green rooms are never green

so apparently the word on the street is that i am a national winner in the newsong contest. it was a big huge kickass show and there was lots of wonderful talent there from all over this country. and i got to see some west virginia and dispel more stereotypes but create new ones. fun drenched song festival with people filling the streets that all either played guitar or djembe.. i don't think you were even allowed in if you didn't play one or the other.
here are a couple shots:
www.danielleemusic.com/gallery_image_view.cfm?id=73
www.danielleemusic.com/gallery_image_view.cfm?id=74

and i am completely through with my new album. fini. it will be a couple weeks till we have em. the preorders are up n good to go. i will write more about it soon.
i feel magnetically good.
nite.

From 3:48 AM

ole JC, Mraz's pop diarrhea, and other notes

Hmm.. so the question is, would there ever be a reason to get on the dulles greenway, and actually go west of us, and pay a toll the size of a value meal to go in the direction of west virginia? why yes scooter, there actually is.
the reason would be to hop on over to john carroll's house, a local legend to this area, and have him play incredible parts on the rhodes and the hammond organ on my new album. whilst passing by the downstairs restroom, i noticed the chosen locale for the guy's two grammies: they were on top of his toilet! man i knew i could relate to this guy, but now i'm even more sure of it..
anyway i loved the pristine but scatterbrained yet totally dependant upon the motivation of the moment... way that he put things down. it made me feel much better about the way that i work.
here's a shot:
www.danielleemusic.com/gallery_image_view.cfm?id=72

in other news, what is with the new mrazzy piece of chunk? i have recordings of this dude from back in the day that are bad quality boots of just him in a club with a guitar and toca, with crowd noise all over it, and they are pretty much universally inspiring to everyone i've ever played them for. the guy had such a unique amazing voice, such a poignant place in the songwriter landscape, and now it is all for nill because the devil sold him a wet mushy ticket he pulled out of his ass.
this album half sounds half like i'm supposed to be listening to a broadway soundtrack, except keep the bad production and take out the plot leading the lyrics along, and half like some dim witted white guy trying to profess how big his balls are gangsta style when indeed he has absolutely nothing to say. i've heard school choir concerts that sound better than this.. oh but wait! he actually has a school choir held captive in a gym somewhere in suburbia singing along on a song. oh my, how hip and edgy- you really pushed the envelope on that one, jason, i'll go ahead and call pink floyd and tell them they've been outdone in big ensemble recording notions.

on the other hand i did find something that is completely inspiring. the new live guster DVD is nothing but a perfect depiction of how a masterful band has had a diverse, quirky, very musical, and long career of great songs performed with perfect subtlety. i love this DVD. it is funny, well documented, well shot, and does not get boring for a second. and i'm quite sure i could lose cool points on this post because i'm glorifying a band that isn't exactly sitting pretty on the indiecool radar. 'oh man, you like guster? shouldn't they be playing in a tent somewhere with congas and acoustic guitars while i sit in some hip cafe updating my myspace profile to include 2 more paragraphs of indie bands that i don't actually listen to but put there just to make me look badass because i know SO MANY BANDS THAT YOU'VE NEVER HEARD OF...' buzz off asshole, guster actually has a clue what it means to make a succinct glorious 3 and a half minute pop song that will not only move you but stick in your head all day. this is far greater a task than the recent efforts of bestsellers that crowd our stores like coldplay and their very own idols, radiohead, etc, all whose struggle of getting the mag reviewers' noses out of their bungs would be like lindsey lohan going for a jog in central park while running free from deranged photographers just dying to click and shoot her starved ethiopian looking skelator arms. anyway, get the guster dvd, and praise bands for their quality work and not a nazi vow of loyalty because of their street cred.

From 5:25 PM

times are tough for old computer components

ok ok so there are competing images set in mid smash from the smashfest, so i thought that i would put my own. it was really a very nice affair, and it was interesting to me how the boys had to kind of get the icebreaking started and show that it was ok to give components of electronic hardware the smashing that they deserved, and then the gals came upon the scene. and i must say that the female rage that ensued soonafter by far ousted the gentlemen's display..
www.danielleemusic.com/gallery_image_view.cfm?id=70
www.danielleemusic.com/gallery_image_view.cfm?id=71

From 3:47 PM

shakin out the melodies

on random blue moon nights when we are feeling it, j-bird and i sometimes go to this one 7-11 that has this drink called Boo-Koo. it is not to be taken lightly. oh no. it weighs like more than my head and it proports to being 3 energy drinks in one. it will keep you up for about 24 hours, and it turns you into rabid drooling obsessive shaky animal-boy spitting out physics equations and trying to do 10 things at once. so yester-..sometime (i don't really know what a day is too much at this point) i had that all going in my system and i had my pen to the paper doing the finishing of writing all these orchestrations. and i have to say, i heard so much hugeness in my own head. the music theory was just vibrant and before me, and my head was really wrapped around the way it all worked, like the way that music is math, and you have to write these things in different clefs and every measure is so very labour-intensive if you actually want to make the parts interesting and not just tired thirds. anyway, when it was 5 something am and i didn't even know my own name anymore i was finally thru and we made a late nite run to kinko's to copy all these pages of music for the four string guys.
got 3 hours sleep, and woke up today and they all arrived to record down in our basement. these unassuming classical guys all just took their stuff out, barely threatened by my handwritten staffs before them, barely even looking at them, really, while jon and i scurried around them wiring everything this way and that and miking up the room with a hundred cords. then they started playing it. you know those times when you just can't wipe the grin off your face if you tried? these guys were amazing- the parts i wrote were REALLY hard, i mean arpeggiations everywhere, accidentals and 7th's all over the place, and they just got it- like pretty much all the notes first take and then second take with conviction and keepworthy quality. for each song we recorded all 4 of them thrice, so that we have basically a 12-person string ensemble for each tune. i can't wait to mix it.
pix:
www.danielleemusic.com/gallery_image_view.cfm?id=67
www.danielleemusic.com/gallery_image_view.cfm?id=68
www.danielleemusic.com/gallery_image_view.cfm?id=69

tomorrow will be a grand day because i am going sailing, and then i'm gonna see the completely enthralling ray lamontagne at the 9:30 club. and that, my friends, is inspiration.

summer's almost over, again... -david mead

From 1:38 AM

boo-koo

tonight out of the murky wet grey nast of weeknight downtown dc there came quite a few people to see me play at a damn cool club right around the corner from the 9:30 club called dc-9. and it was one of those nights where even tho there were many flaws as there always are in my own head to what i'm doing, there was something else, another element of connection and emotion that just sort of rises up and makes me not even care a bit, to leave every moment behind and be at peace and just play however i want with perfect abandon. and i believe if this was not all because of the audience that was gathered there, then whatever percent of that feeling left would be because of the wonderful sound at that place. and i tried a lot of new material. i am still feeling it all out.

www.danielleemusic.com/gallery_image_view.cfm?id=65
www.danielleemusic.com/gallery_image_view.cfm?id=66

jon and i have been late-nite madmen who record and take middle-of-the-night trips to shoppers where i can buy chocolate soymilk and meat forbidden by more than a couple world religions. i feel as though i am at exactly the place and time i am supposed to be in order to just realize this music and let it exist, like it is allpurposeful and the baggy eyes and disconnect will all have paid off, and then i can not only return to a more easygoing state of existance, but i can then venture much more as i've been wanting to in my shows, with these songs to fully flesh out live. later this week is the studio mayhem in the aforementioned post, but on saturday is the college perk 8:13 fest, in which i play at 7:26. it'll be a great event bc there will also be a collective yard sale and smash-fest, where there will be a bunch of inoperant hardware and hopefully an old crappy car, and you can like take mallets and beat the sh*t out of stuff.

i have two really good guy friends who just recently got engaged. i wish all four of the parties involved the best step forward in family history they could ever dream of. and i'll even paint their picket fence. i can't believe how many of those rocks must get sold in this country, those, waddya call em, diamonds. i'd like one of those statistics like you usually hear from mcdonald's or something where the things line all the way to the moon and back or some shist like that.

i am waay too delirious to be posting right now. and not in that good prince way. and to all a good nite.

From 3:22 AM

an informational

anyone who's known me for a long time knows that when i get into the time period when i'm really into the innerworkings of making an album, i kind of drop off the face of the planet a bit. in the words of the huge lurking barbarian coach at dixie basketball camp, "EXCUSES NOT ACCEPTED!!" but must say that if you thought i suddenly had some sort of hypochondriactic aversion to the cellphone or some hand-leperosy inability to type.. that is not the case; i just ... get a little lost in my process. yes i know this is bad.
so i've been in the final stages of recording a more stripped-down album where i am trying to realize, amid the modern day soundbyte insta-attentive explosion, the value and power of space in music. most of these tunes are recorded as me and the guitar merely backed up with just a hammond organ, or a string quartet, or 3 oboe parts, etc. it's been pretty cool trying to orchestrate all the parts and line it all up in a way that is interesting and soulful. i took a brief secludy trip down to the atl where i burrowed myself up in my friend bob's attic to write and do my work and hear the inside of my head. and i went on over to ryan macdougal's studio where we spent all our collective energy recording a tune. i am amazed at this creature, the way he puts his all into the creation of something potentially special, and how he is on opposite-time even moreso than myself. and his sweet gf katie just sat there patient and giving, like a housecat. anyway if anyone wants an extreme personal do-up of a recording experience in the 404 area, you should give this man your buisiness. and hear him sing..
rightafter i went on to charlotte and had the opening slot for a writer-hero of mine, david mead. sweet quirky redhead fellow with an angelic voice and great songs.. i would say that my personal award for the most perfect and brilliant album that lies totally off the radar goes to his debut, 'the luxury of time'. if you can pick this one up i can pretty much promise you that you won't be disappointed.
let's see... i've also been doing some production work, where my roomie jon is engineering out of our basement and i am sort of adding instruments and sounds and production stuff to songs of a client. and i got some studio work singing on someone else's recordings at a studio in vienna, and that was good fun- got to use my whole range.
next week i'll be bringing in the string quartet and also we'll be hopping on over to jon carroll's house for some keys- wurlitzer, organ, etc. he's sort of a local hero a la d.c. area, who's played on like everything. he is the man. and not in that corporate way.

the cd release party for this disc will be the last strathmore date, SEPT. 28. i would love it if you put it on your calender.
sentance~
d

From 3:42 PM

D's Journal