Pheroze

Dang, we doin’ it up right.

Just a bit over half-way done recording guitars for my next album. Things are sounding great! We wrapped up the drums two weeks ago and started the guitars earlier this week.

10 songs total for this album. And we are giving the utmost care to these songs – making sure the tones and performances are just right. Each song has a unique vibe so each song gets a unique sound. Clay Holley’s been working the board and making everything sound just right. He’s also been great and coaxing exceptional performances out of me. So it’s been a pleasure working on this so far.

We’ll wrap up the guitars this week, then we’ll fly Shane in to lay down some bass next weekend (or maybe he’ll just drive over). After that, it’s time for vocals. Then we’ll sit back and see if we need to add anything else – like sousaphone, saxophone, telephone, gramophone. Then das mix. Then das remix. Then das mastering. Then das remastering. Then das boot.

I took some time this year to explore what’s out there in the rock scene and listen to albums, see some bands, pay attention to what people are doing. I didn’t like much of what I heard. Bands have gotten fucking lazy. Song-writing, tone, performance – it’s by the numbers and it seems people pay absolutely no heed to the actual creation of music. I have made it a point to stay out of the music scenes for a long time now. Scenes never seemed to be about music – just about being part of something. I’m confident enough in my “belonging” that I’d rather just make music.

Everyone is an amateur musician these days – I don’t mean amateur as in “indie” or “undiscovered”; I mean amateur in terms of musicianship and attitude. Fuck these amateurs. Time for the real deal.

I am going to enjoy changing that mindset over the course of my career. Let’s bring it back to the music.

Don’t forget the Oil Spill Benefit show next week.

love

-pheroze

It’s been a whirlwind my friends-  a jumbo kong-sized cyclone of frenzied EVERYTHING! I’ve been working, writing, smiling, moping, playing, obsessing and dismissing.
That said, I’m so sorry to have ignored you for over a month. You see, I’m starting to record my next album at the end of this month.
And I am super mega fucking HAPPY to announce that the writing is (pretty much) done. All songs are written, demoed and I’m almost done with pre-production.
It’s also been a reflective period for me. This is the first time in my life I’ve ever had a surplus of songs and ideas to choose from. When I recorded “Driftwood” it was like I was exorcising my evolutionary demons. Purging and expelling the material I had carried with me through previous bands, old journals, demolished 4-tracks- all that kept me in a certain time and space. “Driftwood” was a labor of love and letting go. I wanted to escape my past with that album- the limitations in expression, the lack of joy I experienced in trying to drag people up to meet my vision, the cliche’s and trappings of all the previous bands I was in. I wanted it out. And I set it free with “Driftwood”; an album written and produced solely by faith in myself and wanting to hear my older material played the way I desired.
I had the luxury of starting from scratch with this album. No older songs. No baggage. In fact I had about 30 new songs and ideas to work with, so I’ve challenged myself to focus and create the album that hones right in on where I am right now. And it’s beautiful.
About 4 years ago, when I started to work on my solo music career, I had nothing but the wreckage of the past. A good friend of mine asked me what kind of music I wanted to make. Being the arrogant bastard I am, all I said is that it not only needs to be the music I want to hear – but it needs to change people’s lives. It needs to be pivotal.
I think I’m about to record that pivotal album. And I have you to thank for it. I look forward to sharing it with you this fall.
More news coming soon – very soon.
with love
-pheroze

The only thing that I “wrote” are the main melodic line and the simple thumping rhythm that make up the core of the song – Joe Renaud added his spice to the rhythm while keeping the simple pulsation cemented. We would play off of each other for the dynamics and the changes, and we would get fed the rest of the song from the audience at shows.

Hopefully, if you came to a show in 2008, you remember the song (for it had no name at the time). I’d start by asking the audience to think of one word or concept, and then tap into the collectively focused energy of the room and channel the lyrics and song structure from there. For me it was a public marriage of my spirit and music connections – and I’d like to think that for you it was, at the very least, moving.

In short, people loved it – and when it came time to record a demo of new songs last year, I really wanted to record this one. Capturing the same feel and intensity of a life improvisation, let alone one that was channeled through the audience’s energy, was a challenge to put together- and when the time came I just had to say “fuck it, it’s a demo”.

Well I think we fucking nailed it. And when I say we, I truly mean the big whole fat mass of collective “WE” (that includes you bucko). I’m just your medium on this one. It’s simple, haunting and beautiful.

If you came to a show in 2008, you wrote this with me. Your thoughts, energy, and feelings are in it. And for that I thank you. And, no, it doesn’t mean you’re getting any of the royalties so suck it.

Thanks again, and I’m looking forward to collaborating more with ya. Make sure to go to the music page to stream or download Conversations With A Knife, or just right click here and save it to your computer.

Unless I get gored during the week by a runaway wildebeest- I’ll be playing this Sunday on June 21st at 7PM at Otto’s Shrunken Head in Manhattan. Come on down for, much like that wildebeest, it’s free! Unless it gets abducted by an alien and becomes a prime representative of our species for exploratory dissection. Thanks wildebeest! Details on the show can be found on my Tour page.

This show will also mark the first live show I’ve played with a bass player in the fold! Please welcome Joe “Joey Baby” Pepitone to the fold. He’ll be holding down the low end and I’m very excited to have him on board.

In two weeks I enter the studio to start demoing songs for my next album. The new songs are coming out great and I look forward to sharing some early recordings with you soon! This time I’ll even remove my bodily fluids from them. If you want a sneak peek soon, then come to the Otto’s show – where we’ll be unveiling at least 5 new songs. Who knows, Fred Hardcastle might even show up.

Joe Renaud, Joey Pepitone and I have been polishing these new songs up – and I think you’re in for a treat. So go to the fridge and make yourself a brownie sandwich or fried cat salad,

mmmm..... Cat Salad

then put on your reading glasses and peep these new song titles:

Show Me Tomorrow

Conversations with a Knife

The Stolen

Old Sad Laughter

Kingdoms

Wreckage of Liars

Caught in the Wheel

They’re so awesome I italicized them.

More soon, things are in the works.

Yup, so I know some of you are thinking “what the shit”? What’s happened to the nourishingly sexily spastic typings that you’ve come to expect from me? Well pull up that ragged bean bag chair/ small child servant you have lying in the corner and listen close.

I’ve been busy. Busy with the many multiple hordes of things that grabbed me by my neck hairs and tied me to a high chair.

Busy with what? Well, first off busy getting my health in order. I was waysided by some stuff that came up and had to be sorted out like so many misplaced socks.  So that sucked, but all better on the other side.

Then I got a new day gig that has taken some adjusting to. And I was in Seattle last week eating this —->

Those crab legs take a while to eat.

But most importantly, I’ve been WRITING! Fuck, I have about 20 something song ideas that I’m fleshing out-  5 of them are ready for live performance, and damn if I’m not excited about it. And Joe Renuad has been killing it on drums helping me bring these songs to life.

So yes, you can hopefully expect a new album this year.

And you can expect many many live shows coming soon too. The first of which is happening in Brooklyn at Bar 4. My good friend Joe Pepitone of Dead Till Tuesday asked me to play at his video premiere party and I’m flattered and honored to do so. It’s gonna be a great night-  Dead Till Tuesday are fantastic. Check out the details on my tour page.

And yes, I will be playing the 5 new songs that night. So get excited. I wrote them about all of us.

I’m back on the radar, and I hope to see you all at a show soon. I’ll be writing more – I missed you!

love, hugs, and now give your child servant a rest

-pheroze

I straddle a borderline obsession with exploring the creative process on both a grand and minuscule scale. This often leads me to pour through writings by artists, scientists, authors and musicians who share their creative rituals, habits, and techniques. Everyone who creates seems to have their methods (predominantly of madness I like to think) of bringing their creations to life- meditation, obsession, objects they keep around, binging, purging, dipping their genitals in sparrow feces.

I recently had a quite a few of my own observations and explorations of my creative process confirmed and thrown back my way as not just being central to my own purpose, but as general guidelines applicable to all.

My good friend Asa invited me to a lecture by noted Theoretical Quantum Physicist and Nuclear Physicist, Amit Goswami. To anyone who has a chance to hear him speak, do so. He has a great ability to convey topics based on quantum physics to a broader audience. I was first introduced to quantum physics in high school – so hearing Dr. Goswami speak was a real treat.

Dr. Amit Goswami

Quantum physics, for those asking, is essentially the study of the mechanics of things at the atomic level. It’s controversial because many of the resulting discoveries and theories fly in the face of widely accepted classical physics like Newton’s laws of motion. It also spurs controversy because there are intrinsic interpretative ties between what quantum mechanics shows and what mystics throughout the ages have described as a “universal consciousness”; fundamentally dismissing the classic science versus religion argument by doing away with the duality of what both sides try to explain. But fuck, that’s all shit to discuss another time when you can all throw your crosses/beakers/jelly beans my way at will.

Back to topic! The creative process is the concern here and Dr. Goswami had a section of his lecture where he outlined what quantum mechanics means for that process. Here are the steps he discussed:

1. Preparation
2. Incubation
3. Sudden Insight
4. Manifestation

Damn, he had just described what I’ve observed over the past 12 years about how I write music.

Over the weekend, I’ll post about each of those steps and how they relate to music writing.

Have a happy snuggly Friday the 13th and a hauntingly cursed Valentine’s day.

I’m sitting here looking over notes and trying to piece together a new album – a process that I have always believed suffers in presence of a formula and thrives in chaos. Fuck the music as math credos – I want music as chaos. Organized chaos.

Maybe I need to take that notion back and reconsider my song writing stance as, over the years, I’ve found my own brand of chaos that works well for me. Part of which involves looking back over random hummings and strummings that have ingrained themselves over the past year in my phone’s voice recorder. And part of which involves looking back over scrawled scratches in the little bright orange notebook that accompanies me everywhere. And part of which involves picking up a guitar and observing where my fingers naturally fall and pushing them to go other places. And part of which involves euphoria and depression. And part of which involves stepping away from it so I can come back clearer and virginal to the songs. And part of which involves obsessing over one small melody to the point of insomnia. And part of which involves waking up at 3AM from deep sleep because some song, lyric, or image is haunting me and I have to get it out of my head. And part of which recently  involves trying to clear the fatigue, brain fog, and sometimes debilitating pain I’ve been feeling for the past four months so that I can actually concentrate on this shit.

Wiglet Can't Write Songs

So maybe there is a formula to it all. Maybe I should have paid more attention in the Music Theory classes I took high school and college that are all a blur to me these days. Classes I took because I thought you needed to learn this stuff in order to write decent music. And because I didn’t want to take math classes. Classes where I learned valuable stuff like you can’t have parallel fifths or octaves and that you should avoid large intervals. True, the large intervals rule has come in handy when crossing the street, but the rest has had no transference in my music career.

I’m not anti music theory. Learning theory in any aspect helps as a communication tool and a way to process information; especially valuable in major composition or learning other’s music.

I’m anti music formula. Formula can take the form of theory dictating composition, or habit dictating composition. Whether it’s a music theory expert that writes formulaic music or a chaos driven song writer who stylistically writes the same chords and lyrics over and over again – that shit gets boring!

At least it gets boring to me.

So as I sit down and look at a list I made of 15 partially written potentials for my next album (right now given descriptive titles such as “Disco-ish Bluesy Song” and “Runny Arpeggio Song”) maybe I’ll start sharing some thought process along the way with things that help me get out of my song writing habits and explore music creative process. Not song writing lessons, those are dumb. But explorations of things in my music tool bag. Maybe. I don’t know. If time allows.

By the way, who the fuck actually takes classes in song writing? Seriously, what the fuck? I mean I see the merit in learning some tips on creative process, but classes? That’s up there with “Social Media Experts” and “Penis Pumps” for things meant to suck money out of you based on the somewhat valid premise that people are idiots.

Ok, enough ranting. Time to get back to songs.