New recording - Baltimericana

[midwayfair]

Spam spam spam, spamity spam spam spam ...

This was a home recording project I did with my friend Joe Scala starting last summer. There's also a bunch of DIY effects on it, and the music is a bit more experimental than I usually get (there's a lot more layering and looping, as well as some brilliant found percussion courtesy of Joe). It's a bit much to go into here, so I wrote a series of blog posts about the songwriting process that also include notes on the gear, which happens to also include a 1956 Gibson electric on a couple tracks ...

You can listen here:
http://baltimericana.bandcamp.com/
(Sorry it's not an embed ... I don't have it on Soundcloud yet.)

And the blog posts.

Anyway, I hope a couple of you like what you hear, and if you like it enough, please pass it onto a friend.

Oh ... and thanks to everyone who bought the pedals when I had a sale to help fund this. We decided to skip mastering and professional mixing on this one to keep the purely home recording vibe (part of the reason it took so long to release) and instead roll the extra funds I raised into a new Midway Fair EP at Beat Babies Studios in January. I go into the studio to start that one at the end of this month, and I feel really, really good about the songs that are going onto that record.

Unfortunately, this does mean that I will probably be away from the forums a lot more in the next several months and probably won't be able to do much design work if any in that time, either. I will say that I think that the last year and a half of building DIY effects has made me think more deeply about sound in general and I also think I've become a better guitarist and singer during that time, which is strange because I haven't been playing out as much. So I'm definitely not giving this hobby up entirely, but I thought I should put this somewhere in case I miss a troubleshooting thread about one of my PCBs.

[jubal81]

Yeah, I'd call it gourmet spam. Fucking brilliant stuff. I'm sure 'Fallout Shelter' is going to be in heavy rotation at Casa De Lilly for a long time.

Link to the blog posts is broken, though.

[madbean]

Great tunes. The Harbor song is just so moody...I really love it.

[pickdropper]

I was wondering where you'd been.

Cool tunes.  Hard to pin that to a single genre.  I enjoyed listening to them.  Are you doing main vocals or backup?

[midwayfair]

Thanks guys.

Fixed the blog post coding. I forgot that BBcode doesn't need quotes around the URL. Thanks for the headsup, Jason.

I was wondering where you'd been.

A little burned out in general, spending more time playing and writing, and also I've been writing/DMing a Pathfinder campaign. I just needed a change of pace.

Cool tunes.  Hard to pin that to a single genre.  I enjoyed listening to them.  Are you doing main vocals or backup?

I'm doing about 75% of the vocals. Some of the backup is Joe, and the female vocals are his wife Katie, who is one of the best singers I know. This is their website: http://www.katiebowersband.com/

EDIT: I'll just put this here so no one has to go poking around to find her singing. Written by Joe. The drummer is our mutual friend Mosno, who we'll be doing some sort of February project with.

[timbo_93631]

You should be proud Jon.  Very good work!

[ch1naski]

I saw the name of it, and immediately knew it was a Jon project....Baltimore.

Will listen when I get home.

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk

[Gledison]

Wooow. Fantastic work mate!
loved the "can't swim in the harbour" ! do you really used a Gibson 56? OMG!!!
Keep rocking man!

[midwayfair]

do you really used a Gibson 56?

It belongs to one of Joe's neighbors and he managed to borrow it for a week so we could track with it. It was a fantastic guitar ... much tighter and brighter sounding than most modern full hollowbody guitars (it's the guitar on the last track). It sounded a lot more like an acoustic and I think a big part of that was that it wasn't a laminated body. I don't get too starry eyed about vintage gear (guitar- and amp-making technology has advanced ridiculously far in 50 years), but I mention it more because I'm not aware of another guitar that really has that sort of sound. Peoples' tastes change, you know? I mean, heck, I'm the sort of guy who perfers a silverface deluxe to a blackface, so there's no accounting for taste, right?

[Gledison]

do you really used a Gibson 56?

It belongs to one of Joe's neighbors and he managed to borrow it for a week so we could track with it. It was a fantastic guitar ... much tighter and brighter sounding than most modern full hollowbody guitars (it's the guitar on the last track). It sounded a lot more like an acoustic and I think a big part of that was that it wasn't a laminated body. I don't get too starry eyed about vintage gear (guitar- and amp-making technology has advanced ridiculously far in 50 years), but I mention it more because I'm not aware of another guitar that really has that sort of sound. Peoples' tastes change, you know? I mean, heck, I'm the sort of guy who perfers a silverface deluxe to a blackface, so there's no accounting for taste, right?

Sure, is all about taste, and MOOOOJO!!
great job again Jon!

[gtr2]

Awesome Jon!

Josh

[icecycle66]

Very nice.
I appreciate the atmospheres you created. I use the world atmosphere intentionally as the music reminds me of different states of breathing.