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| "I can see my house from here." |
Hi everyone, your wayward correspondent here, begging for forgiveness and mercy again.
So the single did what it was going to do, and the video Dan Andrews and Mike Allen did for it has gotten over 4000 views. Pretty good for no advertising, a little bit of radio (thanks Mike Marrone at The Loft) and scattershot shows. Basically, I'm really pleased with the calling-card nature of the thing, and I believe I reintroduced myself to the public in a positive light, even though "Don't Mention the War" is light as a battleship's anchor and as danceable as a funeral march. (And those are good things!)
That said, here we are in May 2018, and I'm getting ready to release a new album on July 25. I'm not at liberty to say who's releasing it presently, but I think you'll be very pleased when you find out. It's called Game Day, after the lead-off track.
Here's the trailer for the record.
I played almost every note on the record. I recorded and mixed it in my basement studio. I'm so far inside this record I'm breathing dryer lint. So any semblance of objectivity about it and its chances at being loved by the general populace is nil.
The best thing is I did the record all by myself (that may also be the worst thing I did), and it's absolutely the record I wanted to make. People will undoubtedly hear it and scratch their heads and say it sounds weird and eccentric, at least I hope so. I can't I'm a professional producer or engineer, and indeed, a lot of stuff went down on the album by necessity or lack of fundamental tools. I was not going to let those things or any ineptitude or lack of skill stop me from getting this done, so you're getting a shank of my mind and soul, trussed up to look like an album of songs.
After I sent it to the record company, I felt a little emptied out, having spent so many of my spare hours finishing the record up. But fortunately, I also have an impending move to a new place to live concurrent with the finishing of this project, so I'm not spending a whole lot of waking hours anxious about the record. It is what it was made to be, a representative batch of newer songs that I like best in my catalog. No more, no less.
I'm prepared for people to love Game Day; I'm also okay with people not loving it because it doesn't sound like records or bands I've been involved with before. In past instances, I've allowed the opinions of my work to twist my emotions into rattails, but this album is different: I own it all. Every note. Every flub. Every effect on every guitar. It's my pleasure, it's my fault. I feel completely at ease with it, something I've never felt with a record before.
Now that the record's done, I'm also rehearsing a new group, the Peter Holsapple Combo which features Will Rigby on drums and Glenn Richard Jones on Fender bass. You know Will, but you may not know Glenn--we've been playing together in the Well Respected Men for a few years now, and I admire his playing and singing so much I bullied him into playing bass in this combo. He acquiesced and has been an important leg of this musical furniture. We're playing songs from this album, a couple dB's and Continental Drifters songs and some choice covers. Everyone's sounding really good, and we're having a ton of fun playing together. I'm trying to be a good bossman, but I'm getting the songs to sound like they need to without being a creep about it. No mutinies yet, so I'm ahead of the game, I guess.
We have a couple dates booked in August which I'll more post about as they become reality.
Thanks so much for your forbearance with this blog. I'm trying hard to be a better self-promoter but, as we all know, I seem to have all the qualities of a superstar with the exception of ambition.
Love
PeterH
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