How does one deal with inertia? It's easier if the climb is downhill.

finished getting posters sent for the "All the Lads & A Lady" tour w/@whoisjonblack, @MCDalton, @ryanhornemusic, and others...

Ah, spring break in Athens... when the adults take back the city for week!

Fantastic... efficiency is going through the roof!

trying ping.fm to update social networks... let's see what it does...

Well, it's official... looks like I won't be finishing my album for the RPM challenge. With a few songs left to finish, I awoke this morning with a purpose and focus not unlike a tightrope walker hovering hundreds of feet above the ground. Faced with a daunting task, I looked incredulously at myself in the mirror and said to my reflection, "Oh, are we gonna do this?!!" and my reflection nodded, "Yes."

I packed a lunch, walked out the door, and fired up the Mazda. "Bring it, RPM, bring it," I thought to myself.

As it turns out, RPM brought it. Today just wasn't the day I guess. The first road block was that I hadn't been out to our practice space (the site of most of these recordings) since we loaded in our gear after the Warm Fuzzies show Thursday at Tasty World. Seeing as it was 3 am at the time, I didn't really feel like setting up mics and re-routing my cables, so today I spent the first half hour of my afternoon plugging things back in and setting up microphones. Strike one.

Strike two came about an hour later when the band next door decided to show up at their rehearsal space. Now, I should say that I knew that recording at a practice space comes with certain inherent risks, as people are free to come and go and play as loudly as they please. I'd been working around that during this challenge, and most of the time, I've made adjustments so that the sound bleeding in from other rooms is either nonexistent or nonobtrusive on the track. Except when the band next door practices. I don't know if it's some weird proximity affect amplifying bass frequencies when they play or something, but the florescent light fixtures rattle and I cannot hear anything playing back in my headphones. They're swell guys, and I have no problem with them playing loud; heck, it's a practice space. But needless to say, this is not a good time to record vocals. Strike two.

Down but not yet out, I figured a change of venue might do the trick.  My office is a decent enough place to do some singing, and no one is there on the weekends, so I hurriedly packed up everything I'd need - mics, computer, cables, hard drive, etc. - and scorched some asphalt all the way over to my building. After circling the block a couple of times, I finally found a parking space close enough and rode the elevator up three floors to my own private vocal oasis. And indeed, it would have been great but for the fact that for some reason my hard drive would not (and still won't) boot up. I swapped cables, checked the power supply, restarted the computer a few thousand times, pushed the "power" button on the back of the drive, and nothing worked. No hard drive means no files to work on. And that was the curve ball that got me swinging on strike three.

And that leaves me here, sitting at the little round table in my office writing this blog instead of recording vocals. I'm not sure what's up with the drive, but I have a sneaking suspicion it will work on March 2nd, the day after the deadline. A couple of weekends ago, my G5 studio computer stopped working for about four days before miraculously coming back to life. This is just how things go sometimes, I guess.

So what I feel at this particular moment is a mixture of defeat, failure, exuberance, relief, frustration, and hunger (haven't eaten in a while). I don't think I could have worked on it much harder than I have, so I can't feel that bad about it. Especially since there is neither a reward nor penalty for completing the challenge. In fact, absolutely nothing is different.

But the larger issue (one that I won't get much into today) is more about where I tend to derive my own feelings of value and worth. I find it hard to fall short of any goal, and it doesn't really matter if doing so even affects my life or anyone in it. Nor does it really matter if anyone even knows I fell short. When I feel I have failed at something, I am quick to feel that by extension I am a failure.

This isn't the truth, of course, and I am learning this. I'll be excited to continue to work on this album, and now I get the chance to put it out as I'd really like to. I decided a little while back to call the record "All Things Subject To Change," and this part is just keeping to form.

Sure would have been nice to finish it, though.

So I've been recording this album for the last few weeks, and today I've finally posted the first song, a little tune I'm calling, "Seriously, Hartsfield?" This particular title is something I find myself asking repeatedly every time I have to check bags through Atlanta.

I've got a couple of days left to finish the album, and I'm going to be honest - this thing is all over the place. The more I do this, the more I have come to think that in my own artmaking/songwriting, I am more about ideas and concepts than anything else, and it's really showing here. Especially since I don't have time to do the things musicians normally do when recording an album - things like cleaning up the overt influences in my music, re-arranging things to make the whole thing cohesive, etc.

So this little song is kind of a happy pop song with a little Warm Fuzzies guitar thrown in there set to a loop off my little keyboard from RadioShack. It's rough, but I guess that's the point.

I should also note that this song was made possible by these folks:
Mark Tulk, who recorded organ @ Small House Records in Melbourne, Australia.
Kyle Heimann from the duo Popple, who recorded harmonica & ukele at his home studio in California.
Meg Abbott (who works in Artist Services here at Rebuilt) on the cowbell and tambourine
And of course, there's Mattox Shuler (formerly of the Warm Fuzzies, currently of the Bride), who thew down some serious glockenspiel.

More to come - hope you enjoy.
 - jason

February is a big month to be so short, particularly this year. On February 2nd, news reporters give groundhogs like Punxsutawney Phil in PA and General Beauregard Lee down here in the Atlanta area their annual fifteen seconds of fame while I become officially one year older. Sharing a birthday with large weather-predicting rodents isn't the worst thing, I guess, but I'd like to go ahead and say that if you're planning on asking me whether I saw my shadow or not, just know that you are MOST DEFINITELY NOT THE FIRST PERSON TO USE THAT JOKE. Okay, moving on...

This year is especially marquee in that this will be my 30th birthday, which is certainly a milestone. No longer bound by all the things you're "supposed to do" in your twenties, I will finally breathe a sigh of relief and experience the freedom of doing the things I need to do, or dare I say it, the things I want to do. Things like driving a minivan or admitting that I don't particularly like going to large music festivals with crowds of drunk people. Yeah, I'll be more honest and possibly more "old man-like" with my straight talk and black socks, but I'll also just still be the same old guy I've been for the previous 29 years. And I'll really only be one day older...

Maybe the anticipation of all this freedom is setting me up for disaster. A big fall. Embarrassment. Ridicule. Well, that wouldn't be all that different than my previous 29 years, either, would it? At any rate, I've decided to mark this milestone by recording an entire album during the month of February as part of the RPM Challenge. It's pretty simple - 10 songs or 35 minutes just for the sake of doing it. Yeah, this sounds exactly like what I imagine 30 year old me will be like - living on the edge and all.

So here's the deal, though; it's possible that I could do this on my own, but I imagine the 30 year old version of me is going to want some other folks involved. And that's (possibly) where you come in. This project is an excuse to put writing and recording music first for a month, but I'd also like to use it as an excuse to spend time with people that I really care about. People I may not get to see as much as I'd like. So if that's you - and you can make it to Athens sometime in February - I'd love to get you involved. I'm sure we'll find lots of places for handclaps and foot stomps and kazoo ensembles. And cowbell.

See, the process of recording can be too inclusive, too "mystical" and "magical," and though I kind of like the idea of treating the studio as a place where special things happen, recording is really more about the "magic" inside the folks making the sounds. Sure, the right environment can get set the right vibe, but it's up to the musicians to make something exciting. I certainly overuse this analogy, but recording is a lot like Punxsutawney Phil - you can predict the weather, but you can't make it rain. In other words, the conditions can be right, but it's up to the performers to make something happen.

And odds are, if you're going to record 10 songs from start to finish in a month on zero cash in the Warm Fuzzies' rehearsal space, the album is going to have some rough edges. Especially if I'm the one engineering it. But in honor my 30th birthday, I want to share something I care deeply about - making and recording music - with the people I care most about. And I hope we capture some real magic, if for no other reason than because I'm getting older and all seasons eventually come to an end.

Here is my overall outline of the project, something I'm currently calling "J. Harwell & the Alltogethernow:"
Purposes:
1. Satisfy the official requirement of recording 10 songs/35 minutes during the month of February.
2. To make the process of recording inclusive, and to share this process with people in my life who may or may not have recording experience.
3. To capture the process on video, and to update social media as I embark on the process
4. Return to the process of creating/capturing music in my own life and to improve in both areas.
5. To make music fun again.

Parameters:
1. I will utilize our Warm Fuzzies rehearsal space as my primary base of operations for this project. This allows me the freedom to leave instruments prepped to record and an unlimited amount of time/volume.
2. The rig will need also to be mobile, though, in the event that I need to record in spaces other than Pigpen due to geographical, noise level, or other reasons.
3. Songs must be completed between February 1st and February 28th
4. Nothing new will be purchased - I must use the instruments/sounds I have currently available.

We'll see how it goes...

It's no secret that I've been spending the bulk of my music creation time with The Warm Fuzzies, and it's no surprise that a large sonic influence on what we've done to this point has been the music of The Rentals.

Though I never would have thought that Matt Sharp would have been the one from Weezer to do something really artful and creative, their new photography/film/music project called Songs About Time is simply amazing. Great concept, great execution.

Simply put, they're documenting a year's time by posting a photo each day, a short film each week, and four EPs throughout the year. It's all black and white and visually amazing.

It's the kind of good that makes you mad that you weren't the one to pull it off.

check it out here.

Just a quick little article in the Red & Black, UGA's official student paper::

www.redandblack.com/media/storage/paper871/news/2009/01/14/Variety/Local.Band.Showcases.LightHearted.Songs.ToeTapping.Tunes-3585145.shtml" target="new">Click Here to read the article online