It has been a few months since my last update... I've been in a mix of working hard to complete the album whilst struggling with exhaustion and balance in my work and personal life.
One of the things that has held me up as I've been striving to complete "Tune It Out" is that I still have to finish lyrics for one of the songs. I've been working on doing this for about 2 months now... At first I was looking for direction. I only had the song title in mind and a main hook, so I had to define what the song would really be about within that starting point. This lead to a lot of road blocks. I did the work and put the time in daily, but remained stumped.
I got stuck with this writer's block and I then let that slip into avoidance of it entirely. That's been self perpetuating for awhile now. Coupled with stress and anxiety from my day job and feeling guilty for the album recording taking so long to release, the overwhelm had put me into a bout of depression.
However, this isn't the first time I've gone around this circle, and I've been slowly but regularly putting in the work of picking myself back up mentally as well as making the daily lyric writing effort which is finally starting to pay off! It's really amazing how finally getting a handle on something that has been bothering you for so long can make you feel so much better and can play into so many other parts of one's life. I'm just about finished with writing and will then start practicing for recording the vocals which will hopefully be done in the next 2 weeks. Aside from maybe redoing a guitar solo, these vocals are the last thing to record!
Now, fortunately we've been moving forward with mixing all of the other songs that have been completed. We are about 5 songs in and everything is sounding amazing. I love working with my good friend Lee at Play Brain Audio to shape these songs into what they truly can become. There's still a lot of work ahead, but it's nice to feel like progress is moving forward and I'm hopefully past my biggest hurdle before we can print the album.
Once the album is complete, then I'm onto the next hurdles of planning the release, the promo, and all of the back end legal work and distribution. Sometimes I wonder if I've been avoidant about completing this last song because it means I have to move onto the next big chunk of work to successfully release and album...
The good news is that I'm still moving forward, whether that's as fast as I can go or as slow as life allows, I will always continue to take the next step. I want to create and release music for the rest of my life and one way or the other that will keep happening.
I have a big announcement coming in the near future and plan to release the first single off of Tune It Out before too long here. I'm working on that timing as I can't release it too early before the album release, and I don't quite know that date yet. Hopefully that will get determined over the next month or two. I still want to try and release in July or August, but that's still only a goal and not a known reality.
To you, the fans, thank you for your patience. I can't wait to release this music for you to hear. Until then, I'll try not to beat myself up too much about how long it's taking ;)