AV About

UPDATE 12/20/09

Up until late 2006, I was a hardcore 4-tracker; I stubbornly recorded all of my songs onto an old-school 4-track cassette machine, well after Pro Tools and other digital recording options became available and even affordable to regular people at home. Perhaps I am a luddite at heart. But I do know that the severe limitations and beautiful simplicity of 4-track recording forced a certain resourcefulness out of me that I was reluctant to sacrifice.

Of course, once I jumped into digital recording with both feet, I realized that it was just another tool, like the 4-track, and that, ultimately, the quality of your ideas is what counts in the end. Unlimited tracks, pitch-correction plug-ins and quantizing software aren't going to make bad ideas good. By the same token, a lo-fidelity recording can't stop a great idea.

All the songs on this site (about 400 altogether) are broken down into year-by-year pages. As you will see, some years saw more prolific output than others. That said, this website is by no means a complete archive -- I've made many, many other recordings that I decided to leave off, for one reason or another. But who knows, maybe some of them will leap out at me at a later date?

Making these songs available for public consumption is really fun and exciting, but believe me, none of this stuff was recorded with the intention of any kind of official release; there's plenty of out-of-tune singing, loose playing, sloppy recording, and not-quite-fully-baked ideas. When I write a song, I record it as I'm writing it, which means that most of the parts are being sung or played for the first time as the tape is rolling -- the stuff hasn't been rehearsed, tweaked or fine-tuned at all. The object is to get the idea down before it evaporates.

There are early 4-track versions of many songs that later got recorded "properly" for pOp*stAr*kiDs and BLACK SUGAR TRANSMISSION (my two main band projects) here, in all their gawky innocence.

They sound rough but honestly I like most of these recordings the way they are. There are special moments and sounds that I could never re-create -- and lordy knows, you can never reproduce the sound of fresh inspiration, right?

Huge gratitude to Dan Karkos, this site's designer. The whole thing was his idea to begin with and he did a really inspired job of it.

THE DIGITAL ERA

Since my 4-tracking years officially ended in late 2006, Dan and I have added a new section to this archive called The Digital Era, which basically represents all of the non-album material I have recorded under the BLACK SUGAR TRANSMISSION umbrella. This period begins at the tail-end of '06, when I finally broke down and got a pro digital recording rig and started recording my songs "properly." For the most part the songs we include here are non-album tracks (go to the LINKS page to find out how to get the two official BST releases on CD Baby and itunes. That's where all the A-list stuff is!).

There are, however, some early drafts of album cuts like "Miserylou", "Use It", "Slide", "Runnin' Like a Dog", etc, which I include because some of them started out with different arrangements, vocals, guitar solos and so on. For instance, the original version of "Viva" is sung entirely by me (in the final version, we replaced my lead vocals with Devlin's) and its original guitar solo was one of Vernon Reid's out-takes from the "Use It" sessions! So there are some interesting things to hear.

The main reason why I include this stuff is to illustrate the main difference between writing/recording on tape and working on a computer: in the 4-track days, if a song didn't come together on the first try, I would generally throw it out. In digital, however, I can make major changes to a song's arrangement without having to start over from scratch. Example: the original idea for "I Dare You" had kick-ass verses but the chorus wasn't working. So I simply deleted the chorus and flew a new one in there. Some of these songs underwent several major reworkings before they came to life.

Another big creative advantage to working in digital is the ability to build song ideas almost entirely in the computer by programming drum and synthesizer ideas. For a guy who pretty much always wrote songs with a guitar in his hands, this was really freeing, and pulled me out of some creative habits. Many of my best new songs came about in this way ("Don't Give Up On Giving In", "Nine Butterflies", "Rally 'Round the Queen" and many more).

In the digital audio realm, there is unlimited tracking, infinite editing potential and a world of sounds in VST instruments and effects plug-ins. Which has allowed me to sculpt and hone and poke and prod at some of these songs for days on end until they sounded absolutely ultimate. If you'll pardon the expression, I've been like a pig in sh*t! I don't miss the 4-track one bit.

I want to make a small point here: I am not above using studio trickery of any kind to get a desired effect. However I do NOT auto-tune my vocals. For the record.

For several months, while I was learning how to get around in Cubase, I re-recorded a lot of older songs, so I could just focus on accelerating my learning curve rather than worry about song writing. This is why you'll hear souped-up versions of songs that already appear on this website in 4-track form ("Animal Wars", "Hotter Than the Sun", "Scream Angel, Scream", etc). Then, once I felt confident in my technical skills, I started writing new stuff. This is where songs like "Nine Butterflies", "The Burning Wreck of Love" and "Slide" came in. The cream of this crop ended up on the first BLACK SUGAR TRANSMISSION CD, which I put out in fall of 2007.

Of course there are some covers, too, for good measure.

Hope you enjoy the music -- it's absolutely some of the best I've ever made.

Now, hit that PLAY button.

andee

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