And So It Begins

his time of the year is always interesting. A forced rebirth in the middle of freezing temperatures and shortened days. I always joke about moving to California this time of the year although back in reality I don't think i could ever handle living there. Except maybe the San Fran area, if there were other factors at play.

But that will be in another life. The matters at hand are strictly music, and doing what is necessary to get this band off the ground. Musically speaking, to borrow the term from Obama, this was absolutely a year of change. I started off working on ideas with my bass player Chuck Hillwig, in a cold studio in Rockaway Beach, Queens, not far from where my Grandmother spent much of her adult life. The neighborhood was much different during those years, I suspect there weren't young kids trying to sell you drugs out of the back of dirty conversion vans. Just a hunch.

Although we spent the bulk of the year working on the new tracks, I was really trying to find some new blood for the band and although i didn't know it when the year started, I was also about to rekindle my musical partnership with Leo McInnis, my Boston connection that really had never gone anywhere. Throughout the year one drummer left to focus on his other project and we found Richie Latoni, a hard hitting, talented musician who stepped up to the plate when we needed him. Despite the fact that our music is quite opposite his metal roots, he seems to be comfortable. Except when i tell him to play with brushes. In August, we were lucky enough to find guitarist Joe Bognanno, who had apparently been looking for a band like ours for years. It's been fantastic to work with someone so committed, i was beginning to think this city had run out of such folks.

As we work on whatever resolutions we care to write down, the band is working hard on new material, and trying to do whatever we need to pick up the pace. In Feb we're back on the stage with 3 shows in 3 different cities. To the untrained eye this would sound like something of a tour, despite the fact that we all have day jobs.

Onwards and Upwards.