8/30/08 EP doneness part 2-zap mama


for those of you who do not know zap mama, i BEG of you, GO GO!!!, listen to everything you can find. the woman is insanely amazing. period.

"east to the west, we're all looking for the best..."
boy, does that resonate today. i've moved west to east, and east to west now, traversing thousands and thousands of miles, crisscrossing my way up and down, back and forth, to make different homes. new homes. old homes. multiple homes. maybe not looking for the best, but looking for something no doubt.
it is so good to be here in california now. it is. so. good. that is never the question. but, as the days pass and the months pass, and all of sudden the summer ends. i remember more and more frequently just how home all of the other places i've lived still feel to me. charlottesville and williamstown will forever be homes and i'm sure i will be visiting them both for a long long time. sometimes their pull causes achey achey sighs, and i wish more than anything that i could somehow physically be in both towns as well as here near my favorite bridge, all at the same time. those moments are hard ones. mostly though these connections make me realize even more deeply just how fortunate i am to have and feel HOME in more than one place. that's a gift. i feel like i am a homemaker of the country, passing through different apartments like moving from one room of a house to another.

the 10,000 oceans EP is done. 1,000 copies are now living in my closet, occupying space that hardly exists. (i already climb on top of brenna's yellow filing cabinet every night in order to retrieve my bed sheets.) having these copies close, and in my own hands, brings relief that is indescribable. in the big picture the EP's doneness seems like a small feet, one that probably could've been done much faster years ago, but personally this moment is like winning my own private olympic event.
years ago i lost control of, and as a consequence all of the copies of, my first album, good alien. to this day i have no idea where the cds live. i assume they have been long forgotten, left behind in the back of a damp free union Va basement or some other black hole kind of space. i've been toting 15 or so copies of the album along with me from home to home for the last 7 years, using them sparingly and keeping them close. so, in an effort to be more independent this time, and admittedly a little over-protective, i plan on keeping the EPs no farther away than the next room, or in this case, closet.

the 10,000 oceans EP is a product of my last three homes. it is a product of my three loves. there is Va, and Ma, and Ca, ALL over it. in the summer of 2004, right before packing up and leaving charlottesville for a fresh new england start, stuart gunter, mark goldstein, and i spent a few weeks in mark's sandalwood studios. the result of those weeks working together on some of my newer tunes was a 4 song EP that i quickly started referring to as 10,000 oceans. (a stolen snip-it from the first track angels provided the name.)i had hopes of getting some art work together as soon as i landed in williamstown Ma, and was sure that the EP would be pressed and available within months. but, as insane and topsy-turvying as moves can be, my life was quickly thrown upside down and the EP, along with music making in general, took a back seat to a new job, a new town, and a whole new set of priorities. (like running and grocery shopping. you know, the really important stuff.) eventually, after a year or so of settling into my new home i decided to dust off the 10,000 oceans project and home-make a batch of copies. i found an old photo that i had taken back in college of dylan's beach just outside of SF, and it was a perfect image for a "cover". so, with the help of a glue stick, brenna's polaroid camera, and a big box of black digipaks, i started making batches of the EP by hand, mostly in front of the t.v. during dinner, the night before a gig. when not glue sticking i did manage to write a little here and there and at a certain point came up with the tune something great- a prelude of things to come, if you will, that eventually would serve as a sort of finale type song, and snag the 5th and final spot on the EP.
my efforts proved to be funky and memorable for a time, but eventually the EP home operation made me crazy, and really over glue. it may have ruined arts and crafts for me altogether. once again the EP was left to be pondered over, and was almost entirely forgotten as the worth-wild, really good sounding project it is.- forgotten by me i mean. friends and family were always quick to remind me that it needed to be out there and available.
so.

now, it is.
4 and a half years after stuart and mark and i slapped walls and played pillows like toms, the EP has landed back on the west side, traveling far from the eastern corner of the country. i think it took a little Ca, interstate 80, fast lane speed to whip me into shape, hire a printer and DO IT ALREADY. so, i did. i found great people at command productions, convinced my dear friend and fellow musician todd to write a bass part for something great, and taught myself some rudimentary photoshop to snazzy-up the 10,000 oceans EP art work.

yay.

it's done.

phew

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