Well OK!

My new album has a title (Colossal) and a release date (October 27th, which is the day after my 33-1/3 birthday).  It will be out on vinyl, download, and limited CD-R (that last thanks to Sinkhole, Texas Inc.).  I'm very excited.

I just posted the first song (which also happens to be the title song) here on my myspace profile for your enjoyment, and will continue to post new songs (probably somewhat erratically) until the release date.

Thanks, I hope you like it.

Levi

Just to tidy everything up:

On Sunday, Casey and I finished mixing the 9 songs that will make up my third album, which will be called Colossal.  I've listened through these tracks a few times, and I'm really quite happy with them.  I have handed them over to Mr. Kevin Bressler of Whiney Cat Audio for mastering, and by the end of the week I will have a suitable-for-listening master copy of this here record.  The plan is to release it in October, on vinyl and via electronic 1s and 0s, with a limited CD-R release from Sinkhole Texas, Inc.  Keep your eyes on this space and my real web site for news on that front.

Thanks for reading,

Levi

My friends, I am very happy to report, as of Saturday, May 16th, the end of major combat operations tracking on my third album, Title TBA.  Casey comped together a vocal track for "Mall of America" from our last session, and I went through line by line and doubled it.  I think it sounds pretty damn good.

Yup, mission accomplished.

Now, assuming no unexpected situations arise with insurgents the mixing and mastering processes, it is my sincere desire and hope and expectation to have this puppy done and ready for release in the next couple months.  The actual release date is still quite fuzzy, of course, but I'm aiming for early fall.

If anyone reading this is at a record label of any size or stature and would like to help me with the release, feel free to drop me a line.

Hey, I forgot to tell you about this:

The wonderful people at Beep Repaired have released a new compilation of songs from their nearest and dearest, and I'm on it!  This is the first release of a song from my forthcoming/in progress third album.  (The new recording of "Mouse on Fire.")  It hasn't been added to the Beep Repaired online catalog yet, but I hope it will be soon, and at a very reasonable price.

Here are all the bands on the thing; 2 discs of awesome!

Autopilot is for Lovers
Baby Sloth
Beast, Please Be Still
Blicky
Brittain Ashford
Choncey Langford
Cock and Swan
Corespondents
Dead Doctors
H is for Hellgate
Happy Birthday Secret Weapon
Hecka Ar
Iron Clads
Lake of Falcons
Leaf Language
Leisure Hive
Levi Fuller
Lonesome Shack
Low Red Land
Navigator vs Navigator
Oars
Old Man Smithers
Open Choir Fire
Police Teeth
Sequin Socks
Smile Brigade
Snowman Plan
Sweet Potatoes
The Bismarck
The Contraband Country Band
The Curious Mystery
The Graze
The Whoremoans
Unlearn
Virgin of Birds
Webelos
Yonderlow

Day 15: Friday, April 3rd

As promised in the previous blog, I took Friday the 3rd off to take advantage of Casey's spring break to get some vocal work done.  We completed vocals on "The Hunter Surrenders" and "Pigeon Feeder" (and added a super sweet bassy Fender Rhodes part on "Hunter"), and did most of the vocals for "The Mall of America."  We decided to double the vocals on the verses on that one, though, and we haven't gotten around to finishing the second vocal track due to my being attacked by the worst canker sore in the world - on my tongue - which rendered me near-mute for several days.  Awesome.

Day 16: Sunday, April 11th

Cello!  This was a pretty quick one.  Ki came over, and I pretty much left her and Casey to their own devices as she busted out her parts (as written by the generous and talented Mr. James Nixon) on "Seaplanes" and "The Mall of America" in an hour or so.

And that's where we stand now.  I anticipate that we will finish the doubled vocal on "The Mall of America" this weekend, and then we will be DONE WITH TRACKING.  Yay.  Then, after mixing and mastering, all the other gears of Releasing a Record go into motion, and hopefully this thing is in your hands before the leaves start fallin' from the trees.

Stay tuned for a final recording diary, and then maybe some mixing and mastering diaries if I'm feeling like they're worth diarizing about.

All right, we're getting there, people.  Yesterday we finally put some instruments on top of Lindsey's lonely drum tracks for "Pigeon Feeder."  I realized this new version is much faster than the original, which I think is an improvement.  I recorded a decent take of the acoustic guitar part in a few tries, then relearned the bass part real quick and played that (got a nice, fat, bassy bass sound, too - hooray for Ampeg!).  Then I relearned the super-simple "guitar solo" on the bridge, and recorded that with some fulltone overdrive and a little tape echo sound courtesy of my Line 6.  And bam, now it sounds more like a song!

Casey's on spring break this week, so I'm going to take Friday off work and devote the day to vocals, which is all that's missing from the final three songs ("The Hunter Surrenders," "Pigeon Feeder," and "Mall of America," from which we'll be using most of the tracks I've already recorded, just remixed by Casey's sure hands on his fancy machine.)  I hope to have Ki record some cello on a couple songs, and then . . . we're done?  Well, then we mix and then we master and then I see if I can afford to press this puppy on vinyl, and then we're done.  So yes, I think I can confidently say this album will be released in 2009, probably late summer or early fall.  Fingers crossed and knocking on wood.  Hopefully it'll be worth the wait.

Woah!  Yesterday was quite the whirlwind of activity.  First I worked at my job, a wonderful place called Jack Straw Productions, until about 5 (OK, so that wasn't so much of a whirlwind, but bear with me).  Then, at 5, I was joined there by Casey, Jack Straw engineer Moe Provencher, and drummer Lindsey Reeves, to lay down (that's musician-speak for "record") drum tracks for the social anxiety disorder anthem "Pigeon Feeder" (also heard on 2007's pseudo-album The I Is not Always Me, with sub-par drums played by me).  Moe and Casey got Lindsey all mic'd up and sounding huge, I went into another room with my guitar and mouth to play along with her, and we ran through a few takes. 

The fascinating thing was this:  We were playing along to a click track to make the future tracking of guitars and such easier.  At 88 beats per minute, the verses sounded fine, but we kept getting overwhelmed in the choruses and bridge; they felt too fast.  So we slowed down to 86 BPM, and everything felt we too slow, and we were rushing the choruses.  I was starting to feel a little desparate, and like maybe the click wouldn't work, but we decided to try splitting the difference, just for the heck of it - me thinking "how is 1 BPM going to fix anything?"  And you know what?  87 BPM was the magic number!  After that we played through 3 close to perfect takes, which will be the base of a full, kickass recording of this song.  Hurrah!

So after about two hours of that we were done, and Casey was running off to see Brightblack Morning Light and Dan Higgs at The Vera Project (I will admit here that I sort of wished I could be going with him).  Lindsey and I still had more work to do, though: We loaded up her Tribute (which I keep seeing as Trilobite, when I look at the back of it - that would be a good name for a vehicle, don't you think?) with her drums and my guitars, and headed over to The Comet to play a show with Little Pieces and . . . well, that was it.  Blue Skies for Black Hearts were supposed to play, but they live in Portland, and I-5 is completely flooded between here and there, so they didn't make it.  So Lindsey and I set up in a leisurely manner, and played a pretty awesome set, I think.  I got to borrow Herman Jolly's gorgeous Fender amp, and my acoustic guitars sounded fantastic through it.  After we were done, Little Pieces set up and played a delightful set of pop gems.  Then they took a break and played another set to compensate for the lack of a third band!  What troopers! 

Then I went home and went to bed, and woke up and went to work again.  The end.

P.S.  It can be hard to find old blog posts on this here myspace, but if you're interested you can read the very first post in my recording saga (from an embarrassingly long time ago) here.

Hey, remember me?  Remember that album I've been recording for ages?  All right, I admit, things have slacked off a bit.  Day 11 was, um . . . over 8 months ago?  Yikes.  The problem is we finished 6 songs, so for the next day of recording to start we had to start a whole new couple songs from scratch and open up a whole bunch new loose ends.  And then the summer happened, and the holidays . . . and we're lazy.  So you see the problem.

Anyway, yesterday my trusty engineer Casey and I started one of the remaining songs that will be part of my heretofore untitled 3rd album.  This song is called "The Hunter Surrenders," and it's 7 and a half minutes long and slow and droney.  Luckily Casey didn't fall asleep during the many, many takes of guitar overdubs.  He had some zombie fiction to keep him company.  This is another song that I wrote and perform live using the looper, so adapting it for recording proved a bit of a challenge.  First I had to figure out exactly how long it was and where my vocals and the other parts go.  Then instead of using the looper, I recorded each part separately on guitar, and then added some banjo for good measure.  So, like I said, a lot of takes.  When next we revisit this one, we'll do a little percussion, some vocals, then it should be good!

This Thursday we're recording drums with Lindsey Reeves for the song "Pigeon Feeder," so I should have a further update for you very soon.

[I don't generally use this blog for political purposes, but today is a special case for many, many reasons.  Bear with me.]

This is, without a doubt, an incredibly happy day, a joyous day, a historical day.  I haven't felt this happy and engaged and excited about an election result in - well, ever.

That said, I am deeply saddened that California (CALIFORNIA!) has passed the bigoted Proposition 8, writing anti-gay religious ideology into their state constitution, depriving same-sex couples of their rights en masse.  Obviously a lot of people voted for this bill and there's a lot of blame to go around, but one group in particular put a huge amount of money into supporting it, and it seems to have paid off in spades.  I'm talking, of course, about the Mormon Church and many individual Mormons.  They spent millions of dollars that could have gone to feed the hungry or save the environment (or to a candidate of their choice for election) to make it so that people in California cannot all marry the people they love.  Why would they do that?

I have a few friends and acquaintances who are Mormon, maybe some "friends" on here that I don't know.  Generally I don't talk to religious friends about their religion, because it's obvious we don't see eye to eye and I don't want to alienate anybody.  And I know that the actions of a church don't necessarily speak for all of its members, but the Mormon Church is known for being a bit more ideologically homogeneous than many others.  So I would love to hear from you: how do you feel about your Church doing this in your name (and possibly with your money?).  Do you consider yourself an active member of the Church?  Have you spoken out or do you plan to speak out to Church leaders?  Or maybe you're pro-Prop 8; if so, why?

Frankly, if an organization to which I had any ties took part in an activity like this it would be next to impossible for me to maintain any connection with that group.  So, progressive (or centrist or non-ideological) Mormons . . . where do you go from here?

October 5th, 2008: First Person
33 songs whose titles start with the word "I."  Try reading through the titles as if they're a short story.  It won't make any sense, but might pass a few minutes.  I think this is re-airing right about now on Hollow Earth if you want to check it out.

..tr style="height: 13.2pt;" height="18"> ..table>

Name	Artist	Album
I Chose Horses	Mogwai	Mr. Beast
I Love Your Point Of View	Fulton Lights	The Way We Ride
I Am A Psychiatrist	Lee "Scratch" Perry	Panic In Babylon (Disc 1)
I Wish	Stevie Wonder	Stevie Wonder's Original Musiquarium 1 [Disc 2]
I Got A Big Fat Mama	Shuggie Otis	In Session Great Rhythm and Blues
I Miss You Like I Miss You	Chad Vangaalen	Infiniheart
I Feel Too Young To Die	South San Gabriel	The Carlton Chronicles: Not Until the Operation's Through
I Have No Idea	John Vecchiarelli	Tiny Rooms
I Don't Think I'm Ever Gonna Figure It Out	Elliott Smith	Unreleased (From A Basement On The Hill II)
I Throw You Away	Johanna Kunin	Ball of Wax Volume 4
I Throw You Away	Troubleshooting
I Threw It All Away	Bob Dylan	Nashville Skyline
I never shall marry	Amy Blaschke
I Know What I Knew,	Richard Buckner	Impasse
I Am The Mountain	Damien Jurado	On My Way To Absence
I Am The Little Girl	The Graze	Iowa Anvil
I Have Been Wronged	Fog	Ditherer
I Found That Essence Rare	Gang Of Four	Entertainment!
I Was A Teenage Hand Model	Queens Of The Stone Age	Queens Of The Stone Age
I Don't Respect Those Guys	Kaiser & Lindley	The Sweet Sunny North
I Am Not Willing	K.	Goldfish
I Don't Care	Scott McChane	Sweet Pariah & The Beautiful Loser
I Don't Care	The Roots	The Tipping Point
I Have a Dream, Too	Dead Prez	RBG: Revolutionary But Gangsta
I Hope Yer There	Tim Fite	Gone Ain't Gone
I Me You I'm Your	Jim Noir	Tower Of Love
I Can't Reach You	The Who	The Who Sell Out
I Can't Reach You	Petra Haden	The Who Sell Out
I See A Darkness	Johnny Cash	American III: Solitary Man
I Pity the Poor Immigrant	Angels Of Light	Akron/Family & Angels of Light
I Would Work If I Could	Brian Michael Roff And The Deer	Inventory
I Don't Know Why	The Quiet Ones	Nite You Surprised Me [EP]
I would die 4 U	Prince

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