Goodbye 2020…
A year few anticipated that presented everyone with struggles and challenges to overcome and get through. Despite the many loses and challenges the year presented, it’s also been a year of resilience and hope. On many fronts people pulled together to do what’s best for others as well as themselves and I have every confidence we will turn several corners in the coming year and come out better as a result.
For myself, 2020 was an unexpectedly productive year. I had been working on the book, Bad Blood: A Life Without Consequence, throughout most of 2019 and “thought” it was finished at the end of that year. A chance conversation around the start of the year crystalized a couple of nagging thoughts and suspicions, leading to a different ending for the book. While going through the process of editing the final version and the world suddenly shutting down at the beginning of March, I found myself in the studio a LOT. What came out of these sessions were very different from the previous work I had been doing. I had envisioned moving into a full-on electronic dance album, but instead some very introspective compositions materialized. I found myself bringing in strings, acoustic guitar and other instruments not normally utilized in the previous releases.
GRAY/SCALE just seemed to materialize out of nowhere, but I didn’t realize until after a very fast digital release, that it was also the bedrock and foundation for what came next: Bad Blood, the album. As we waited for the various guest editors to get back to us with notes, we realized the best option for releasing the book was crowdsourcing. After a LOT of research, we went with Kickstarter. Creating the campaign, it occurred to me “a song” might be appropriate to go with the campaign. But with that song, “Bad Blood (The Ballad of a Bad Man)”, a theme emerged. I realized that several songs written over the period of timeline covered in the book were about or were a response to the events in the book. Before I knew it a curated listening / soundtrack album emerged. Along with that, creating a few videos turned into a quest to make a video for each song on the Bad Blood album as well.
I wanted to utilize every tool at my disposal (the written word, music, video, graphics) to tell and explain the narrative of Bad Blood to its very fullest. Every aspect of the project was under my creative umbrella. January 1 will see the release of the book and album on Amazon and all major digital platforms.
The book and project were a cathartic exorcism of ghosts and lies. Many of them looming much larger and longer than was actually warranted. Perhaps had the world not closed in on itself when it did things wouldn’t have come together as they eventually did?
Wishing everyone a healthy, happy and prosperous new year!!!
