The Early - In Korea

Most of those who read this know that I’m in a band called The Early.  It’s a project that’s taken various forms, but has been part of my life for the past 8 years or so.  Today we’ve released a new track called ‘In Korea‘.  The song was born from a composition written by Alex Lewis on acoustic guitar, and grew into a recorded piece featuring drums, guitars, field recordings, a mutilated eBow track, and plenty of noise.  Everything but the field recordings were tracked and mixed here at Badlands. We’re quite proud of it and are happy to share it with everyone.  It’s our first release since The Liberty Sessions almost two years ago.

In just a few weeks from now, we’ll be putting out another batch of recordings, this time with our friend Holland Andrews of Like A Villain.  It’s a split tape release on local Portland label Friends For Life.  We’ll be playing a pair of release shows, with the first one at Valentines in downtown PDX.  Check out the Facebook event here.  In addition to us and Like A Villain, Team Evil will be playing, featuring our new friend Victor Nash.

I’ll have more to share from The Early in the coming weeks, but I couldn’t wait to post about what we’ve been working on.  Thanks for reading.

End of Summer Update

09.16.2011
Thumbnail image for End of Summer Update

It’s been a busy summer here in Portland.  Despite the abundant sunshine over the past few months, I’ve found myself spending a great deal of time inside the studio here at Badlands.  Even when temperatures crept into the 90′s and the studio air grew thick with heat, it wasn’t enough to keep me (along with [...]

A New Perspective On Lyrics

06.09.2011

For most of my life, I have never been able to remember song lyrics very well.  While I can sing along with many of my favorite songs, in general lyrics just don’t stick with me as they seem to with other people.  This is likely due to how I listen to music.  Growing up, as [...]

Big Ups to Small Gear Companies

05.16.2011
Hamptone

With all the great progress on building acoustic treatment for the Badlands recording studio, I decided that a serious gear upgrade was in order.  After researching all the different options, I decided that I could get really excellent equipment and keep costs down by ordering directly from the manufacturers.  This turned out to be great [...]

A new city and some new projects

04.25.2011
Thumbnail image for A new city and some new projects

After some serious deep thinking, a bunch of meetings, a hectic few weeks in LA, and a long rainy drive in a truck through California and Oregon, I’ve finally arrived in my new home in Portland, OR.  I’m sad to leave Los Angeles behind, but after being in PDX for only a week I can [...]

A Return to Guitar

02.16.2011
Thumbnail image for A Return to Guitar

It’s safe to say that most recording engineers are musicians.  Or at least were at some point.  How does one end up with a career devoted to documenting musical performances if not through their own experiences creating music?   I’m sure that there are some engineers out there with no musical background, but I’m sure [...]

Should I Work For Free?

01.27.2011
Thumbnail image for Should I Work For Free?

If you’re like most folks with a steady gig as a full-time employee, the answer to this question is pretty clear: “No way!”  You wake up early every morning, commute to work, spend 8 or so hours at the office/firm/agency/store, and you expect to be compensated fairly for your time and effort.  Pretty simple, right? [...]

Best Of 2010…

12.15.2010
Thumbnail image for Best Of 2010…

With Christmas coming up, that means New Years is right around the corner. Of course, this means every website, blog, Tumblr, Twitter feed, and online magazine will soon publish an onslaught of “Best ______ of 2010.” I usually love these things, especially the music ones since they provide an opportunity to discover some great albums [...]

Missing Nerdy Music Events

10.18.2010

CMJ and AES are both not in the cards this year, unfortunately.  But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been keeping up with what’s going down at these things.  If you find yourself in New York next week, here are a few of the things I’d be going to if I were in your shoes: Tuesday: [...]

New sessions, and a new site or: My Summer in Sound, part 1

10.11.2010

While I was letting digital dust collect on this here blog, I was actually keeping busy with plenty of other projects, musical and otherwise. The first is the integration of my old WordPress.com blog and my actual website. While before I had you jumping every which way between sites, now everything’s all under one roof, [...]