Time travel is the new driving.

Stopping time and buying more however, is simply not an option at this point. The proverbial hourglass has been tipped and the great race to the finish has begun. This is one project I might actually finally finish...IN NINE DAYS.

A little history on James Lanman Projects:

When I was 14 I tried to build a life-sized helicopter out of wood, I set out to learn five languages on my own, and even once tried to make medieval chain mail for Halloween...okay that was last Halloween.

Every single one of those projects failed miserably: the wooden helicopter (ended up adding just the right amount of heat to that barbecue we had), learning foreign languages? (The universal language of 'charades mixed with beer' is far more efficient than speaking other languages) and the chain mail…let's just say I was one blow torch short of blacksmith (and yes, that doesn't even make sense).


Here's my point: Setting a deadline, in stone, means sticking to it and I intend to finish this album 'put down my pencil' so to speak in 9 days so that I have enough time to put the CD on itunes and across the digital universe. The goal was to have everything finished one year after I started in December 2006 when I graduated from school.
Make no mistake! This has been a HUGE project. Not only am I doing literally everything by myself but the tools I am using to compose, record, mix, sequence etc are sub par at best. Someone actually laughed in my face when they heard what version of pro tools I was using. Even the page background is done by me!
But I'm not really complaining, just making you appreciate where this music is coming from...a little apartment in Seattle off of a dining room table in the corner of a room...a bathroom in London on a rainy day...a large communal house in Berkeley, California. I'm still Jimmy from the block. First I had a little, now I STILL have a little.
But I like the way my keyboard delicately holds the microphone I've anchored with a stack of CD's over the amplifier where I let my less than perfect guitar skills frolic in the fields of distortion. I like the way my old Mbox is held together with duct tape (as my friend Bobby always eloquently put it, "If you can't fix it with duct tape than that shit is BROKE.") I am lucky to have anything to make music with at all! I think its part of the appeal of my music...its stuff you could maybe hear on radios but it has the rawness of a garage band. In the end, it is music untamed.
It's the closest thing you will hear to putting a stethoscope to my skull and listening to the little world inside. It sounds like life (and melting ice cream).

Yeah, there are days when I wish there were a team of people on call who I could ask how to do things, or even doing them for me like writing the songs and just calling me in to sing, but honestly at the end of the day who can really say they did it all on their own? I made this product start to finish, a year in the making, and that feels pretty damn good.

THAT is why I have to stick to this deadline even though I am brimming with ideas. The ideas that didn't make it onto this album will have to wait till the next album comes out and I have to somehow find the patience to wait till then. In the next nine days I have to finish the last project(maybe two) I am working on, go back and make sure ALL of the songs are as good as I can get them sounding, then begin the process of placing them in the digital and physical marketplace as well as manufacturing them.

I'm not planning on becoming "the next big thing" with this album...that's not really important right now. It's a personal victory for me, I finished a project, wrestled against my own nature and this was the result. My first album. Planning on making a ton of money on this album? No. I hope people buy it because they like it and show it to everyone but I really just want to make enough so that I can put a deposit down on my own place, not be sleeping on a couch and not have to get a waiter job the second I get down to L.A. If I achieve that...I have won.

So there it is: New song, new blog, and deadline for finishing the album. November 18th...which gives me just enough time to do everything else involving putting it on itunes(I'll announce the actual date shortly) as well as planning tour dates down the West Coast(which will be announced in December). The profile pic is a representation of the natural time I should have been born in...while some would argue that it is not another time I belong in but another dimension, I will accept that as well.

Additionally: I am working on writing some music videos and more stories for the strip on the background...any ideas?