A bunch of my music just became available on iTunes today. Check out:
Honest Engine – Combustion and Overhaul
Mr. Sunshine – Estranged
Points West – Tumble Down
It is just back catalog stuff right now, but new stuff is forthcoming. If ya dig it, write a review! If ya hate it, move along…
Oh yeah, you can like us on Facebook too!
Several years back I got a Moon Blue DeArmond M75 guitar as payment for some studio time. It was in pretty bad shape; it had a bad nut, crappy tuners, terrible action, terrible intonation, and a big gouge on the back. Despite all these flaws I could tell that the base guitar was actually pretty special. When I found a position that I could play in tune it had a great tone and the neck was straight. I figured it could either be a good base for a dedicated slide guitar or, with some work, a good Gretsch Duo-Jet stand-in.
It sat in its case for about seven years until recently my favorite luthier, Gary Rosier, struck out on his own and his lead-time fell to a reasonable time. It used to be six to eight months(!) but now was six to eight days. I gave him the guitar and told him what needed to be done.
He replaced the nut, fixed the gouge, and intonated the guitar. What I got back was amazing! It inspired me to continue the upgrades and I made the following list and started upgrading, I’ve checked the completed upgrades:
In the end I will probably spend nearly as much in upgrades as the entire guitar is worth, but nothing should stand in the way of great tone (and fun). I’ll post a pic as soon as it is finished.
Another new song! Yay!
This one is a rollicking amalgam of funk, ska, rock, prog, and pop. It makes me want to get up and shake my ass. Keep an ear out for the funky clavinet that leads into the chorus, it makes me laugh every time. The bridge is supposed to evoke the sun sparkling on ocean waves.
Falling Apart is the title of Mojo Philter’s new song. To the right you’ll see a link to a page called “Jukebox“, I’ve added our kick-ass new song. It’s funky yet sad, so you can cry and dance simultaneously.
Falling Apart features Farris on vocals, she also recorded vocals for three other Mojo Philter songs and I’ll add them over the next few weeks. Since Farris is currently living in Kenya, we are going to try to keep what we do musically as open as possible. So we’ll have instrumentals, as well as various guest vocalists, and we’ll go where the music takes us. We figure that since we are beholden to no one, why should we follow a formula?
Anyway, we really dug making it, we hope you dig it too.
What a busy past few months! Huge project at work finally finished it took up most of my spare time. Everything suffered because of it; family, friends, band, camping, health, haircuts, yard, you name it. Now it is done and I can get back to the fun stuff.
The stars aligned and Mojo Philter had another vocal session today and we finished vocals for the last two songs. I will have everything mixed and posted for all to hear by next weekend. I think it is sounding really cool and I’m excited to hear what people think.
We also moved into a new practice space in hopes that it would be a little bit cooler, temperature wise, than Lucky 13. It isn’t. It is bigger, and sounds better (after I acoustically treated it) but it is still hotter than hell. The real kicker is that it seems to be wetter in our new room, yes wetter. We all sweat when we practice and in this room it stays, everything feels damp when we are done. It is really quite disgusting.
Gotta go mow the lawn…
…Okay, I’m back. So I’ve got to say that it is really frustrating to have all the music recorded for our demo in March and not be able to finish vocals until July. The whole reason I have a home studio is so that I can record stuff whenever I want. Now I’m fully aware of all of the legitimate reason as to why it took so long, but that doesn’t mean I like it.
So busy, everything happening at once. To my readership of 4; please forgive my inattention.
Recording guitars and keys now, trying to finish by end of week.
I worked on What Happened to You? last night and it is sounding freakin’ epic. Seriously, the last chorus is ridiculous, complete with harmonized guitar leads and a Big Rock Finish!
Adrenalin, now in song form!
Got bass recorded on Saturday. Nothing of note happened except for one amusing little thing. I got Rehan all set up and I couldn’t get any signal. I had tested all my cables and connections the night before so it’s not that I wasn’t prepared. So I retested all the cables, still no signal. Rehan says “I can see signal on my stuff.” Checked my patch bay, fine but still no signal. Rehan says “I can still see signal on my stuff.” So I pulled out the rack and started tracing connections, all fine, still no signal. Rehan says “I’m still seeing signal on my stuff.” I check my software connections, all good. Rehan says “I can see signal on my stuff, oh wait, I have my tuner on and that bypasses the output.”
All told, the troubleshooting took about 45 minutes… Sigh.
We just finished tracking drums for four songs:
Rhythm of the Tides
Falling Apart
Kingdom Come
What Happened to You?
We’ll lay down bass sometime next week. Atom took some photos, I’ll get them up as soon as I can. We decided to go for a rougher, more spontaneous feel instead of a produced sound. The music we’re doing kind of calls for that approach in my opinion. So in that spirit I used a three mic technique on the drums with a lot of room sound. Very much an old-school late 60’s technique. One mic in the kick (AKG D112) and a pair of condensers (AKG C451B’s) in an XY pattern (as well as some of my own special sauce) to mitigate phase errors . It sounds very Muscle Shoals. We had Reh and Atom playing along to further contribute to the more “live” feel.
My front room is an incredible sounding room and I usually record drums there, right in front of the rock fireplace. But instead of recording there like I did for Gina French and James Woods I packed up a mobile version of my studio and we recorded in our practice room. I’m really liking the idea of doing more down-and-dirty style recordings, it feels a lot more casual. Plus it would be fun to pack up the studio and record in some nice old church or something. Make recording more of a fun get-together, rather than a stressful event.
Photos: Atom Holiday
We were a little nervous, but we still rocked. We drew pretty well for being an unknown band playing on a Wednesday. I think we even got paid! We took some video and got some pics. If there is anything worth seeing, I’ll post it for everyone’s amusement and ridicule. It was great to see some long-time friends at the show and I hope that I didn’t embarrass them too badly with my rock-n-roll affectations. I didn’t get into a fight or take my shirt off, so I’ll chalk it up as a win!
Here is our set list from the show:
We ended up skipping Falling Apart due to time constraints.
We are ready to rock tonight @ The Urban Lounge. Nobody knows who we are, no one has heard our stuff with vocals, we have an opening slot usually reserved for unknown’s, we are playing for a very short amount of time, and we’ve been out of the scene for eight years; we are the archetypal dark horse. Our set list has a wide variety without being schizophrenic (I hope). We have another 7 songs that are in various states of completion, but I think the chosen 7 are strong.
I’m excited we are finally getting Mojo Philter off the ground. Hopefully I can avoid the mistakes I made with Honest Engine. I figure since I’m just the guitarist this time around instead of the lead-singer/lyricist/guitarist/front-man/band-leader/publicist/engineer/producer/graphic artist/etc. it’ll be a bit easier!
To announce our upcoming gig I sent out a group e-mail to a whole mess of friends. Apparently our name has been met with some confusion. Our name isn’t gibberish, it actually does mean something:
1. the art or practice of casting magic spells; magic; voodoo.
2. an object, as an amulet or charm, that is believed to carry a magic spell
1. A potion or charm supposed to cause the person taking it to fall in love.
2. A potion or charm believed to have magic power.
transitive verb:
1. To enchant or bewitch with or as if with a magic potion or charm.
Some things you can feel coming. You don’t fall in love because you fall in love; you fall in love because of the need, desperate, to fall in love. When you feel that need, you have to watch your step; like having drunk a philter, the kind that makes you fall in love with the first thing you meet. It could be a duck-billed platypus.
— Umberto Eco
So, a Mojo Philter is a love potion, love talisman, or love spell. It is also one of the lines in the Beatles song Come Together:
He roller-coaster he got early warningThe idea is that our music is a mojo philter. You’ll fall in love, maybe a little against your will; but love isn’t about control anyway, is it?
Mojo Philter 