Rawhide

The cold hit while I was inside. I hardly had a chance to be outside this summer, stuck inside doing recording and mixing. And finally, as I'm nearing completion of The Lizard People's "The Boudoir Sessions", it's cold. Pretty soon I'll be coming back into the studio to create a companion piece to "Schematics" and the live project. Something minimalistic in nature, more electronic and stripped down, but it never stops, it seems.

This week (and it's starting to look like maybe next week as well) I've been finishing up Lizard People's "The Know", working on a palette based on Western orchestrations and Elvis-like vocal work. Think Ennio Merricone with a touch of Al Martino.

As I was driving to work, I was thinking about some of the work I've done in this realm. Being that my birthday is this weekend as well, I thought about my grandparents. Birthdays and grandparents seem to go hand in hand. October 10th is usually one of the few times I ever talk to my dad's dad.

A year ago, my grandpa turned 90. For his 90th birthday present, I recorded myself singing some of his favorite standard songs. One of them happened to be Al Martino's version of "Spanish Eyes". Another was Miles Davis' "Bye Bye Blackbird". I turned on "Spanish Eyes" when I got home today and couldn't stop laughing.

When I gave my grandpa the three song EP, the entire family went bonkers for it. "That's you?!" This tends to be a standard extended family reaction to recordings of their family members. On top of that, and I anticipated this, my family prefers me doing standards to doing Patch. After we listened to my gift, they said "What's Patch sound like? Is it like this?" Me: "Not exactly." I turned on an old mix of "Trachomanic" that I had at the time, and they said immediately "That doesn't sound like you either, but I liked the other CD better."

Here are two of the songs from that EP:

"Bye Bye Blackbird"


"Spanish Eyes"


So, tonight I have to revisit the "Spanish Eyes" vocal style to meet Taylor's "Know" wishes. Should actually be quite ridiculous.

Ennio Morricone -- "A Silhouette of Doom"