WHERE ARE THEY COMING FROM?!

Inspiration is a funny thing. It either hits you in one fell swoop, or it ignores you for months. Sometimes you get so many ideas attacking you, that there aren’t enough hours in the day to jot them all down. Or you sit there hearing paint dry.

Fortunately I fall into the former camp.

With the nicer weather (I can wear shorts!), my mood elevates and therefore, the muse pays a visit. Riffs are tumbling out of my head and onto the guitar, which begs the question: “Where are they coming from?!” It’s not something that can easily be answered. It’s one of those “You have to be there” moments.

I have about 8-10 rough guitar-only demos. Thankfully, my Tascam DR-05 hand-held recorder is a savior. I also write things down on manuscript paper. True, I could easily get a program like Sibelius but I prefer to sketch things out. To me, writing music is art. Call me old-fashioned but I get a kick out of seeing all those notes zooming around the page, with funny little notations (thank you, Steve Vai) to keep myself amused.

The interesting thing about writing music is that you’re basically living in a vacuum. You isolate yourself from the world, get into this head space and forget life for a while. And then once you are done, you expect the rest of the world to like what you’ve created. I sit here in my corner of the basement, and whenever an idea hits me, I reach over and grab a guitar. Can’t ask for anything more convenient than that. (I wish I had a bigger space to work in but I guess that’s part of the “vacuum” vibe.)

Also, I dropped off some gear at Mike Sabatini’s studio because we will be gearing up for the July 9 show in Teaneck! The cover band is on a small hiatus so that affords me time to hammer the set list with Mike and Brian. Mike even opined that “we work well together” and expressed interest in doing the next album. That works for me! While I am in no rush at all to do any recording, it’s good to know that things are lining up. I won’t predict anything but if a new album can be squeaked out in 2023, it will be the first time in a LONG time that there won’t be such a long gap in between albums. You can’t/don’t rush art, so whenever the songs are ready to be recorded, they will present themselves.

That was, like, deep, man.