My good friend, and the newest member of the Square Peg Alliance, Ben Shive has been working on a masterpiece of a record for the last few years, and people, it is almost done. And you need to own it. In the baddest of ways.
Not only is he the finest piano player I know, but one of the finest songwriters, and producers, and arrangers, and hair stylists. You can preorder his record at the Rabbit Room now. It will be released on June 17 and if you preorder you get two extra tracks and an exclusive digital booklet. But the biggest reason to preorder is to support Ben and allow him to finish the masterpiece that is the Ill-Tempered Klavier.
CLICK HERE to go to the Store, then choose the Ben Shive tab.
Oh, and if you don’t want to take my word for it, take a minute to hear from a few other of Ben’s biggest fans…
No score and three years ago… was a very painful day. Just in case you’re keeping track. Maybe someday I’ll have a party.
So yesterday was drums and bass day on my new project. Andy Hubbard and Aaron Sands were the backbone, Andy Hunt was tweaking the knobs, and Neilson and I were getting them to do whatever we wanted. It was fun.
I still can’t get my iMovie working (I apparently deleted something important when I moved from my old computer to this one) so there’s more to come, but here are a few photos…
Andy Hubbard
Andy Hubbard’s evil twin
Mr. Aaron “Fingers McGillicutty” Sands
Neilson, Andy Hunt and Nate (assisting)
What happened to Nate when he had to leave Calypso Cafe, where were eating lunch, because somebody locked the door wrong, set off the alarm, and the cops were at the studio. Andy Hunt was in charge of placing his order, which included two sides. This is, in case you didn’t notice, a chicken sandwich with potato chips AND tortilla chips. Yummy.
This thing scares me
All right, it’s back to work for me. I’m working on the answers to the questions you sent in a couple days ago. Stay tuned. More soon.
I’ve been learning a lot these days, or it seems, I’ve been unlearning a lot these days.
I’m usually a talker. I have a lot to say. You’ve probably noticed, if you read this blog for a while, that I haven’t had that much to say recently.
It’s because I’ve been trying to listen. And I’ve been hearing a lot about freedom, and my own glaring lack of it.
Raised in midwestern Christianity I’ve been taught to be scared of things like knowing yourself and being yourself. But I’ve believed a lot of things that were untrue, and one by one, painfully but wonderfully, they’re being ripped from me.
The most important thing I’m learning is that I’m valuable. If you read my lyrics over the past decade, it should be no surprise to you that I’m a person who often finds himself despising who he is. But that has to stop.
I’m realizing that if I believe in a God who created me and loved me, then I ought to live like it.
I can’t continue to feel like I’m worthless. I’m not.
I can’t continue to be afraid of who I am. I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
I can’t continue to be scared of my passions. I’m made in the image of a loving artist.
I can’t be scared of what somebody else thinks. Not because I believe in myself so much that I have the power within me, but because I have power within me that’s greater than me, and I believe in that.
I can’t be scared of my own story. Until I know it and understand it I’ll be controlled and defined by things I might not even be aware of.
I can’t continue to hide from the people I love when I feel I don’t deserve them or I’m not good enough. I need to be with them, for them and for me, knowing that who I am is worthwhile, even if my actions, thoughts or emotions tell me otherwise.
To be present is no easy thing sometimes, but anything less is a lie and dishonors the people that I love and the things I’ve been called to do.
I’ll spend the rest of my life learning what this looks like in real life, but now that I’ve glimpsed it, felt the wind of real freedom blowing through what’s left of my hair, there’s no going back.
Somebody suggested this, and I thought it might be a good idea. We’re going to do a bit of a “Reader Mailbag” type thing. Do you have any questions about what’s behind a song, a guitar sound, some opinion we’ve discussed? Leave your questions as comments on this post. Thanks! Hope you guys have a great week.
I go back in the studio tomorrow to cut drums and bass, so I’ll have photos and, if I can get my iMovie working correctly in time, some video too. Stay tuned.
Well, Neilson and I have finished up our first week of working together. We’re doing four tunes, and they’re turning out great. Tuesday we’ll go back in and cut drums and bass, but right now it’s just some guitars, some vocals, a few finger snaps and a lot of Garett’s thumpings and bangings. And that’s a good thing.
Here are a few hastily taken pictures…
Garett and a few of his toys…
Me, enjoying not having to push every button…
Neilson at work, me backseat producing. (It’s a hard habit to stop!)
I can’t wait for you guys to hear this stuff. Hopefully you will soon. I feel like I haven’t been able to get as much done here on my blog because I’ve been working so much on other content for the new website. It’s going to be a lot of fun. So thanks for your patience.
I’ve had two days in the studio with Neilson Hubbard now, and it’s going well. We’ve been deciding which songs to pursue and then outlining them, getting the keys, tempos, grooves and main melodies down.
These songs are very different for me. They’re very, dare I say it, “pop”, but naturally. I’ve been relating more to simple songs recently, more Tom Petty, less Radiohead, and that’s where these tunes are sitting. And I really like it. But it’s different. We’ll see where they go from here.
Garett is coming in today to lay down some of his percussion-y goodness. Instead of putting down the major drum kit right away we’re going to start with layers of perc rhythm. We want the foundation to move naturally so that the drums get to be more dynamic on top, without having to worry quite so much about being the metronome/heartbeat. Should be a lot of fun. It’s a bit more of a Peter Gabriel/Paul Simon approach.
I think, at the end of the day, we’re trying to do with my music what this guy does with jumping out the windows of buildings. And now it’s time for a family trip to the grocery store before heading back to the studio for Day 3. I’ll try to take some pictures today.
An excerpt from “Bound for Canaan” by Fergus M Bordewich, a book about the Underground Railroad.
Conductors who were in a hurry, or desperate, sometimes literally flung fugitives onto a passing ship, and hoped for the best. In one such instance, a steamboat captain named Chapman, en route from Cleveland to Buffalo, was hailed about three miles offshore by four men in a small boat, two of them merchants with whom he had done business the day before, and the others black strangers.
One of the whites threw on board a purse containing fifteen dollars in silver, and asked Chapman to land the black men in Canada, telling him to take his pay out of it, and to give the passengers what was left. The sight of the new passengers didn’t please the captain, who, imbued with the racial prejudices of his time and place, found them “very black, coarse in feature and build, stupid in expression, and apparently incapable of any mental excitement except fear.”
Fortunately, however, Chapman was a man with a heart, and he ran in near the Canadian shore, and landed the men on a beach, where they were met by the agents of the underground… …Chapman handed the men the entire fifteen dollars, and told them they were free.
What he then witnessed startled the captain.
“They seemed to be transformed; a new light shone in their eyes, their tongues were loosed, they laughed and cried, prayed and sang praises, fell upon the ground and kissed it over and over. I thought to myself, ‘My God! Is it possible that human beings are kept in such a condition that they are made perfectly happy by being landed and left alone in a strange land with no human beings or habitations in sight, with the prospect of never seeing a friend or relative?’ ”
“Before I stepped upon my deck I had determined to never again be identified with any party that sustained the system of slavery.”
———
This is a powerful story, and it’s also a powerful metaphor. We are all slaves to something. What or who is your master? What would your freedom look like? How would it affect the people who saw it, like this captain? Is it worth it to pursue it? How will you?
My weeks are starting to be busy in a new way right now. A lot of business-y things are going on and so it’s been a lot of meetings, a lot of brainstorming, a lot of making of lists (and checking them twice). It’s all very good stuff, and I think I’m just going to lay it all out when it’s a little closer to complete, but it’s enough to say that we’re trying to get the Andy O machine off the ground in the next year, and I’m really excited.
I’ve been trying to find time to write new songs recently. It hasn’t been easy to shift from the business to the creative, the left to the right side of the brain, but I have a few things I’m excited about.
I’m going to go in the studio with Neilson Hubbard starting next week, which should be fun. He produced Matthew Perryman Jones, Glen Phillips and Emily Deloach, and is going to help be another set of ears for me on these tunes. We’re just going to start with a handful of songs and see where they take us. I’ll keep you posted next week. Probably very posted actually.
I’ve also started carving out some time this summer for Letters to the Editor, Vol. 2, so if you get a good song idea, write it down. I probably won’t ask for them until June, at least, but I thought I ought to get it on your radar.
- I played with JJ and Dave Heller last night at the Exit/In here in Nashville, and we opened for Chris Sligh of last season’s American Idol.
- The new AndrewOsenga.com is getting close to finished, and it’s looking (and working) killer. Can’t wait to show it to you.
- I love the new Colbie Caillat song “Realize” just as much as I loved her first one. It’s amazing, and hopeful, to me that a good, actual song can still get played on the radio. I didn’t think they still played real music these days.
- You ever get that feeling that you’re supposed to be somewhere, doing something, but you can’t remember what? I have that feeling all the time.
Ok, now I’m going to go try and turn off the business and finish a couple tunes.
It’s Tuesday now. The final show of this leg of the Overdressed tour was Saturday night, and it was a great show. It was the smallest room we’ve played a full show in possibly since I joined the band five and a half years ago. And it was really fun. It just felt like there were people everywhere, with a balcony that stretched around both sides of the stage. And it was Illinois, a psuedo-hometown crowd for me. A good way to end it.
The Cubs game was a great experience. Our seats were, literally, the last row of the furthest section out beyond third plate. Here was the view behind us…
Jeff and I freezing our collective toucas off in the wind of the Windy City…
Cliff, Josh and I out front…
And our friend Ryan and I… He came along this past weekend to shoot video and stills of this great tour. He was a blast to be out on the road with and a few of the things I’ve seen so far have been amazing…
Now that the tour is over, I’m about to dive in nose-deep, (or ankles-deep, depending on how you dive I guess…) into songwriting for a new project. I’m going to do some experimenting with a couple different people to help me with a bigger vision, and I’m looking forward to that. More on that subject as it becomes clear.
For today, though, I’m taking the day off to be with my family. I took the girls to the zoo this morning, where we met up with Todd and his son. Baby alligators are awesome.
Oh, and the Cubs won 13-1. Pretty great game to start with.
