Here’s a post veiled in the mystery of anonymity. Two good friends had their baby tonight, at around 7 PM my time. Congratulations, B+K, you’re going to be great parents, and I’m looking forward to seeing the little monkey soon.
Now, back to Christmas preparations.
I went to Minneapolis over the weekend to record some songs for an album by Josh Harty, a friend and colleague who lives in Madison. I met him through Lis, and we have both played with her as sidemen. Ever since I heard him perform, I wanted to play with him. He has an unreasonably beautiful voice, and plays a fine guitar as well. We had talked about recording together as early as the end of last year (I think), but it never fell together.
A couple weeks ago, we played a show with Lis in Madison, and he asked me to come up to Minneapolis to do this session. He has a band that he works with, but the drummer wasn’t able to make the session. Rather than reschedule (he had other out-of-towners already committed), he asked me to do it. I jumped at the chance, and it was a great thing. I was a little nervous about not knowing the material going in, but only a little nervous, and once we got to the studio, all that dropped away. The songs we recorded were great, the other players all played great, and the final product should be stellar. I think it’s coming out early next year.
This makes three recording sessions I’ve done this year, and I’m excited about all of them. The Monday night jazz group has what started as a demo, and will probably be a record, coming out as soon as I can finish mixing it. Tin Horse is in the process of recording some original songs — three have all my parts done, and we might do more this month. Now I have this new one with Josh. So I went from not playing on any recordings this year to three. Not bad for a month or so.
I’ll be writing some more about the weekend’s session over at Home Audio Journal. I had a pretty ear-opening experience that I’m eager to write about as soon as I have all the materials together to do that.
Meanwhile, I’m much more excited about Christmas next year than Christmas this year. My brother, whom I haven’t seen in two years, will be back in the states, so we’ll have a chance to have the whole family together. It might happen in the spring too, which will be great. I’m looking forward to being with Lisa’s whole family for the first time in a year or two this year as well, but not having seen my own flesh-and-blood for a couple years is getting to be too long.