Tim! Where ya been?

It's been quite a long time since I made a post here, so I guess it's just about time for an update.

Let's see. What have I been up to since this last spring, which was my last post? Well, quite a bit actually. Over the summer, we celebrated Gwen's first birthday. She got a ton of presents and was rightly and duly fawned over by all. Then we lost our babysitter, which kind of forced me into a new schedule at work. I now work nights, which sucks because I hardly get to see my wife at all on weekdays now. But it works out in the long run, because I get to spend the days with Gwen and spend a lot more quality time with her. Plus we don't have to pay for a babysitter.


In August, we went to Pennsic XXXVIII, which was a great time! Gwen even took her first unassisted steps in our tent there! The SCA geek in me was so proud! The war was a great time and I picked up a new instrument to learn. I am now teaching myself to play the mandolin. While at Pennsic I managed to teach myself one Scottish tune and played it for a small group of people around a campfire one night. They clapped! (I'm sure the applause was because I stopped! LOL)

On the homefront, I've been working hard on my recording and mixing skills. It's a great deal of fun for me and is proving to be quite challenging.

I recently finished a complete re-record of my first original tune from 21 years ago, "Cold and Lonely Nights." I wrote the tune waaayy back in 1988. (That's the previous century for you young-uns.) I was an 18 year old kid who had been dumped a few months prior and wasn't dealing with it too well. It was a dreary autumn night and I was coming home after working late at the West Chester, OH McD's. Walking from my car to the house I looked up at the grey clouds drifting about and the rather melodramatic phrase, "I looked through the gloom and despair of the night..." popped into my head.

I rushed in, picked up my guitar and started writing. I hammered out the chord progression and wrote the lyrics in about three hours. That next band practice, I showed it to the other guys in Sweet Cheetah and the song was basically finished. It didn't feel polished yet, but I was sure it would get there over time.

SC broke up a few months after that and I took my song with me to my next band. And the next. And the next. And...well, basically every band I've ever been in since then. It was almost always one of the first songs we put on our "Originals" set lists since it was basically completed without any effort. I'd show everyone the chords, setup a mic in front of me for the lead vocals and Boom! off we'd go! Then we would move onto writing new stuff and adding covers to fill out a set. Just about the time we got to the point of being able to go back and do some more intensive work on the originals, we'd break up. Repeat ad nauseum. Then I took about a 10 year break from bands and the whole deal.

So basically, this song has been in an unfinished state (in my mind) for over two decades!! Lots of guys have come to know it only in this state. So hearing me call it unfinished now, to them, may seem odd. But I finally got to the point where I have enough gear of my own and the state of home recording software has grown to the point that it is easy enough to have a full pro level studio in a bedroom. I decided to set out on my own to finish the song and try to make it sound like a polished track and not a garage band jamming.

(Apologies to my Facebook friends who are probably sick of seeing me post about this song already!!)
You can hear the end result here at my ReverbNation Artist page. If you're interested, a boombox recording of the original version is on my older Soundclick page (listed and "Cold and Lonely Nights - Original Version)

I'm a true glory hound, so please feel free to leave some comments and tell me what you think of my work.