Awhile back, I started off remixing some of my ancient rejected songs to make them less sucky. I have the second installment of 2004-era songs finished:

• Five Minutes
  
• Dark Roads
  
• Parasite
  
• Zero to Phantom
  
• Texas
  

I bent the rules with Zero to Phantom because the lead vocal track on my backup was completely messed up, but everything else on these used the same raw tracks, just remixed. The instrumental mixes are also now available, up on my music page. Enjoy!

I first heard the news of the Haitian earthquake when I woke up this morning. I grabbed my guitar and a song spilled out. Here's what I wrote. This is just a rough guy-and-guitar demo (as is the video), but you get the idea.

If you enjoy it, please take the time to make a donation to Doctors Without Borders. It'd mean a lot to me, and it'd mean way more to those in need.

Motionless Land: (MP3, Lyrics, Share)

Hey everyone! I'm going to try something different in 2010. Every week, I'll be releasing a video of some sort. There'll be some acoustic performances of album tracks, some interesting covers, some behind-the-scenes studio footage, and videos from live shows. I'm also going to share my new songs this way, instead of the usual demo MP3s.

For my first installment, I wanted to share a brand new song I'm working on writing, called "Already There". It's not quite done yet, but that's the fun part of this format.

I should take this chance to invite you to subscribe to my YouTube channel, which is the main place I'll be posting these. You'll also be able to get to them on my Facebook page, which I'd be thrilled if you'd take the time to fan that up as well.

Enjoy, and let me know if there's anything you'd like to see me do with this project!

Seems like there's definitely a lot of interest in a remixed Only Whispering, so I'll probably tackle that soon. In the meantime, I'm working on giving touchups to some of stuff in the reject bin. As much as I'd love most of those songs to die a humane and peaceful death, they're still getting a lot of downloads and use in projects. So I'm tacking them in batches.

The first batch of 2004-era stuff is now online and ready for download:

• Across the Dusty Plains
• Fear is Free
• Gigolo
• Keep in Touch
• Upcoming Downtime
• Wrong Side of the Revolution

All of these will get instrumental mixes as well (one of the main reasons I wanted to do this). I'd say "enjoy", but that might be a little ambitious. How about: "may your ears no longer bleed" instead? :)

Thanks for all the great responses on the favorite album poll this week. It's really interesting to see the results. The winner of the moment seems to be "Only Whispering", which I never would have guessed!

That brings up another question for you guys. I wasn't planning on remixing that album, as I had done with Here Today and Crawford Street recently. The main reason is that I had that CD professionally pressed, and I still have hundreds of shrink-wrapped CDs up in my attic. But there have still been some quibbles that have annoyed me over the years, so I'm considering tackling it as a download-only remix - the MP3s free as always, and when you buy the old version on the CD, you get the new version on FLAC as well.

This one would be far less extensive than the last two - I'm mostly happy with the recording, I just want to fix a few bugs, make a few of the tracks a little less dry, and remove those super-annoying random clicks that my crappy old interface caused.

So what say you? Is this something you'd be interested in?

I'm just curious - for those of you who have heard all or most of my albums, which is your favorite?

With the new CD, I've decided to drop the Share-Alike clause from my license. My music is now all available as Creative Commons Attribution. This means you can use my music for anything, as long as you give credit for it. [More Info]

I'm extremely happy to announce that my 8th CD, "Breadcrumbs" is now available for free download. It's been a year and a half in the making, which is an epic amount of time for me. I'm insanely happy with how it turned out, and I hope you'll enjoy it, too. :)

My next CD is done! I need a little time to get the artwork set up, but the release date will be October 5th. There are 11 songs, including 3 brand new ones and several that have been massively overhauled since I released the demos. I think it's sounding pretty good. :) Stay tuned, I'll be launching a preorder soon.

Oh, and it's called "Breadcrumbs".

Much like I did with "Here Today" last year, I'm happy to announce that my second CD, "Crawford Street", has been remixed. You can download the updated version from here, or grab the ZIP file of the whole album directly.

Wow, I've been slacking on updates here! Sorry about that. As usual, I had a burst of songwriting energy during the long, cold Ohio winter and then suddenly lost my desire to pen myself up in the studio when the sun came back out.

That said, I've got a few more songs in the pipeline that will (hopefully) finish up the next album. They're all very odd, but I think they'll do a good job of the hard task of pulling a bunch of random songs into a semi-coherent album. I probably won't release them until the album comes out, so that there'll at least be few new things to chew on. :)

I always hate to give estimates, but I'm looking at probably September, give or take a month. I'm pretty excited about this one, and I'm even more excited to get working on my next project, which will be a big departure from my previous work. More to come on that later. :)

In the meantime, I have another little project that I'll be unleashing over the next couple weeks. Stay tuned!

Warning: gear geekiness follows.

Here's another new tune! This one is almost definitely the creepiest song I've ever written. I won't give it away, but I'm guessing after listening to it, nobody will be brave enough to tell me they didn't like it. ;-)

Under the Stairs: (MP3, Lyrics, Share)

I seem to be settling into a monthly groove for new songs. Progress is progress, I guess! Hey, that rhymed. Yay, I'm all set for April. :)

Anyway. Here's a new one called "Overthrown". It's been earworming me for weeks, so I guess that's a good sign. Here's hoping it ends up driving you nuts as well. :)

Overthrown: (MP3, Lyrics, Share)

I've been wanting to write a song about immigration for years, but I could never figure out how to tackle it. I finally got my thoughts down on paper and said exactly what I wanted to say. Enjoy.

Border Blaster: (MP3, Lyrics, Share)