I'll be joining my friend Charlie Gaylord for the entire hour on Greetings From Area Code 207 this Wednesday, November 5.

The show airs Wednesday at 8 PM and again Sunday at 9 AM on WBLM 102.9 FM if you're in northern New England. Otherwise, listen live at wblm.com.

Tune in!

hi folks!

i'll be speaking on the panel "Artist X: The D.I.Y. Route" at this year's CMJ music marathon this Friday, October 24 at 12:30 PM. If you're registered at CMJ, come check it out!

http://www.cmj.com/marathon/panel_show-template.php?panel_id=8

If you're not, but you're in the city, holler at me, let's go hang out in my old Brooklyn stomping grounds... Greenpoint, represent!

cheers,

jon

Once again, I am to pressed for time for a full-on blog update of what's been going on... suffice to say, the new shop is up and running, and I've been keeping it crazy busy for the better part of the past seven months.

But there were a few pieces of good news that i had to share...

First off, the Portland Phoenix' Sam Pfeifle reviewed three records that I'm really proud of...

The Jerks Of Grass "Come On Home"

http://thephoenix.com/Portland/Music/65298-JERKS-OF-GRASS/

Phantom Buffalo "Take to the Trees"

http://thephoenix.com/Portland/Music/64977-PHANTOM-BUFFALO/

The Baltic Sea "Through Scenic Heights and Days Regrets"

http://thephoenix.com/Portland/Music/65642-BALTIC-SEA/

Also, the boys in Sparks The Rescue have put up a few songs from the record we did earlier this year, and the response has been ridiculous... like, 16,000 plays TODAY ALONE as of 5:30.

Its nice to see that people are listening to the fruits of all this hard work...

Hope summer is great for y'all...

cheers,

jgw

i'm switching my web hosting, so i was going through my web site's stats to see how much bandwidth i am using. i happened to stumble across the search terms that people use when they find my website. my favorite:

"very well hung white guys in maine"

thanks, leon.

cheers,

jgw

i have been less than diligent about updating this blog (i will do a thorough recap of the last few months soon, i promise) but i got some news this morning that i wanted to share.

Dead Season charted at 7 on the Billboard Heatseekers Northeast chart. The Heatseekers chart showcases the top-selling up-and-coming artists who have not (yet) appeared in the top 100.

This is a big deal, especially when you consider that these guys did it entirely by themselves... no crazy distribution, no promotion... they just made a really great record that people wanted to buy.

Its an amazing accomplishment for those guys, and proof positive that now, despite the big guns crying foul and everyone saying what crap shape the business is in, it is possible for an artist to make a go of it on their own.

Viva la resistance!

jgw

i had a last minute shift in my schedule, and its left me with some free time in december. since its short notice and i am incapable of being dormant, i figured it'd be a good time to offer up a sweet deal if anyone out there had some stuff to do... so hit me up, tell me what you're up to, and maybe we can work something out!

cheers,

jon

once again, i somehow managed to let a second consecutive summer pass without seeing a single red sox game, either on television or at fenway. this is kind of a big deal for a native bostonian who actually went to one game of the '86 series. no, not that game.

but, the good news is a huge amount of great projects kept me really busy.

i left off last time with a little teaser about a project, which, as everyone has probably surmised by now, was the new rustic overtones record. rustic is a pretty important band for me, personally. my band played with them when we were in college, around the release of "my dirt." i did the pre-production for their major label release in 1999, and shortly after, when i moved to brooklyn, i would go to just about every show to cure my homesickness. i've been fortunate enough to work with just about all of the guys in their other projects since the initial demise of rustic, so it was an honor they asked me to produce their first new material in almost a decade.

we did a few brand new songs, and a few songs from the back catalog that we felt were worthy of another swing, and along with a few unreleased tracks from the arista / tommy boy sessions, we had ourselves a record.

needless to say, its been a great success and the guys have been absolutely killing all summer, selling out just about every showw they've done, and selling a whole bunch of copies of the little record we did.

Lost Conscience, a metal band from the Brunswick area, came in and laid down some pretty scorching... well... metal. not sure when they're releasing it, but it was some pretty heavy duty stuff.

my old friends lansdowne came back for their new five song ep, "burn this for your friends." when we fist recorded together, about a year and a half ago, the band was really new, and were retrofitting jon ricci's solo songs to their instrumentation, but months on the road and collaboration have turned them into a bona fide band. and the proof is in the pudding: smartpunk.com is charting their release at 16, a day after its release.

dead season, who are still selling a ton of records at bull moose, almost a year after their first full length release, came in to start tracking stuff for their next release, and i believe they snuck a single to WTOS...

my old friend adam flaherty came in with his new project, the sea captains. hard to pin down, but reckless pop abandon wouldn't be inaccurate. we did three songs, but my favorite may have been the song they tracked on their own, "you were wrong," which is the crazy, almost ragtime collage... you'll have to check it out. chuck from dominic and the lucid played drums, and corey from sidecar radio played bass.

i'm jsut winding down the mixes of the new seekonk record now (in fact, jason and dave are on their way over for what may be an eleventh-hour overdub). its gorgeous, as usual. the guys from seekonk are also doing well with their other venture, freakshow fx, a line of boutique guitar pedals. jeff tweedy of wilco has been using them... i'm psyched to get my hands on some soon, too (hint, hint...)

i suppose its fair to publicly announce that i'll be moving my operations effective january 1... darren and i are setting up shop around the corner from where we are now... try as we did to land in downtown portland, the real estate gods didn't smile on us, and it would have been just too dang expensive to build out, so we're renovating a barn as i write this... hopefully i'll have pictures and progress reports as this progresses!

i've already got some great stuff lined up for the new joint, including new releases from joshua madore, pete kilpatrick, and the holy boys.

over and out!

Continuing the recap of 2007 to date...

Shortly after New Year's festivities (once the hangovers subsided), we set to work on the debut from Boston's Black Tie Affair. Their EP "Burning Down The Library" is available now.

Seekonk convened to begin tracking a new record.

Pushing Zero came by for a few day to touch up some songs we had in the can, and begin work on some new material.

Boston's Butterknife came up for a spell... the drummer from Butterknife, Jim Theodore, is one of my oldest and dearest friends, and is a hell of an engineer in his own right, so once the drums were tracked, I threw him the keys and let him finish overdubbing. They're just starting to play out in the Boston / Cambridge area.

Headstart was in to track a (no joke) TV show theme song. The producer of the show wrote the song, and handed the boys a rough sketch of it, featuring only voice and acoustic guitar. The boys basically kicked the crap out of it, and we had a blast, knocking out the song in its entirety in a day. In fact, it was the same sort of maniacal, unapologetic pop that made doing their first record so much fun, and Kevin and I both agreed that doing some more pop songs was definitely in the future.

In February, I produced the debut EP for Hiss and Chambers. I'm pretty excited with how tis one came out, and I think it exceeded everyone's expectations. I've worked with Shawn for a while now, and i can safely say that he sounds like he's comfortable in his own skin in this project... this is the music he was meant to do.

Gateway Mastering hooked me up with a pop artist from Chennai, India named Sajjid Manuel, and i mixed the record that he tracked on the other side of the globe. Time differences made for some logistical bumps, but the record came out great. I recently learned that one of my heroes, the might Tchad Blake, has been working like this recently as well, mixing for artists from his studio in England, sending files and revisions back and forth over the internet.

Next came Jason Spooner's record. I have known Jason since i first arrived in Portland in 1997, and have been an admirer of his work. I was really thrilled when he, Andy, and Reed asked me to jump on board for their new full-length. Its a really great record with some beautiful songs and some awesome guests: Kim Taylor (kick ass songwriter from Cincinatti), Tim Carbone (from Railroad Earth), Andy Happel (formerly of Thanks to Gravity, now with his own band), Karl Anderson (from The Wrecking). It was fun, because a bunch of these guest spots were done by the artists in other cities, so i'd send of a protools file, and in a day or tow, would get an e-mail with new tracks in it. How bout it, technology?

Lost on Liftoff convened one more time to put the finishing touches on what's going to be a full-length (13 songs! yow!) record. We tracked a handful of new songs, and put to bed a few that still needed work.

I tracked and mixed a new EP for El Grande. It was a blast. We fired up the hammond, and i always love tracking horns.

Loki recorded one song to promote themselves in the WTOS battle of the bands... it came out fantastically well, and there's talks of a full length soon,

New Hampshire's Vegas Temper came in and we did three songs. It was a long time coming, as we had talked and hinted at working together a few times over the past year or so. It was great to finally get together and make some songs.

Cult Maze came in, and we had a lovely few days filled with frost brewed lining and michael mcdonald jokes.Oh yeah, and we tracked a kick ass full-length album, as well. Look for it soon!

Dean Ford finished up work on his EP, "The Silent Pages." This time he enlisted the sercives of the ever-so-dapper Dan Capaldi and my failthful assistant (and kick ass musician) Micah Davis. Dean's a talented guy, and as much as the acoustic stuff is great, I think it would rock with a band as well!

Jeff Kral, formerly of Goud's Thumb, tracked some solo songs that look like they're going to become the making of a solo record.

Trent Gay's new band has a name (All Night Chemist) and new songs (awesome). The new lineup features Dan Paulsen and Shawn Maines, of Lowlife and EFS fame.

And that get's us more or less up to date. I'm gonna post a separate blog about my most recent project, which i'm sure everyone will be tickled pink about....

cheers,

jon

Things have been busy, to say the least.

Rather than try to recap every last little detail of the past nine months or so, i'm gonna hit some highlights, and talk about some of the awesome stuff coming up as well.

My last blog that actually pertained to what i was working on (rather than shameless self-promotion from a bunch of press) was talking about Billy Libby's solo stuff, which puts us at about september 2006. Billy's stuff finished up great, he moved out to seattle, but word is, he will once again be gracing the east coast with his luminesence.

I mixed the debut album for Dominic and the Lucid, which was tracked by my friends Jack Murray and Jim Begley. Its a really great record, and now they're up for a few Best Music Poll Awards courtesy of the Portland Phoenix. Dominic claims i was nominated for sexiest bastid, but i haven't been able to find that category... once again, i am a write in.

Jake Roche did his post-Jeremiah Freed solo debut in September. For those familiar with Freed, it might be a bit of a departure from what you're used to from Jake, but its a beautiful record. And, with a team featuring Hutch Heelan and Tony McNaboe, its hard to go wrong.

Singer Songwriter Zach Romanoff did five songs (was it five? six? four? it was october after all...) for a solo ep showcasing is pop-rock songwriting. My ace Danny Crean came up to play drums, and Jasper Rice of Hiss & Chambers (more on that later) held down the bass.

If there was ever a moment in my life that was the professional equivalent of a closing scene of a John Hughes (pre-Home Alone before he went bonkers) movie, it was working with The Everyday Visuals. I'm so fortunate that i was able to work with a band that i was already a fan of before we even set foot in the studio. We tracked a brand new song and i mixed six songs for their just-released LP "Things Will Look Up." Being Bostonians and not wanting to make them commute, they crashed at my (tiny) house over the course of the session. True road warriors, they made the best out what meager acommodations i could offer. Morning rolled around, Roxy (my pooch) was thrilled to have five extra people to pal around with, and Joe quickly jumped onto the antique pump organ in my living room. The smell of coffee, wheezy organ, and groggy morning-voice harmony filled my little house. That's how i know i have a cool gig.

Shortly after, i mixed a quick one-off song for Headstart that didn't really fit in with their recent masterpiece, "Our House." It's called "Love You To Death," and i think it might be on their myspace page right now.

Kingpin Wrecking Crew came in and did four more new songs, which i believe are going on a revised version of their "Abolition Strategy" album. Its amazing: it took nearly two years to finish the first album, and then we cranked out four songs in five days.

My old friend Trent Gay came in with a new band, which i don't believe even has a name yet, but has some amazingly beautiful songs. Trent has been the frontman for Trailor and Stars Look Down, and plays in Rulers of the Raging Main. He writes really amazing songs and is one of the most compelling, honest vocalists i have ever worked with.

I went to a wedding in new york, and i'm told i sat next to Mary Louise Parker. I say "i'm told" because a) i don't really know who she is and b) it was a jewish wedding, and i was desperately trying to balance a tiny yarmulke on my huge head, so i did not look up much.

In December, I started a record with Josh Madore. A little backstory: Josh approached me in October about doing some stuff, and sent me some CD's he had made at home. My first impression before i even listened was that this guy, who i had never ever heard of, had two full-length CD's of songs. I listened to them, and i was sold. The kicker of it all was, those two CD's were really only half of what he had to draw from. All told, he handed me 42 songs to work from, all of which he demo'd at home in Garage Band, which has proven to be a pretty awesome songwriting tool for a lot of guys. We assembled a band featuring the unstoppable Danny Crean once again, Hache Horchatta on bass, Karl Anderson from Kingpin on keys, and i covered most of the additional odds and ends. The result is a stellar album called "The Same Mistakes." I strongly urge you to check this guy out (he's in my top friends).

And that closed out 2006. My coffee's getting cold, so i'm gonna go find some more. Next up, first quarter of 2007, then all the crazy stuff yet to come! stay tuned...

i know, i know, i'm way behind with updating thiss blog with the goings on in my rock and roll world, but i thought i'd at least hit you with a little shamelss self-promotion...

i'm featured in the iherald section today in the portland press herald. you can find it here or on your newsstand.

i prmise, i'll write about the stuff i'[ve been up to soon... and there's definitely some cool goings on going on.

until then...

j