Cruel Summer

I certainly have been very neglectful of my blogs recently, but work and life sometimes just have to override all else. It was just this time last year that I unveiled a project, which I called "About a Girl," which involved my recording 14 songs in 14 days, alone, all written (or co-written) by female songwriters. I had various reasons for doing this, and it was a huge challenge. Just selecting the material was tough, and then there was trying to work out interesting approaches to each song, and then finding a way to execute them, all under self-imposed time pressure. It was a real journey of discovery, and a year later, I'm still very pleased with the result, despite the fact that some of it sounds sloppy and ragged in places. I feel as though I've learned more about how to record effectively with my primitive set-up (GarageBand for iPad), and that the things I do today sound better.

Anyway, at the time, a close friend urged me to continue with the project, make it open-ended, and try to build a live performance around it. I didn't follow his advice (perhaps I should have), but went on to record other things, though I have played some songs from that project live. Now, a year later, and in the same late summer doldrums which inspired the first project, I have resumed the quest, albeit without the self-imposed deadline or any other constraints. I'm just trying to discover interesting material and find a unique way to present it, as and when. I have plenty of interesting stuff on my list of to-do's. Here's what I've done so far.