I’m now in the middle of three studio recording projects. First on the stack is the next Buzzy Tonic album and the follow-up to Bluezebub. It’s working title is BZVR, and is more of a rock album, with all the songs so far including and electric guitar part. I had three songs mostly complete before I decided to make Bluezebub as an instrumental jazz record, so now I’ve dusted them off.
One is The Story Lies, written by my brother Martin, a cool uptempo funky number. Second is Who Speaks on Your Behalf, a prog-pop anthem by The Cheshire Cat from Buffalo back in the day, reinterpreted with a horn section. I had this one in the can, but when I listened back I decided it needed a heavier sound. So I added a guitar part, mostly big sustained power chords to give it some fill, or syncopated rhythm accents behind the riffs, which are handled by saxes and synths. Third was Why Not Zed? which already had a pretty heavy guitar, and a sort of metal-industrial vibe, but the sax sounded a bit thin. So I doubled the tenor part on bari and octave down and replaced the tenor solo with a bari solo. Just the thing!
That was back in late winter. Then I began work on the three new songs, all short, singer-songwriter style songs written on guitar. The first of these was Slope. It began life as a jazz song with my pre-pandemic group Haven Street, written by our bass player Jay, and appeared on our record. I wrote a lyric for it, but I’ve never been much of a fan of vocalese, unless it’s Ella Fitzgerald. So I changed it from a jazz style into a blues. The arrangement is fairly sparse, with just a single vocal, guitar, bass and drum. I’ll probably add a bit of fender rhodes and organ, and a bit of sax. Possibly also some real drums doing brushes on the snare, since I don’t have a good sample for that.
Second is My Ol’ Brokedown Truck. This is pretty much a traditional country song, although with different lyrics and chord voicings it might be something like a jazz standard from the great American songbook. I wrote it around Christmastime, when I was visiting my parents and my Mum asked me to explain Nashville notation. I did by way of demonstration and came up with the beginnings of this song. I like the chords and lyrics enough to finish it, and it came out quite good. I now have the basic track recorded, with guitar, bass drums and vocal. The vocal has a low and high harmony part, and decided it’d sound better with a female voice doing the high harmony. I asked my sister-in-law Mary, who has been in a number of singing groups over the years, if she’d like to the part. Now we’re trying to set up a time.
Third is All of the Above, which is a rock song with a uptempo fell, and lots of little changes in time signature, basically going from 4/4 to 6/4, but more easily expressed as 2/4 throughout. I have the guitar and bass tracked, and a basic drum part, and have been trying to find the time to lay down the vocals. But things have gotten busy …
I was listening back to my earlier Buzzy Tonic record Elixr for comparison. This was the last one before Bluezebub, and again more of a rock record with lyrics. It took me about eight years to write and record it. My friend Jay helped me mix and master it, and at the time it was a big step forward for me in terms of musical production. But my mixing chops have improved substantially over the last few years and there are a few things I don’t like about the sound of that record. So decided to remix and remaster it. And I must say I’m quite happy with the result. I don’t think I’ll get new CD’s printed up but I’ll probably replace the existing record on Spotify. I’m almost done; just tweaking the time between songs and a final listening back on different stereos.
But then along came an opportunity for a gig with my Thursday Jazz and Funk Group. The group has been getting more and more solid, and none of us has played out since before the pandemic, so we’re all pretty excited. A few weeks ago I bought a portable digital recorder and started recording our rehearsals. To give bar owners an idea of our sound, I put together a few some clips of songs from our last rehearsal. You can hear it at:
https://zingman.com/music/mp3/jazzfunkgroup/jazzfunkjam220421.mp3
Enjoy!