the current lineup, reflecting everything that is happenign now. We came up with six new songs and rerecorded one that we put on the first album. All seven of the songs on this album come from the current incarnation of Pawnbroker and from the gigging and writing and fun-having of the last year. I'm very excited to give birth to this thing.

- I wish I had money for another five guitars.

- I can't deny it any more. I need to lose some weight. There has definitely been more of me in the last year of band photos. On the world tour, when I tear my shirt off, I don't want everyone to be horrified.

- I like my bandmates. Speaking as the guy who sometimes creates the drama, this band has a low level of drama. Also, we actually hang out. Nicole and I babysit for each other, and our drummer Scott did my taxes. Who knew that drummers could do stuff like that?

Enjoy the music!