Back from xmas break. Had a brief trip upstate to visit family and friends. Heavy weather driving both ways. Great to see everyone and glad the everyone is doing well. My dad got eye surgery and for the first time in my life doesn’t need to wear glasses anymore. Discovered the Hamburg Brew Pub.
The new year is off to a cold and snowy start. Last night we had a foot of snow, canceling my band practice. Both the kids had no school today, extending our xmas break. Took a good hour and change to shovel out, even with Lizzy’s help. Luckily the snowblower started right up after not being used for almost a year.
I’ve been updating the music section of my web site at zingman.com/music. I’ve added a link for The Relix, and added links to the new tracks on the Buzzy Third page, Is It Safe to Go Outside? and Black Swan, which prettty much bring me up to an album side. I changed the working title of the third Buzzy Tonic record to Elixr. It’s an anagram of Relix and also a play on the whole Buzzy Tonic theme.
I also came up with a logo, which makes a much better place holder for the eventual album cover than what I had before. This particular task has been on my todo list for a whole year; indeed made a sketch last xmas vacation. Constructing something like this in the computer is extremely tedious for me, so instead I drew it by hand and traced over in sharpie to get the right combination of precision and looseness. This is a technique I used a lot in college when I was studying design and architecture. Then I scanned it and played around with filters in photoshop until I caem up with something I liked. It’s been a long time since I used photoshop this way. I was able to achieve a rich look buy building up lots of layers of effects with varying transparency, a lot you’d build up layers using paint.
Even though I like how it turned out the colors don’t particularly match what I had going on the BZ3 page. Like I said it’s a placeholder for the eventual album cover, so I’ll continue to play with it. Meanwhile enjoy!
