Springin’ in the Slush

March sure came in like a lion this year. After a very mild 2nd half of February it turned cold and we had two major back-to-back snowstorms on Saturday and then Tuesday. Jeannie and the kids ended up missing two days of work/school, while I worked at home in between shovelling out. Now we’re well on the way to having melted away but hey, it’s already the third day of spring. And it’s back to the cold in the days a head.

The kids have been busy with shows and performances. The first weekend of March Lizzy had her school musical called The Boyfriend, in which twenty-first century high school kids pretend to be British thespians from the 1950’s pretending to be French debutantes of the 1920’s. Lots of fun, good cartoon-jazz music and dancing the Charleston.

Next weekend after the Michelle performed in the Lower Westchester Honor Band. Highlights included A Night on Bald Mountain and The Firebird, as well as lots of epicly-titled selections such as Fight Squadron A, Alien Attack, and THe Final Countdown.

And then a couple nights ago both girls sang in the Young at Arts Salon. This is an annual fundraiser in which the people who run the group call in favors from some of their Broadway friends to come and participate. Lizzy had a featured solo alongside the woman who is currently playing Princess Jasmine in Alladin on Broadway. I helped set up the PA the Saturday before.

Now Lizzy is in rehearsals helping out as a ringer with a prodcution of The Hunchback of Notre Dame at another local high school. She’s the only soprano who can hit and sustain the really high notes.

Meanwhile my band LEFT HOOK is playing this Saturday night at Fisherman’s net in Pelham. Lots of exciting new songs including some 80’s Australian power pop as well as all your rock’n’soul favorites.

And my Saturday jazz group is up to 10 originals. Gary keeps writing more bossa novas and latin-oriented stuff, and Jay the bassist contributed a great, slow bluesey number in 5/4 called slope. I have one more song we haven’t even gotten to yet.

The global jukebox is almost, almost, almost done, after sixteen month’s work. Just a few more tweaks and minor bug fixes and final testing. Then we’ll take a couple weeks off and start in on Phase II, which is shaping up to be another year’s work. Very cool stuff, very psyched for the launch.

Meanwhile in my day job we just moved offices to a much larger and nicer space in downtown White Plains. More on that in a future post.

Buzzy Tonic – New Tracks

Here’s a bunch of new mixes for my long-awaited Buzzy Tonic album Elixr. I’ve been focusing on the vocal effects, the bass sound, the balance of instruments in the mix and the overall dynamics. It’s really starting to get there. The biggest changes are to Now and Forever, with a new vocal arrangement, and Your Dancing Shoes, which is finally properly mixed. As a bonus, I changed around the arrangement of To Be a Rock, so it’s now solidly in the ballpark, although there are still some tracks to render and I might add some sax on the outro. Only two songs remaining: Soul on Fire, which is at a rough mix stage, and The City, for which the arrangement is done but still requires some tracking, particularly the lead vocals and sax. Anyway here you go, enjoy!

RocketToTheMoon56
SeaOfTranquility32
IsItSafe44a.mp3
NowAndForever35.mp3
BlackSwan74.mp3
YourDancingShoes23.mp3
ToBeaRock40.mp3 (rough mix)