Pretty much just stealing news from The Cream at this point but in case you somehow missed that Hotpipes are previewing material from their forthcoming album The Bear & The Astronaut over on their Bandcamp page, now is the time to go check it out. As usual, each Hotpipes release gets better and better. Maybe I’ll eat my words on this but I suspect the ‘breakup’ of the band may not be as permanent as one might think.

It’s been quite awhile since we heard from Jeremy Ferguson, aka Battle Tapes, aka one of Nashville’s hardest working recording engineers, studio wizard and extremely active local music champion. If you have even the slightest doubt about any of that praise, I think you’ll be entirely swayed to my way of thinking after you read what he’s been up to for the past six months. You’ll also discover quite a bit of substantial news regarding loads of acts around town and their forthcoming releases. Long story short, it is more than a worthy read..

Since last we spoke (January-ish?), things have been nutso.

In February, I helped Mock Orange mix their new album, Disguised As Ghosts, at Black Bird Studios for a few days. They recorded it themselves in Indiana, where we grew up. It’s a really great record in their tradition of making each record more-so of what the last one was (or completely different). The following week, Slow Claw came into the studio and did about a week of tracking with Joel Dahl co-producing with me, and finishing overdubs and mixing at his studio, the Dahl House. The CD is out now and it’s really cool and kinda reminds me of a band I used to love called Karate. That following weekend started tracking on the Action! album, Friend Weakend. This one had a few weekend tracking sessions with music being tracked almost entirely live, if I remember correctly, and the two of them together in the piano room. I know WOTT has talked up this album a bit, and they should… it’s fantastic. CD is out now, AMAZING sounding vinyl out in November. The next week, I started a new group called The Dead Towns for about a week of tracking. They’re new and not “in” with all the “in” bands but they’re an awesome new group and you should definitely check them out when you can… Really solid, timeless rock music. They’re releasing three 3-song eps of the material. The weekend following THAT (February was kinda busy), I started the second Timbre album, Little Flowers, which went into March. This album had us recording at Battle Tapes as well as the Cathedral on West End for a live song and more 16-18 piece choir (I forget). At Battle Tapes, we did the normal thing for her, which was recording a whole lot of instruments. It’s another really cool album.
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