I realize that it has been a very long time since I have
spewed my stream of consciousness out onto this blog. I assure you that this is not because I have
been hiding from the world of music. To
the contrary, my plan to write a song every couple of weeks worked out
brilliantly and I can now say that I have a rough draft of the entire new album
complete. At this time, I am putting the
finishing touches on the lyrics and plan to record vocals over my silly guide
vocals starting this week. I am pretty
pleased about this, especially because I nearly lost my entire studio (and
house) last week.
A week ago on Friday I was lying in bed watching TV when a
bright light and loud crack made me and my wife believe that house had just
exploded. We ran out of bed, to the
sounds of alarms blaring, screaming to our kids to make sure they were
alright. They were, and they came
running downstairs with equal looks of shock on their face. Then we smelled the smoke coming from the
studio. It turns out that lightning had
hit two 150 foot tall pine trees 10 feet outside of our bedroom window. The bolt traveled down the trees, through the
roots, and connected with our cable TV lines.
These lines heated to the point of setting the insulation in the walls
of the studio on fire. After calling 911
and getting everyone out of the house (as well as my studio hard drives) the
Fire Department arrived and tore out a wall in the studio, putting out the
fire. Thanks to their quick work, the
house did not catch fire. However,
nearly every electronic device in the house was fried, with the exception of my
studio. Somehow, the lightning had
destroyed nearly every surge suppressor in the house except the ones in the
studio. We lost TV’s, computers, audio
equipment, phones, furnaces, and much more.
But somehow, the studio equipment and hard drives were fully
intact. Insurance will cover most of the
damage, but could not have replaced the several weeks worth of work I had done
recording since my last off-site backup.
Lesson learned . . backup to an external drive every day!!
On another note, Jay Rowland and I decided to take our
writing in a different direction. NOS
will continue to be written and performed by me alone. However, we are writing from scratch together
for an as yet unnamed prog metal duo.
More to come about this in the near future.
Anyway (they say she comes on a pale horse), the album seems
to be structured like this: brief intro,
rockin’ 5 minute proggy song, 12-minute prog metal piece, short classical
guitar interlude, 12-minute prog metal piece, 22 minute progressive rock epic,
7-minute remake of a prog favorite. Hope
that clears things up!
More to come, sooner than last time (I hope)!
Craig
Sounds so good that you saved your life and your Family !
ReplyDeleteEverything else is not worth that much. Although I'm happy to hear that you saved your hard drives, too.
I'm very excited to hear the next level of NOS.
And also the prog work with Jay Rowland -
can't await it.
All the best for you, your incredible work, your family, friends and your inspiring mind.
Thomas Nathan.
Thanks Thomas! Very true, I feel very fortunate about how things turned out.
ReplyDeleteTake care!