Joel, my relentless, uncompromising, perfectionist producer and co-writer, has spent the past few months doing what he does best: “refining”. The man is a master audio distiller who has been locked in his production studio tweaking, polishing and generally obsessing over how best to take the past 20+ years of our creative collaboration as recorded and convert it into a compelling and distinct live sound. As usual, he’s making our music even better in the process.
Joel always sounds great onstage, so his half of our rehearsal results is no surprise. He’s a talented multi-instrumentalist and whether teasing out a sensitive ballad on the keyboard or wailing with his big pedal effect box one of my sea shanties. Me, well…I’m a work in progress. But we’ve had two solid weeks of rehearsal sessions, each 3-4 hours, and Joel says I’m “way ahead” of where he thought I would be considering my story of the past few years. How time flies:
· In May of 2014, I was officially diagnosed with mouth cancer…exactly two weeks after we’d JUST finished recording the last of my vocal tracks for “Hidin’ Downisland”.
· In late July of 2014, I finished the 3 rounds of chemotherapy and the 35 daily radiation treatments and began what I look back on my “100 Days in Hell”
· In October 2014, we shot the first album video, “So Good Then”, with me 100% voiceless, lip-syncing myself like some sort of protozoan version of Milli Vanilli…shortly thereafter being told I was cancer-free.
The miracle of all this is not lost on me, and the opportunity for this rusty old singer who hasn’t gigged in years to once again get out there and share our music in live venues is, to me, one of the greatest gifts I have ever received. I look forward to seeing you when we finally start playing out again. J