A friend offered to remaster my I’m On Fire cover.
This song needs it!
Among other things, for the original master, I made the mistake of listening to the final mix only on headphones. 🎧 And I made the original pretty darn echoey in an attempt to compensate for my very basic singing.
So I’m putting the stems (tracks) here for my friend (or anyone) to download and play with.
Stream the original mix.
A few months ago, I knocked off a bucket list item by recording a song with a friend who can sing.
The actual bucket list item was “Make a song that I can play in my car using Siri that I actually enjoy.” 😉 So I made sure to get it out on all the streaming sites.
I followed this up by taking a shot at singing and got that out to there too.
But the one streaming service I missed, and probably the most helpful as a musician, was SoundCloud. This site is a little more artist-oriented. You can upload songs instantly, give and get feedback, and basically do whatever you want without going through a distributor.
So here’s my new SoundCloud account.
I have a couple new songs in the works, but none good enough yet to post here even by show-your-work standards. When I do post something, it’ll go SoundCloud first.
Now that I finished up my first solo cover song, I wanted to get it out in the world. As Steve Jobs said, “Real artists ship.” I’ve been working on that mindset for a while now and trying to show my work along the way.
To get my song out there where it can be streamed anywhere – via Siri, on the HomePod, in the car – I needed to pick an “artist” name to use on all the streaming services. It’s always fun to pick a band name, but I had set a rule for myself from experience messing around fruitlessly with friends in the past: first the music, then the name. You have to earn the name.
So I decided to go with The Coastal Service. 🙌 It’s sort of a play on The Postal Service, an amazing band with one of my favorite albums ever. I am not a Postal Service tribute band; their name just inspired an idea.
“The Coastal Service” is meant to invoke a sense of mystery and fog and awe and danger. It’s about meeting the ocean: like life, it’s big and dangerous and beautiful and meant to be explored.
I also like the idea that this fictional “coastal service” is there to serve humanity and is broader and more secretive and than, say, the US Coast Guard. It’s somewhat inspired by a Wes Anderson vibe, especially Moonrise Kingdom.
I also played around with some sketches on the iPad just for fun.
So there you go: The Coastal Service is born.
I still don’t know if I’m a real artist, but I did ship. 🚢
Explosions in the Sky – an explosion of music 🤩 (no lyrics needed) @explosionsinthesky Artsy photo by @ktucci #acllive #explosionsinthesky #austin #texas #atx #concert #shotoniphone #portraitmode via Instagram https://instagr.am/p/C07TMCqOMRH/
Searching for some Thanksgiving inspiration, I came across this quote from Willie Nelson, who has been through a lot.
When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.
Willie Nelson
I like the idea that gratitude is not just a good idea but is also useful.
Yes, we should pause today, on Thanksgiving, (and heck, every day) to be grateful for the good things in our life. But even more than that, we should make something of it – make it useful.
Use your gratitude to show some love, some kindness, some appreciation to someone, to make the best of your situations and bring the best out of the people you know.
Funnily enough, I found a similar idea from from Neal A. Maxwell, a Mormon scholar and educator.
We should certainly count our blessings, but we should also make our blessings count.
Neal A. Maxwell
I don’t know much about the Mormon Church, but this dude seems bright and extremely accomplished across many areas, as well as being noted as a talented writer and speaker.
I’m going to file Mr. Maxwell away along with Timothy Leary as someone I wouldn’t naturally be drawn to but who seems to have some good ideas.
Mental Break Town 