Summertime is Finally Here

Hey y’all – so again, a lot has happened since I’ve set aside the time to write on here. Hopefully you are all connected with our facebook music page, so you can see the more bite-sized updates on the reg. Since my NW tour with Star Anna in March/April, I’ve released the third (and probably final) installment of my cover series. I dug back into one of my initial inspirations, Nirvana. After discovering Elvis at 10, the Beatles at 11, it was really Nirvana at 12 that really brought it all together for me. “I can do that!” was my 12-year old response. Well here we are decades later, and I still haven’t done “that,” but it definitely got me started on my own musical journey. So it was with great pleasure that I dug into “Aneurysm,” which I first heard from 1992’s Incestide. I really wanted to stretch the arrangement as far from the original as I could. There’s musical references to Angelo Badalamenti’s work with David Lynch (Twin Peaks), Bernard Herrmann’s work with Hitchcock (Vertigo), as well as a little Michael Jackson Thriller vibes, which I couldn’t help but include. I always found it interesting that the background vocals on “Aneurysm” screamed “Beat it, beat it!” Again, I utilized the video editing skills of my brother and long-time right-hand-man, Brandon Tutmarc, this time using Jan Svankmajer’s claymation masterpiece “Darkness Light Darkness” as the visual backdrop to the song. Check out the video here…

Some of you may be wondering, “whatever happened to the next full-length album?” That is a very fair question, since I posted that we finished the album last September. Well, long story short, after some change-ups in our management team, we have now begun re-mixing the album which I promise will make it worth the wait. I am so pleased with the new mixes I am getting from Nathan Thomas (another long-time collaborator). He’s really bringing out the magic of the performances that Jason Miller so beautifully engineered. While a release date is still a ways off, the record should be in a much better place by the end of the month. As always, I will keep you up-to-date here. And keep checking our tour dates, we are focusing mainly on out of town dates this summer, with another trip to the NW this fall. See y’all at the shows!