Put simply, this is the album we never meant to make. It was a record-something-every-month project, named for a safecracker (a “Cracksman”) and a blackjack with a woman’s name (a “Betty”), adorned with pirate skull and burglar’s tools, and we finished it up last December… or so we thought.

But the thing is, I went back and gave those recordings another good hard listen, and realised that I’d improved a lot both as a vocalist and an engineer over that year.

So I decided to clean it up, and do some new vocals, and oh, I can totally make Dalek Boy funnier, and Old Black Rum can be a lot more rowdy, and oh, I have this new song (“Song for a Blockade Runner/High Barbaree”) that’ll fit in just great, and…

…somewhere along the way, this became an album. It became a piece, a thing, not just an assemblage. Not a complex a piece as Dick Tracy Must Die or far-reaching as Din of Thieves will be, perhaps, but an entity, a set.

‘Or,’ I asked myself, ‘did it? Really? Am I just making that up? Let’s ask some beta listeners.’

And the first response back was:

everything I hear in these tracks is totally Next Level from what came before.

…followed by an assortment of “impressive,” “SO MUCH BETTER” [capslock in the original], “awesome,” and “I love Dalek Boy so much.”

So I guess I wasn’t making it up!

But what is it? Here’s the track list:

1. Song for a Blockade Runner/High Barbaree
2. Captain Kidd
3. Paddy Murphy (Victory Boulevard Style)
4. I’m a Rover (Live in Juanita Bay)
5. Columbia (Scene from a Revolution)
6. Danny Boy (Instrumental) (Live at El Dorado)
7. Red is the Rose (with Leannan Sidhe)
8. Great Big Sea
9. Old Black Rum (West Coast Style)
10. Dalek Boy (Cyborgs Behaving Badly)
11. Red is the Rose (Live in Studio – bonus track)
12. Dalek Boy (Radio edit – bonus track)
13. The S-100 Bus (Live in studio – web-only bonus track)

I think it’s CRIME and the Forces of Evil – or various subsets thereof – not taking everything quite so seriously. I think it’s an alternate history lesson, and it’s kicking back in the studio just to have fun, and it’s riot girls dyking our way around Vancouver starting fights (also fun), and it’s piracy, and it’s kicking out some Cascadian folk and cyborg lulz.

And it’s dropping on Monday. Of that much, I’m sure. 😀

Wow, I hope some of you were there for Monday night’s The House of Julie with Julie Cascioppo – it’s hard to tell, since we filled Chapelspace, and that’s a pretty big room! Thanks again to Julie for having me, and Bill White for handling booking.

 
Meanwhile, it’s Wednesday, May 2nd, and the new album – the remixed/remastered/rerecorded Cracksman Betty – drops Monday. So many last minute things to do!

I wanted to mention a few of the guest performers who are on this album, so I’ll start with them.

 

• Angela Korra’ti of Twelve Good Measures provides some key backing vocals on the rewritten “Old Black Rum (West Coast Style).” This is the same Angela who has this Kickstarter project running to get her fantasy series back into print after her original publisher folded. If you haven’t seen that, go look. We’re doing the soundtrack album, which is going to be awesome.
   
• Paul Johnson – who spends most of his time as a visual artist – provides the raw voices for MC Dalek and MC Cyberman on the track, “Dalek Boy.”
   
• And finally, Leannan Sidhe provides lead vocals for “Red is the Rose,” probably the most traditionally-performed song on the album. Her band is currently working on their second studio album of dark and reinterpreted faerie tales. Check that out, too.

I have to admit, being mostly into elfmetal, I’m a little hesitant about doing a “traditional” album. But it’s not entirely traditional – not with all the Republic of Cascadia alternative-world material! And it’s a good lead-in to the Faerie Blood/Bone Walker soundtrack.

There’ll be new music on that one, too. Elfmetal-folk hybrids! Here, have a teaser, a snip from a rough draft of “Song for a Free Court/Anarchy Now:”

…I’m not afraid of your power and
your stupid money’s no good here because
a new millennium of pointless grudges
Is sim!ply! not! my! idea! of fun! I’m gonna

START!     by ignoring all your strictures
START!     by sitting all this out
START!     by bailing on this conflict
START!     by building my own map…

Yeah. That. 😀

So many awesome things are going on right now that I have to combine announcements! It’s crazytalk. But before I get to that, even, a quick reminder: I’m guesting tonight on The House of Julie with Julie Cascioppo, 7:30pm, in Seattle, with several other musicians including Roo Forrest, Elaine Bono, Jean Mann, and Bill White. I’m Julie’s first guest of the night; come see the show!

TO THE ANNOUNCEMENTS!

FIRST: The new album – the remixed/remastered/rerecorded Cracksman Betty – will drop Monday, May 7, 2012. It’ll lead off with a completely new track, “Song for a Blockade Runner/High Barbaree,” the pirate’s version of that tale, recast in the fight for Cascadian independence, musically and lyrically original.

My beta listeners have described the album as “impressive,” “SO MUCH BETTER” [than the work prints], “awesome,” and, in one notable case:

everything I hear in these tracks is totally Next Level from what came before.

Caps of Awesome as in the originals. Fuck. Yeah.

This is our long-promised traditional-music album. But of course, we can’t leave it at that; this “traditional” music is re-cast in the Republic of Cascadia, songs of piracy, riot, and revolution, with new interpretation, new history, and far more often than you’d expect on a “traditional” album, new music.

You’ll hear more about that – and some of our guest performers – this week.

SECOND: We’re doing a soundtrack album. For reals, assuming the Kickstarter makes it. It’s a book companion for the novels Faerie Blood and Bone Walker. We’ve already committed Sunnie Larsen (who has played with several bands including Bone Poets Orchestra and Vixy & Tony) and Leannan Sidhe, with whom we’ve worked before. And we’re in talks with more.

Bone Walker will be a mix of readings, original music, and the traditional music referenced in the books. It’ll be something new for all of us, which is always awesome. And again – more announcements will be forthcoming!

FINALLY, talking of Leannan Sidhe, they have their own Kickstarter running for their second studio album, More to Love. I’ve heard some of the material; these are some pretty subversive fairy tales. So of course, we’re onboard – I’ve backed the project personally, with, you know, money. My money. Not even stolen! So you know I mean it.

Currently there’s an extra incentive package: a signed print of a sketch from the album cover artist (Rob Carlos), a print of the aurora photograph that’s going to be used in that album cover, and a handwritten card from the band. That’s all in addition to the regular backer bonuses for whoever gets them to $2000.

God damn can you believe all this? And we have more things cooking I’m not even talking about here. More than can fit into this post. But one more super-sneak preview, a whisper, a ghost, a rumour of rage, an echo of elfmetal, a part two of a bigger story, a title:

Din of Thieves.

Muah ha ha ha ha ha!

Other people have music! I knew this was possible.

1. Leannan Sidhe have added an incentive – whoever gets them to four digits on their recording Kickstarter gets album art design sketch prints.

   Cool stuff nobody else gets is awesome, and it’s just whoever gets them to $1000, no specific amount required. As I’m writing this, they aren’t far off from that level, so check it – it might still be available!

2. I kind of skipped DEVO’s comeback Something for Everybody album when it came out in 2010, thinking they’d been done for a long time, and not caring for nostalgia acts. But having finally bought it – wow, was I wrong. They had unfinished business to do. SoE is New Traditionalists-level work, without retreading; good parts and a sum which is greater.

   Standouts: Fresh, What We Do, Mind Games, Later is Now. Only one real misstep (Cameo). Of particular note: No Place Like Home, possibly the least-DEVO-like Devo song they ever recorded, and a vector showing where they might’ve gone in better hands. But listen to the album as a unit.

3. This isn’t music, but Anna’s fantasy novel kickstarter for Faerie Blood and Bone Walker has also added an incentive: whoever gets her to $3000 gets to name a character after themselves and have that character killed off. It’ll be either in the third Kendis Thompson book, or a future Warder universe story.

   I suspect you can also name the character someone else. I hope you can, anyway. XD

It’s a hard time to be in the creative classes, particularly in the States, where support for non-commodifyable culture has been on the rocks for years. This article is both relevant and interesting on that point. So go help make up for that kind of crap, and launch some art!

i am told today is international fukkit day. the all lower-case is important. this is good because i’m pretty wiped from the Genticorum afterparty last night. XD

I mean, seriously, even Anna was all ‘but there’s still crisps and stompy’ as we dragged ourselves home to bed sometime after 1am. On a Sunday.

A week from today! I’m a guest on The House of Julie, a variety/chat show held in a theatre:

Chapel Performance Space at the Good Shepherd Center, (4649 Sunnyside Ave N), Wallingford, Seattle, Monday, April 30th at 7:30pm. Poster here.

I’m gonna make some sound baffles today, and make video of that for youtubes. Bending carpet seems about the right speed right now. And I’m pretty sure you won’t see that on The Legend of Korra. XD

My partner Anna is a writer; her first book – Faerie Blood – appeared a few years ago, from Drollerie Press. It was out as an ebook and selling briskly, so Drollerie planned a paperback release, and to publish its sequel, Bone Walker, as well. But sadly, the founder’s health went bad, and they shuttered before any of these plans could materialise.

So Anna’s decided rather than shopping around, she’ll take matters into her own hands and launch a Kickstarter project to get both books back into print.

I made the video. Video is fun! I’m also her book designer, but not cover artist or editor – those are Kiri Moth and JoSelle Vanderhooft, respectively.

Faerie Blood‘s a good book. It got some great reviews. Something’s Coming is part of the Bone Walker soundtrack. (I also have a tiny, tiny cameo. 😀 ) So go over to the Kickstarter project, read the sample chapters, play the video, and if you like what you’re seeing, support the project.

And pass this around, too. Publishing books is expensive; she needs to hit $4000 in pledges or none of it goes through. She got almost a third of the way there in the first day, tho’! That’s kind of amazing. Girl has fans is what. 😀

I dropped a release candidate video for Anna and her book reprint/series extension Kickstarter earlier this evening; she’s pleased. So far, nobody in her crew is kicking it back, either.

This video stuff is kinda fun. Less of a learning curve than recording studio so far, but I’ve used a bunch of these skills before. Recording live audio for sync was kind of interesting too – I had three sources (on camera true live, on-recorder broad-field mic pair sync sound, on-boom-stand large can cap mic, also sync sound. I ended up using exclusively the large-can cap, but despite it being the least noisy of the three, and despite what seemed to be a pretty quiet room, the uncontrolled environment still creates quite a quality and noise problem.

But I think it sounds okay. It was work to get it there, and it’s not as good as if I’d recorded the sound in a studio and looped it, but… it’s pretty okay. I’ll point at it more closely once it’s public. ^_^

This is going around: Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins thinks everything sucks. Here’s a YouTube embed:

Basically he agrees the major label system sucks, but not for the same reasons we do; being one of that tiny percent to actually make money in it, he thinks that part is just fine. He just thinks the people who do manage this feat are the “winners.” What he hates is what he calls the “singles mentality” and homogenisation, combined with the death of the album form, which he sees as removing the connection between little indie band (j0) and MEGASUPERSTARDOM RAR!

And he also spends a lot of time crying for the mass cultural experience.

But at the same time, he also hates on the indie scene, mostly on his exposure to it through alternative rock, declaring it eternally “precocious” and incapable of sustaining an audience or band, dismissing it entirely as, “What’re you going to do, sell albums to the same 10,000 people every year?” and saying bands that go that route are just going to be working back at Burger King in ten years.

As opposed to almost all major label artists who end up back working lousy day jobs and bankrupted.

Personally, if I can sell 10,000 albums a year, I’ll be totally psyched. I’d also be making more money than most major label artists. But to him you don’t count unless, as he puts it, grandmothers know about you. You have to CHANGE THE WORLD, MAN. Like he, um, didn’t. (Sorry, guy, got news.)

I don’t actually want to spend this entire post hating on this interview, because he has a bunch of things to say in there which are varying degrees of legitimate, like how goddamn behind the technology curve the major labels have been and continue to be. But god damn, dude – do some fucking math. The label-and-album system that did work for you (and for about 10-15 other artists a year) didn’t work for anybody else. Except the labels, of course.

You’re so concerned about all this, about the “little” and “indie” bands who are so “precocious?” How about floating some goddamn ideas instead? Because the album as an art form may come and go – Dick Tracy Must Die isn’t just an album, it’s a goddamn concept album – but changing fashion of forms isn’t going to save anybody. Not even the labels.

Meanwhile we, the eternally “precocious,” will be over here, trying to get some work done. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll figure some shit out.

I’m handing over today’s entry to Anna, so she can signal boost a few items, particularly S.L. Gray’s Kickstarter project to get her backlisted novel back in print. We were all part of the big Willowholt Elfquest RP group which has spawned several published writers and one musician (hiya!). But for more, here’s Anna:

Hello! I’m Angela Korra’ti, a writer and a geek, and every so often I like to plug things being done by my fellow authors!

First up, for those of you who’re on Goodreads, my fellow formerly-Drollerie author Gary Inbinder is running a two-week ad on the Goodreads site to plug his books Confessions of the Creature and The Flower to the Painter. If you happen to see this ad, please clickie! And even if you don’t see the ad, please consider adding Gary’s books to your Goodreads To Read shelves. I’ve read Confessions of the Creature and quite liked it as a followup to Frankenstein; The Flower to the Painter is on my queue.

Second, S.L. Gray, who I am pleased to note as one of the several writers who’ve come out of the Willowholt Tribe I ran way back in the day, has a Kickstarter going to resurrect an old novel of hers, The Dragon Undone. Go check her out and give her some support love, people! As you may guess, Kickstarters are currently Highly Relevant to My Interests, but so is supporting writers of my Tribe. Tell her I sent you!

Third, if you’re a fan of the work of Francesca Lia Block, you might want to be aware that she’s in danger of losing her home. Looks like she’s yet another American whose home has gone underwater and her bank’s not playing nice. Click over on the link to read up more about her situation, and if you’re so inclined, sign the petition they’ve set up on Change.org on Ms. Block’s behalf.

Thanks!

Give those some thoughts, won’t you?

Oh, also, tonight, I’ll be doing another one of those Google Hangout online events. Normally there won’t be so many in a row, but Leannan Sidhe are trying to figure out what times are best, so I’m making all the ones I can. We had like 20 participants last time, so it was fun once we got past the technical hurdles. Watch here for the hangout link, sometime around 6pm Cascadian/Pacific, 9pm Eastern time. Hope to see you there!

So I’ve survived my first small brush with the larger YouTube audience with that live video of the Skyrim song (Open Mic Night at the Winking Skeever) I posted last week, and I think I came out I think okay. Many more likes than dislikes, noticable spillover to other performance videos, hopefully one or two of those viewers made it here! (Hiya!)

That was kind of scary, because YouTube is merciless, but coming out okay is good. Almost three times as many likes as dislikes, and over 400 views – it’s not exactly viral, but it’s not bad.

If you missed it, it’s here. It’s about this NPC guard you run into while playing OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN, omg, and he’s always complaining about his lot in life. This is kind of him going down to the inn (The Winking Skeever, in Solitude) and doing an open mic. Because that’s the kind of thing I find funny: briefly glimpsed and then crushed hopes and dreams. XD

Anyway, have some links:

Nick Mamatas has a really interesting post on a certain type of story structure he sees a lot.

This is an article about a contest to find exploits in Chrome, but that’s not why I’m linking it. I’m linking it because what the exploit does. Screenshot at URL. I lulzed. ^_^

James Marsters gives an interesting interview, 15 years after the premiere of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.

This is going viral right now. If it’s not already. It’s in Portland, which, well, really, there is no part of that which is not Portland.

Have a good weekend, guys – you doin’ anything? Me, I’m going to a show, Bekah Kelso down in at Sidhehaven, where I played back in November. I’ve never heard her, but I know a lot of people who recommend her music. Road trip!