Cracksman Betty, alternate history songs of riot and revolution, is live on Bandcamp now. The album of not-entirely-traditional songs we never really intended to make is online, 13 tracks on the web, including “The S-100 Bus” (also available as a free download) as a bonus.

I really said the best of what I think I have to say on Friday. This is CRIME and the Forces of Evil – or various subsets thereof – not taking everything quite so seriously. It’s an alternate history lesson, it’s kicking back in the studio just to have fun, it’s riot girls dyking our way around Vancouver starting fights (not that I’d know anything about that, aheh), it’s cyborgs doing it for the lulz…

…and it’s kicking out some good old alternate-world Cascadian piracy, riot, and revolution folk.

It’s also a good lead-in for the Faerie Blood/Bone Walker soundtrack we’ll hopefully be doing in a couple of months; that’ll be somewhere between this and Dick Tracy Must Die in tone, depending upon where you are in the books. 😀

This new album leads off with a brand new track, “Song for a Blockade Runner/High Barbaree,” something you’ve never heard. It’s a new song, with new music, telling a different version of the High Barbaree story, one with enough references to the original to mention it – but it’s from the pirates’ side, and set in the Republic of Cascadia’s 1973-1974 war for independence. Hit PLAY now:

Oh, if you bought the pre-remaster Cracksman Betty for money, at a show or something? Contact me. Send me a photo with your CD. I’ll throw you a download code.

I worry a little about this album, I admit it. We’re mostly about the elfmetal, and the rage. This has elements of that, but it’s a different angle, less complex, and absolutely as sedate as we’ll ever get. I don’t want people to think we’re losing our edge. Din of Thieves will disprove that in 2013, but that’s a year away.

Despite that, as much to my surprise as anybody else’s, I’m convinced of this album. My beta listeners certainly were. If you forgot the reactions I quoted, here they are again:

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

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

I hope you do, too. Hit PLAY. Find out. Tell your friends.

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!

Two big announcements coming on Monday morning. One’s already up, in audio form. 😀

I’ve posted the DIY video on making cheap acoustic sound baffles up on YouTube! Two lessons:

1. iMovie is seriously not capable of handling videos this long (50m, from a 1h37m rough-cut) – everything takes literally 2-7 seconds to select or move or anything. So it’s CLICK wait 3 seconds [highlighted] MOVE MOUSE TO DRAG OBJECT wait 7 seconds for object to move partly there wait 4 more seconds for object to move further to the wrong place RAEG.
2. YouTube takes forEVER to process videos this long, omg. I still don’t have preview graphics. XD

I wanted to do looping and sync sound but had to abandon that idea and do live sound because iMovie choked too hard. But the live sound is okay. Plus, birdsong! I was working half-outdoors.

Beta listeners, if you’re listening, please let me know about those recordings – thanks! Everybody else, don’t forget the show on Monday. Have a good weekend, everybody!

This post is part of The DIY Studio Buildout Series, all on building out a home recording studio.

Working on a DIY video for how to make your own studio sound baffles the way I do. I needed to make a new one (or two, or three…) for nwcMUSIC next year if I want to do that “Find your Instrument” workshop again, so it seemed the time. Who knew editing the video would take almost as long as both shooting it and actually making a baffle?

Reminders:

• My guest appearance on The House of Julie, on Monday night at 7:30!
• The stats say Week 2 is Dead Week for Kickstarter projects. Anna’s just hit week two. ARE YOU A STATISTIC? ARE YOU? HUH?!
• Leannan Sidhe made their $1000 goal, and now have a new incentive for 25% – you get to pick a song for Roses and Ruin. Check that shit out.

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

Oh guys seriously I did not think Cracksman Betty could sound this good. Not what’s online now; the re-engineered/re-mastered version that’s in progress. It’s always going to be a bit of a jumble as an album, having been originally just a place to put all my trad-o’-the-week/fortnight/month songs, but it’s so much better a jumble than I ever thought it would or even could be.

And I don’t mean just individually as songs, I mean as an album. It’s actually starting to hang together as a work. I don’t know what to call it – Alternate History Folk, maybe? But that’s awfully long. Regardless, it has a form now. It is shadowy and rough, but it is a beast, of genus undetermined.

I’m even thinking of asking Kickstarter if it wants to pay for mastering. No lie.

Did I mention there’s a new track? I don’t think I mentioned there’s a new track. There is! “Song for a Blockade Runner/High Barbaree.” I’m really excited about it.

Of all the reset-in-Cascadia traditional folk, this is the most changed from its original; it makes “Columbia” sound unedited. “High Barbaree” is about taking down pirates; “Song for a Blockade Runner” is the other side of that story, in 1973, during the Cascadian War for Independence, a goddamn hardscrabble pirate and smuggler anthem. It’s new music, too – not so much a traditional-song rendition as a long-lost fraternal twin, come in from the cold Salish sea.

12 tracks on the CD, if I print one. 13 tracks online, with “S-100 Bus,” which has to be online only for licensing reasons. Eleven songs, plus two “radio edit” versions as bonus tracks.

None of this is going live quite yet – I’m still twiddling bits and I want to redub another line of vocals. But – it’s coming. Soon. 😀

PS: Anna’s fantasy novel Kickstarter just hit 45% and she’s dropped an excerpt from “Blood of the Land,” another Warder universe story, as a teaser. She’s really hoping to hit 50% this weekend. Check it out!