Jinglebacker Writer
Three things are happening right now. Right now, I'm in Chicago, where I’ll hang out for a day before I head to Montreal. I’m getting ready to document Kid Koala for a very special (and wintery) Dream Session. Needless to say, I am extremely excited about this. I was very lucky to meet him in 2011 while on tour with Surrogate Valentine. We played around with some guitar pedals, talked about music, and ate some Baked Poutine.
My next blog post will be about what happens there this week, so stay tuned…
Secondly, I just posted the $100 tiered Kickstarter Jingle/Lullabye Rewards. My friend and frequent collaborator/producer Kurt Kurasaki was kind enough to let me camp out and record at his home in San Juan Bautista to fulfill the rewards I set up. Much of the backing music was recorded in Brooklyn and Sacramento with the musicians I was featuring for those Dream Session Episodes, but I had to transform them from backing instrumental tracks to mini songs. I locked myself up and started writing on New Year’s Eve, completely missing the countdown because I was testing a microphone. I finally emerged seven days later with twelve pieces of music (16:59 minutes total) and no sense of reality. The amount of energy I spent on these was equal to, or maybe more than what I put into my own songs. I really put my heart and lifeforce into these, they’re basically little love songs/letters ranging from silly, sad, lonely, ecstatic, saucy, delirious, desperate…
Here They Are:
https://soundcloud.com/gohnakamura/sets/dream-session-jingles
The third thing I’m trying to do is better document my creative process, which is hard to do because in the heat of the moment things get real messy and I’m just trying to maintain a focus/creative groove. The minute I start thinking of “oh, I should document this” or “I wish someone was filming this” there is a distraction. The Muse is a jealous lover and very temperamental. I’m not sure if I’m cut out for it, this age of constant documenting and too much information, but I’m trying to find a happy medium.
More rewards to come, I'm catching up... this project has been a beast, I won't lie. It's been a big butt kicker. Maybe my next website will be Buttkickstarter dot com. Don't steal it.
Anyhow, I want to say Happy New Year, and a huge THANK YOU for making this all possible. I'd love to do more jingles in 2013, it's a great exercise for me- vocally, writing wise, and it's fun to study different genres of music.
I leave you with some pictures of the "studio" and some cats and hens.
