Birthday, Recording, Leafy Sea Dragons

On Sunday I flew to Boston, arrived at midnight, to find myself locked out of the place where I was sleeping. After an hour of feeling sorry for myself I finally got in. This was a bad way to start my birthday. Cold, hungry, tired, alone.

My birthday got a better start the next day when Sean Slade showed up with coffee and a cute engineer and we drove to Sean's house in rural Maine where we have been recording in his attic on an 8 track. In mono.

It sounds great! The limitations of our recording setup has become an integral part of the sound. Benny, the engineer plays drums, and Sean plays piano, sax, and bass clarinet!

In our first two days we've gotten a large chunk of the album done - or at least a good way towards done.

We are eating great food, and just working and working. We record from about 11am to 11pm, with just a few breaks for sanity and food. It's all very natural though, we're just here for music and all so focused. Sean and Benny are great to be around and I feel so very grateful to have this opportunity to work with them.

Sean has produced some wonderful music along his career, some of those albums have even been popular - Sean keeps all his gold records in his bathroom.



Now at the end of day two in the recording, I'm tired and full of music, but wanted to write and say: Thank you.

Thank you for reading this, for paying attention, for giving me feedback, for interacting, for contributing art/thoughts/money, for helping me do this impossible thing.

Because you are awesome, I present you with photos I took with my iphone at the Monterey Aquarium last week - if you can go, then go - it is WONDERFUL! I cried at the leafy sea dragon exhibit.





Nature blows my mind.

And this is me with a dollar pinned to my coat - in the New Orleans tradition of pinning money to the birthday girl.