Safer By The Shore

Listen to 7 Years Bad Luck by Safer By The Shore.

Here’s a pretty close to finished mix of a song going to appear on the new album.

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Radio Interview on The Planet 100.1

Another demo from the upcoming album. This is the token “6/8” song. Jamie Moody on drums.

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Demo of a song from the upcoming album “Through the Darkness, We Will Find the Light”. Featuring Jamie Moody on drums.

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Working diligently to get Safer By The Shore to be a live band. Graciously, I’ve got a few upcoming shows with the help of Jamie Hughes and my favorite drummer, Greg? from the Genuine Nokovs to be my backing band.

I recently welcomed Rich Delmonico to be the permanent drummer, and we’re rehearsing now. Still looking for 2 more players to complete this group and play these full production studio songs appropriately. There are a lot of extra vocals in my songs, so the more “singers” the better. There are also a lot of synth parts in most songs, so ideally a bass player and a guitar player who can also alternate on simple keyboard parts. I’ll end up doing the same, jumping between vocals, guitar, and keys.

I’d really love to get a real Moog theremin eventually so I could live play my part on the song “Calamity Is My Middle Name”. The recording has a 4 measure melody (looped) that took me an hour to record playing on my pitch only Theremaniacs Theremin. Sounds freakin awesome, but it is near impossible to play actual melodies on. The device (I named “Toto”) works awesome in Mugshot to play noise effects on “Whole Lotta Love” or my improvises on “Closer” and “Burning Down The House”.

So hopefully the right people will appear soon, and we’ll get this show on the road!

We Wear Our Hearts On Our Sleeves

Here’s some demos of the 8 songs I wrote in Feb 2012 for the RPM Challenge intended to be an album called “Heart on Sleeve”. They are pretty diverse in genre, from pop to electronica to rock to tropical island acoustic. I am trying to condense the sounds to something more uniform before releasing the album. What sounds do you like best?

I love a lot of different kinds of music, and it shows in the music I write. What I’m coming to realize, is Safer By The Shore needs a more clear identity, and to limit myself to focus on what kind of genre I play best.

Here are 3 examples: “We Wear Our Hearts On Our Sleeves” is the modern pop rock sound of a throwback 80’s nostalgia new wave/dance music. Similar to Neon Trees or Two Door Cinema Club.

“Free” is an acoustic/hand percussion song with an “islandy feel”. I think this is probably the best written song I did this month, but it doesn’t gel with anything else I did. Reminds of the feel of Talking Heads “Road to Nowhere” a tiny bit.

“Running In Place” has a 90’s electronica distorted messy sound to it. Lots of reverse reverb. I thought it was cool when I was creating it, but now I don’t know.

So which do you like the best, and why?

Thanks for your feedback.

I decided since the rules this year for the RPM Challenge are “to do most of the writing within the month of Feb”, I’m going to include this song I wrote in 2008 that does not belong to an album. I think it fits, and will do it justice. I’ll just have to re-record it, which is cool because all I have is a 2008 bass heavy, muddy mp3 of it. The Logic Express master file got corrupted on an old hard drive. It’ll do it justice to resurrect the song recorded with better, Logic Pro 9 and the mastering plugins I didn’t have back then. Didn’t have the same discerning ears back then either. Enjoy.

With only one week left to write, record and mix an entire album, I’m up to about 8 songs. The goal is 10 songs. Having a lot more of a harder time this time than when I completed the challenge in 2010.

I set a goal to write more “upbeat dance tunes” this time, didn’t matter if the lyrics were still dark. Worked for Everclear (uplifting music coupled with self deprecating and depressing lyrics.)

I’d like to say there at least two happy songs on here so far, which will probably bookend the album as the opening and ending tracks. The rest of the songs continue to lament the rut I’ve been stuck in for a long time. 2011 was just an awful awful year for me, it hasn’t gotten any better yet, and I can’t be the only one who feels down and out. So hopefully you’ll identify with these songs.

Had a productive day today, writing words for parts of 4 songs, a lot of mixing and drum programming. For the first time on a SBTS recording, whipped my wah-wah pedal. Sounds freaking awesome, like a growling panther on a song tentatively titled, “Keep Smiling While You’re Crying”.

Need to just keep it up, had an idea for the album title finally today as well.