Miss What I've Known

One of the only luxuries of working a mindless, dead-end job is the 8 hours each day I get to listen to my iPod. There are a handful of albums that I find myself listening to every week, regardless of what mood I'm in. One of those happens to be Kelsey Waldon's new album Anchor in the Valley. Kelsey and I struck up a friendship over MySpace early 2009 and we toured together in July of that year. Ghostbeard would be hit or miss during that tour, but Kelsey was pretty much flawless every night. She's a real throwback to the classic country sound, but also is full of personality and clever lyrics; an amalgamation of Loretta Lynn and Neko Case. This song is called "Miss What I've Known."




Since I'm very interested in home recordings, here's a twofer today: A version of the song from an earlier EP, recorded in her basement.

Ah Oh Ah Oh

When I decided to propose marriage to my future wife, the first person I told was Kevin Thomas. Kevin and I lived about a mile from each other and spent every weekend together driving back and forth between Magnolia and Katy. I would spend a couple nights each week with him at the record store he was employed at, enjoying a pizza and playing numerous rounds of the game Uno. When I look back on that period of my life, my friendship with Kevin is one of the things I miss the most. He's been lost to the sands of time now, blown into a different world entirely, but at the time he had a recording project called See How They Fight Invisible Foes.





This song is beautiful and haunting, and typified most of what Kevin would write. Lo-Fi, bedroom recording at its best. Currently, he's involved in The Eastern Sea down in Austin, TX.

Hand

The high school that I attended had about 2500 students at the time I was there. My graduating class numbered around 580. I wasn't interested in being friends with any of them. I think the fact that I was an introverted kid with a large collection of wool ties that I wore to school was enough to narrow down the field of human interaction available to me. Of the 4 friends I had at my high school, there's only one I still speak to today on a regular basis. That man is Bryan Jay.

Bryan and I had Music Theory together and randomly struck up a friendship. We started writing music together and formed a band that never amounted to much more than some horrible recordings. Bryan has been pretty quiet musically the past couple of years, but he recorded a handful of songs under the moniker Woodshed Diaries. He has a deep, smooth singing voice that I'm insanely jealous of and would always write the most painfully sad song. This song is called "Hand."



Bryan also did a self-portrait of himself that I used for the very first Ghostbeard EP in 2008. So that cover gives you a good idea of what he looks like.

The circuitry is exaggerated, but the monocle is accurate.

Demons

This is another song that I recorded for The Monster I’ve Become concept called “Demons”. While a lot of what I’ve recorded is incredibly embarrassing to me, this song is one that I’m happy to play for people. This song (and album) marks the beginning of a new kind of songwriting for me that I think is more truthful, whereas I just wrote silly love songs in my teenage years. The basic premise of this song is that the things in my past that I’m ashamed of continually haunt me. No matter how hard I try to shake them, they always seem to push out any good in my mind and I’m left to dwell on my mistakes and shortcomings without being able to move forward. I let them take over.



I recorded this on my computer in February 2005, but it took a while to finish because I wasn’t sure what audio clip to put in it. I had picked out a few different ones to convey the idea of being overcome by a stronger force, but they didn’t really work. The Evil Dead, however, offered the perfect piece of dialogue to fit in with the idea and mood of the song. The dark undertones of this song, too, were a new direction in songwriting that I continue to utilize.

I recorded this using Cakewalk Sonar 2.0. Again, using a keyboard to make the drum beat and plugging the guitar directly into my sound card. To get the feedback, I plugged my acoustic-electric into the sound card, put it right in front of the speakers, and turned up the gain. The fast piano-key was mapped using Cakewalk’s midi instruments. I think they’re 64th notes, much quicker than I could play.

Hail to the king, baby.

Nostalgia

Some future members of Ghostbeard, circa 2002, after enjoying a slice of pizza.

The very night this photo was taken I began courting my future wife, Lindsey. To this day, I’m amazed she took anything I said as being sincere. I looked like an Amish clown.

The Monster I've Become

I recorded this song around October 2004 in my apartment. At the time, I ran my electric guitar through a distortion pedal and into a Realistic brand mixer which plugged into the sound card on my computer. For the drum beats I used a toy keyboard that I had owned since I was 9. I didn’t have a proper guitar slide, so I used a screwdriver instead.


This was the first song I recorded for a concept album I did called The Monster I’ve Become. The story was, get this, a man turning into a literal monster. But wait, it was a metaphor for me turning into a figurative monster. Pretty deep, huh?