The Heart Before the Course (on recording and releasing “Troubadork”) With the exception of cigarettes, there are not many commitments that I finish to the hard end. No matter what may come of this venture into legitimate recording, I will at least be proud to take the fact that I stuck with this project until I felt the satisfaction of holding a real, bar-coded CD in my hand. Hell, even the online journal entries that I began a year and a half ago about my recording sessions dwindled after some five or six weeks. However, now I realize that it was not the documentation of the events that were occurring in the moment that were important insomuch as the end result, one that I am truly proud of. To really appreciate—at least for my own narcissistic purposes—the meaning and personal importance of this post-album reflection, I must take myself back to the start of this project and reminisce on how this album came to be. Even as I sit here now trying to formulate the next sentence I find myself with new eyes and mind, changed and somewhat stronger from the days when I first said to myself, “I really need to record this.” Any previous attempts at “recording” had been sophomoric at best. Without any proper money or demand from others, my earlier tries at recording were done with just a four-track recorder, an unreliable desktop computer, basic audio freeware, and a cheap Radio Shack microphone. I spent countless hours doing take after take on borrowed instruments and a drum machine. This dates back to the days even before I made the transition to be a comedic songwriter. It is really not worth expounding on those songs as they do not really hold much weight in reference to what has become this album. Sure, there are the early signs of my panache for rhyme and subject matter, but this writing is more about the recording than the songwriting. My first “album,” "Don’t Trip Acid at Disneyworld," in all its self-made, Avery label-disc-sticker glory was merely a collection of the funny songs that my small but dedicated fan base wanted to hear outside of my coked-up live shows. I ended up doing some unique things on that project such as the “Jon’s Dance Party….” tracks and my “hidden” track, but mostly that was just accessory to the material that I had written and performed live for many years. In terms of audio quality, the end result is awful. I cringe when those close friends who have copies tell me that they have shared it with others. Today, I am not at all proud of it, but hey, we all have to start somewhere, right? So then what? What happened after that? Well, I sell the CD at my shows, play live concerts for a few more years, then begin to feel the heavy onslaught of burnout. In perfect ADD fashion, I shelve my music and begin to focus more on sketch comedy and writing my childhood memoir (one of the only other projects I successfully completed). I would play an occasional gig here and there, but mainly music had taken a backseat. I finish my self-published book and take over as director for a sketch comedy group, all but extinguishing my desire to be musical. The events in my personal life perfectly iced the cake of my endeavors as I ended up rekindling the flame of a high school sweetheart, moving to the suburbs, and committing to a “normal life” of yard work and quiet evenings of "Friends" DVDs and "Dancing with the Stars." My only personal salvation apart from landscaping a backyard garden and stone footpath (yet another unfinished project) was to sit in my basement man cave playing video games and listening to music. I can’t count the times I would play a CD, hear a song, and think, “That would be a cool song to play an acoustic version of.” To much my girlfriend’s disdain, such thoughts and imaginations were always accompanied by frequent visits to the adjacent garage where I would smoke pot and stare at my cluttered old furniture and boxes of items that were not proper for this house, this life. Each heavy exhalation of smoke served its purpose to mask over what I was not yet ready to become. I was fooling myself one one-hit at a time. Finally—thankfully—everything resulted in a timid breakup and being asked to leave. My security was wrecked. I had not just me but two dogs to care for. Suddenly, I was on borrowed time. I had to uproot my life yet again and relocate. Somehow under an ever-present cloud of marijuana smoke and drunkenness I went into survival mode (something I’ve sadly come to expect since my parents’ premature deaths) and found myself back in the city. I lucked into an apartment not far from my old stomping grounds at Frederick’s Music Lounge. Now closed, it was the bar where I got started a decade ago; coming up through the open-mic ranks and eventually hosting along with my own booked gigs. During my exile in the suburbs I had lost touch with many of my friends and fellow musicians and burned a few bridges in the process. My first order of business was to reestablish those ties. Many of my old open-mic cohorts—some making their debut on Fred’s stage on nights I hosted—had worked and progressed in the St. Louis music scene, forming bands, recording albums, getting press, etc. Thankfully, they continued the popular weekly open mics in many other bars and venues during this time. However, the dynamic had definitely changed. Now, as a spectator and not a performer, I had lost what modicum of notoriety I had some years prior. On a good night, someone might verify their knowledge of me as that "Becky & Wanda" or "Dave Sinclair" guy, a reference to a couple of my earlier songs about local St. Louis celebrities . Even though I was still determined to focus on writing fiction, poetry and scripts, the aforementioned events forged a perfect storm of sorts to bring me back to music. I was back in the environment, back in circles of friends and networking, back single and somewhat jaded, back in my normal life. I never gave much thought to subject matter when it came time to take my guitar from its case for the first time in nearly two years. It sounds cliché, but the songs just began to happen. I think subconsciously I knew I didn’t want to write about silly, fictional premises about porn stars or kitchen appliances possessed by dead hip-hop artists. I was a little older and a little wiser. Now in my thirties, I wanted to try to be at least a bit more ambitious yet still keep my style and sense of humor. So much of my old catalog was portraits that poked fun of others be they real or imagined characters. I was still feeding that beast in my sketch writing, so there was no need to continue it with music. I eventually had to ask myself that one question every writer musk ask, “What do you know?” Well, I know about depression, substance abuse, selfishness, mortality and low self-esteem among other cheery topics. I had started seeing a therapist off and on both before and after my stint in the burbs, but the sessions weren’t really doing anything positive for me. Even with a $40 co-pay each week, it was not enough for me to be complexly honest with myself. It was then I decided to take that snickering finger that I pointed at the subjects in my earlier songs and turn it 180 degrees inward to myself. My first hurdle to overcome was trying to figure out why anyone would want to listen to a song that would inevitably be the musical equivalent to a pity party. I even remember writing almost that exact sentiment down in a notebook. I nearly scrapped the entire idea and started to again go back to just being witty or cute, but I kept going back to that notebook and kept thinking about that phrase, “pity party.” The connotations of each word are a wonderful contradiction. Pity is such a negative emotion, but a party (unless it’s a search party) is anything but negative. And that is when the challenge first presented itself to me: WHAT IF I could write a song that was so musically fun and engaging, yet lyrically abrasive and downtrodden that listeners would almost feel a sense of guilt for tapping their feet, singing along, or in some positive way enjoying it? THERE’S the humor, like a clown at a funeral. That would be something! Very shortly thereafter, I had written, Chiggers on my Nuts, the first track on the album and rightfully so since it is a song about coming back into the fold and trying to figure out what in the hell I’m going to now write songs about. From there, the gates opened up and in the span of a couple of months had seven new songs. I got back into the open-mic rotation to test out the new material and was met with much praise. Soon people began to ask if I had anything recorded. Timing is everything in comedy, and I guess that also holds true with comedy music. I had worked with Kevin Gagnepain at the same company for a couple of years. He was the bassist for Stir, a local band that got signed in the nineties by Aware Records and later picked up by Capitol. Even though Stir is no more, he still performs in several bands, most notably, he is the man behind El Monstero, the sensational Pink Floyd tribute which includes members from other local-boys-make-good bands like the Urge. I knew he played music and he knew that I played but that was about it. Then, at a company function he heard me play a few songs and was impressed. I don’t remember exactly how or when the proposition came to be except that he expressed to me that he wanted to be a producer, had purchased a lot of equipment, and needed a guinea pig. Since I had absolutely no expendable funds for studio and production costs, it seemed like an apt fit. We had our first session on Sunday, September 7th, 2008. Man, so much has changed in our lives since that first afternoon in his then-time home. With his friend and bass tech, Craig Sheehan, we spent a few hours with me seated in front of a compression microphone recording any song that I was conceivably thinking of recording for the project. At the end of the day, we had laid down the blueprints of 16 songs, the equivalent of a survey crew’s findings on the preliminary phase of a construction project. The initial playback was anything better than I had ever recorded in any of my previous attempts, and I remember pleading that Kevin burn me a disc of the session. He graciously complied, and I played the disc of these naked skeletons in my car for weeks. Slowly, but surely. That is the best phrase to describe the recording process. Most bands or artists schedule a week or two of studio time and do their best to lay down everything within that timeframe due to the costs. This endeavor was a little different. Since Kevin was preoccupied with his other bands and life (and rightfully so), the time between sessions could be weeks before we would meet again. Also, schedules with the other musicians would often conflict. I learned very quickly that it was going to be a long time before everything would start to come together. I had to keep assuring my friends that we were indeed getting work done, but I feared that behind their nods and smiles were completely valid thoughts of doubt considering my track record of big ideas and little follow-through. Sure, I was anxious to get everything done as soon as possible, but remember, this was not costing me a dime, so I really did not have any room to start making demands. Most of the serious work happened in 2009. I was able to secure friends and fellow musicians on my end who agreed to be involved, and I’m sure Kevin phoned-in more than his fair share of favors to others to come down to play. In our email correspondence at work, he would give me updates of how the recording process was going. He’d tell me that he was getting so-and-so from (insert notable St. Louis band here) to come by and lay down guitar tracks. That was another undeserving perk that I had in working with Kevin; He knew people. His history in the arena of St. Louis musicians garnered him respect to bring in some very talented musicians. In our discussions about the songs, no idea was ever too far-fetched for Kevin. If I would have suggested a flugelhorn for a song, then Kevin was likely just a couple of calls away from getting someone to schlep out to O’Fallon, MO to come down and record it. By the Fall of 2009, we had a decent rough mix of “Troubadork.” The original sixteen songs I had recorded a year earlier had been pared down to a solid eleven. There was never any real conflict over the content between Kevin and I. Part of me wishes that I could share some dramatic, paper-throwing, shout-ridden argument we had over a certain song or arrangement, but that never really happened. I respected him as a musician and producer. If he wanted to chop up and revamp one of my songs, then so be it. I knew he knew what he was doing. I’ll take the time now to share a few more trivial facts about “Troubadork. First, the album title. I had several ideas that I came up with. One was, “Morganfard,” a take on the street Morgan Ford which is the street near where I currently live in the city. Since I began the inception and writing process here after my move I thought it apropos. The misspelling gives it a humorous slant on the pronunciation with the “St. Louis” accent. My other candidate was, “Luckie Butt.” This tentative title was nothing more than a textual application of what I envisioned the cover art to be: a close-up photograph of my dog Luckie’s anus. To me that was funny and in perfect fashion to have spent so much time, passion and dedication to a project and then have THAT as the cover. Also, it would visually add to the happy downer attitude I was going for musically. Just think of how funny it would be to have someone say, “Hey, I’ve got a copy of this great album,” then hand over a CD displaying that as a cover image. I also pulled some artistic weight from the fact that I was in fact truly lucky to have this entire album recorded. However, I soon realized the difficulty that would require someone to agree to shoot such a picture, plus the fact that I would be exploiting one of my dearest companions ruled that out. “Troubadork” is just a play on words. A “troubadour” is a term that dates back to the Middle Ages that denotes one who is a wandering lyrical poet or musician. Mainly, a troubadour’s work consisted of compositions on the theme of love. Back in my early pre-comedy days as a songwriter, I spent a semester in college in London. One of the clubs that I frequented was called the Troubadour, so there is some sentimental tie-ins. Because of my current situation in life leading up to the recording, I definitely thought of myself as “wandering’ both literally and figuratively. Slightly changing the spelling and adding the “K” to the term solidified the air of self-deprecation that I was going for. Clever, right? There is also the artwork. Even back in 2008 I was already pondering the possibilities of what the actual finished CD would look like. After deciding on “Troubadork” as the title, my mind ran endlessly with concept art. One idea was to have the cover image of a photograph of me in a random field standing beside a dead and partially decomposed clown. I would be holding a stick and poking it. My body language and expression would be suggesting that I was coyly looking around to see if anyone was watching my discovery. The inside panels would feature a crude photo essay of my dragging the clown corpse away. The back cover would be a photograph of the clown propped up in a chair, and just a few feet away I would also be seated with my guitar longingly serenading it. Originally, Kevin liked the idea and even volunteered to play the role of the clown. However, because of time restrictions we decided to go with the current cover, a photo of me outside a delapidated house out near Missouri wine country that my girlfriend and I discovered on our way to a bed and breakfast. The back panel of the photograph of the chair is an image that struck me from the day it was first shot. My friend Anastasia is a very talented photographer. I met her shortly after my return to the city. She was in multiple bands as a singer, but also did photo work for other artists. Long before “Troubadork” was ever conceived, she agreed to a photo session for me. This was another marketing tool that I knew I needed for bookers and press if I wanted to get back into the St. Louis music scene. We spent an afternoon shooting pictures at an abandoned crumbling stonecutting factory in South St. Louis City. Later, we went to Off-Broadway, one of the most popular area music venues with the intention to shoot some mock live shots on their stage. Upstairs among the storage rooms is a small room that at the time was in process of being converted to a photography darkroom. We decided to just be creative with what we had at our disposal and shoot some pictures there. Inside was the chair. Anastasia liked the dingy lighting and the color and thought it would be good if I had a few shots in the chair. She needed to experiment with her camera settings so she took a few test shots of the chair before I sat down. Much to my surprise she did not delete those shots of the empty chair and when we first viewed them I told her to save them. There was just something about that damn chair sitting against the wall that I loved. After the photo shoot, I printed out a glossy 8.5” X 11” photo of the chair and put it on my refrigerator. It hung as an unexplainable totem there during the time that I was writing my new songs. When it came time to record, I took the picture from the fridge and brought it to Kevin’s house where it lived on a music stand during the entire recording process. I told him on the first day, “I know this sounds weird, but THIS is what I want the album to sound like.” To this day, I don’t know if he got it or he was just humoring me, but he nodded and agreed. Now, in retrospect I really like the empty chair picture because it came to symbolize the project, at least in the recording aspect. It is a solemn, yet welcoming image that is inviting someone to sit down and participate, which is how the process ended up unfolding. Now here I sit a year and a half later. The master copy will be in my hands in the just a day or two. The artwork is done. Now all that is left is to send everything off to the duplication company I have selected and patiently wait for a box to arrive at my workplace. I guess now I need to ask myself some serious questions. Am I happy with it? You bet your a** I’m happy with it! This album is better than anything I’ve ever recorded. Hell, I would have been satisfied with the live recording that was done during my first session. Has it changed me? I’m not sure. I know I have changed during this time, but was it a result of this album or not I do not know. I do know that it has been my one constant throughout the past few years. It has given my something to strive for and not give up on like so many other failed projects. Personally, this album has acted as a catharsis of sorts. I was to come to terms with my problems and not just identify but also repair them as a result of this recording. If overcoming my issues with drugs, alcohol and depression would have meant that I needed to sew a quilt, then I would have a quilt right now that I am extremely proud of. However, I am a songwriter and a comedian and not a quilter so this is what I’ve got. I told myself that if I was the same man that I represent in these songs, then the whole point of the album would miss the mark. This is a project of understanding, redemption, and most importantly, honesty. I would be a hypocrite if I was singing a song about how painful it is to be trapped in a life of addiction if I was currently stoned out of my gourd. So did my life changes complement the album or vice versa. I’m not totally sure, but all that matters is that I am now on a much better path. I’ve never put much faith in fate. Hell, I’ve never put much “faith” in anything since I am totally opposed to the concept. However, I must say it is interesting to at least consider that a week or two into my first recording session that I met Erin. Throughout this entire process she has been a stable, calm assuring force that has not only cast aside any doubt I may have had about the validity or importance of the album, but she has also been a constant contributor in her own special way. She has sat through numerous rough playbacks and offered her opinion from everything from how the album sounds to how it will eventually look. More importantly, she has kept me on task. She sacrificed many opportunities to spend time together in order for me to have time in the studio. She put herself out to take care of my dogs because I was going to be late from recording. Even with the knowledge that the bulk of these songs were written before we knew each other and that most deal with my insecurities, addictions, past romantic relationships and personal downfalls, she never once thought twice about assisting me. I think it is fairly safe to say that just as much as Kevin is responsible for this album coming to be, Erin is equally as responsible for its existence. As I wait for the CD to arrive, a whole new set of questions and challenges take shape. Will people like it? Will it sell? Will bookers and music publications take notice? I guess what I really have to ask myself is does any of that really matter? Even if I find myself a year from now sitting with several boxes of unsold “Troubadork” copies on a shelf in my closet I will still feel a sense of achievement. Back when I slaved over scratchy-sounding four-track recordings I always imagined what those songs would sound like if they were actually of studio quality. Even though now the content and overall musical philosophy is different I am still excited to finally hold a copy of a CD in my hand that I wrote and recorded. So without exhausting what I have already committed to print in my liner notes, thanks to all of the extremely talented musicians who took time out of their own busy, more lucrative schedules to polish my turds. Thanks to the engineering geeks who answered many of Kevin’s voicemails when he was struggling with what to plug in where or how to overcome the current Protools error that was popping up. Thanks to all of my friends and fans who have dealt with my baggage and drama over the past ten years. All of you are partially responsible for this project, so if this thing tanks I am holding all of you personally responsible.