This is a blog category with posts about some records I have helped make over the years. Hope you enjoy!
News items, links, and bears! Brooklyn Vegan ran a lovely preview of Street Party, last week. The album is now on all the fancy streaming services, linked to from here. The CD is available by mail order directly from me, have at it here. What else? It’s exciting to get this into the world, finally! Lyric sheets and track credits are in the individual Bandcamp song pages, such as this one. Please enjoy, and feel free to share any ol’ which way! Thanks <3
Alright, my solo album, STREET PARTY comes out Caturday, April 9, and you can pre-order the limited edition CD now! Five years or a lifetime in the making, depending on how you look at it. Hope you enjoy! On Berkeley Cat Records, of course. Clicketh:
In the middle of all this craziness, I’ve somehow had a rather productive year. One big milestone – the early Uptones album! Been wanting to do that for a long time, and the pieces finally fell into place to make it possible. I wrote some posts about it on the Uptones blog. Out now on Liberation Hall records.
I’ve produced some more songs of my own. The most recent one, Jupiter Girls, I finished this weekend and shared right away on my Bandcamp page. It’s so fun, and in a way, it’s the most Uptones-y thing I’ve done on my own. The brass section, arranged and performed by the mighty Steven Bernstein, launches the track in a way that reminds me of Uptones arrangements. We’d often do these huge, triumphant horn lines as intros and bridges and whatnot, and when Jupiter Girls was all done and mixed the way I wanted it, I laughed and said, hmm, we kinda Uptone’d that! Thank you Steve, and drummer Jay Lane (speaking of Uptones!), and Shannon Wheeler (who drew the cover art), for joining me on this long-distance collaboration. It brought me some real joy, and I see it is doing the same for some folks out there listening to it already. And that of course means the world to me. Humble thanks and love, all!
We defeated the orange apparition of death, and saved American democracy. I have many friends who volunteered, donated, posted and participated so actively in this election. Starting during the primary we had at it, working hard for our preferred candidates (for me it was Bernie). Then in the general election, many of us got behind the Democratic Party ticket hard and strong, and helped put them over the top. We did that. We. It was a WE thing.
Bernie Sanders’ 2020 slogan, “Not me, US” is one of my favorite political slogans ever. I didn’t like his earlier “Join the Political Revolution” slogan at all, though I strongly supported him then. I didn’t like the Obama campaign’s “HOPE” thing, though I understood its appeal, and vigorously supported his run in 2008 and 2012. Did Hillary Clinton’s campaign have a slogan in 2016? Jeez I can’t remember – what was it – (googling..) oh right, “Hillary for America.” Again, I voted for Clinton, and in hindsight after this unspeakable disaster, I WISH I had campaigned for her, donated, volunteered, done something more than vote, but that’s water under the bridge and.. “Hillary for America?” Hoo boy. Dem’s, we have to do better! Forgive me for this tangent, but I’m a songwriter, and I think lyrics matter. 45’s slogan, which I shall not repeat, is a political masterpiece. In the endless autopsy of the 2016 election I will repeat, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a comfortable margin, and we need to revise or remove the Electoral College, so maybe her slogan worked fine for some folks too. I just thought it said nothing. I couldn’t even remember it. Popular songs, you can remember. But enough complaining.
We WON the 2020 presidential election, decisively. And every one of us has our own inner dialog about what that means, and the dark horror of what another 4 years of this bullshit would mean. Me, in my little corner of the universe, what were some of my anxieties? Oh they’re almost embarrassing, so small are they compared to the concerns of people in real peril due to this monstrosity, but I’ll share, why not? You know what? I produced a really joyous, celebratory song, the above Jupiter Girls. I honestly didn’t know if I’d have the creative energy and will to finish the track properly if our fellow men and women put 45 back in office again. No. I would have lost a piece of my faith in humanity, I might have snapped, I would have bailed out and gone to live in a monastery or something, I don’t know. And the Uptones early recordings album, what would that be, in the context of the election, if it had gone the other way? We waited 35 plus years to put it out (the reasons for that far too lengthy to address here) and boom, the release date was… November 6th! I laughed and cried when I saw that date announced just a few months ago, knowing election day is the 3rd. Fun. I doubled down on my support for Biden/Harris and helped them win.
When I look at the results from state to state, I can easily conclude that WITHOUT the massive efforts of so many of us, this would have gone south. Pun accepted. But we won. We won and government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. Not this week. Not on our watch. Not this time. Take a breath and let’s see what we can do to help the Democratic senate candidates in Georgia and mute the evil turtle from Kentucky, shall we? What’s the best approach? I’m looking into this.
At the same time as all of the above, I released some great new music from Russ Ellis and friends, Matte Martin, The Recyclists, Comeback Pete and others on my new label, Berkeley Cat Records. And I’ve been working with a wonderful team at Pandora, remotely, all of this remotely, from the same desk, in my COVID outpost. Without keeping busy, I don’t know how I’d cope. I’m very grateful. What a year!
When I was 17 and the Uptones were starting out, a friend of a friend asked me at a party, “Dude, why do you mix politics with music?” “Dude,” I replied, “they’re already mixed.”
I’m delighted to announce the release of Am I Not Alien? b/w People I May Know on Berkeley Cat Records.
Am I Not Alien started a long time ago. I had the idea when playing in HOBO, a band Paul Jackson and Ben Eastwood and I had (with several wonderful drummers) after the initial breakup of the UpTones. We performed an early version of it once or twice but I wasn’t really satisfied with the verses and it just didn’t sound the way I wanted, so we let it go. Flash forward to COVID19 and I’m hanging out with my guitar and the little bass-sliding riff shows up and I recognize it and think, hey, I can finish this now! And put it together myself.
Spent weeks! Recording and rerecording the parts, methodically inching toward the feeling I wanted from each instrument. See, I’m not really a recording engineer, though I guess I am becoming one. And I have nothing but the “gear” in my laptop – amp models, software synths, “VST” effects (I don’t even know what VST stands for!) googles.. Oh! Virtual Studio Technology. Of course! Yes I work in a virtual studio I have been “building” over the years, and in my spare time now I hang out in it and create things. It’s tremendous fun.
So, I had EVERYTHING on “Alien” cookin’ the way I wanted it EXCEPT the DRUMS!! A month ago, I was frustrated because my ham-fisted attempts at drum “programming” were still falling flat and meanwhile, the guitars, bass, synth and organ, (oh and my vocals!) were right there with the musical image I had in my head all along, having followed an aspiration that started (I counted) in 1994. What’s a home recording geek to DO if you can’t get the DRUMS right!?
Call a drummer.
I thought Jay Lane would have the right instincts for this, and in Quarantineville he has his recording outpost running too so he said “Yeah, send me the tracks!” Which I happily did, wrestling first with printing audio “stems” that he could import into his gizmo, and we back-and-forthed about tech issues before finally he too was able to sit down and rock the drum tracks. He sent them back to me, I imported them, and wow, I heard what I had been after with this elusive, delicate, utterly persistent song that wanted me to write and realize it for basically half my life. Thank you, Jay!
Oh! All along I was sending the “ruffs” to Shannon Wheeler. He’s drawn these beautiful covers for me since I started making and releasing solo records in 2015, and usually the method is – I send him the lyrics and a demo or rough mix and he sends me some sketches. This were no different, I loved his take on it, and even before I called Jay, I had the finished cover on my desk. See so I HAD to finish. I could not put the thing off for another year like I had in the past, I had the dang record cover. Motivational. Thank you, Shannon!
It was a saga and I love how it all came together in the end. The song is about being human, obviously, and it speaks to me in ways that feel urgent and current to me. I hope it may for you as well.
b/w People I May Know – yes! b/w meaning “backed with” as they said with vinyl 45RPM singles – an A side and a B side! I’m so pleased with the B side here and it is an ENTIRELY different story! Had the idea one Sunday morning this July – I can tell you the date actually, it was July 12, 2020. Cracked up when I thought of it, saw someone in my “People you may know” feed in Facebook whom I thought I was FB friends with! Being that I consider them an actual friend I was miffed and I thought, FB, that is some fucked up UI design right there! The way I find out I was UNFRIENDED (gasp, horrors..) is by being ‘splained to that they are, a People I May Know! The song wrote itself. To say nothing of the fact that my friend may have deleted their old profile or any number of other reasonable explanations, the gig was on and I was not letting this one get away. Scrawled out the lyrical ideas in pen, pulled up a drum track I’ve been meaning to recycle, played bass, one guitar track, two vocal tracks – inventing the vocal arrangement as I improvised it to tape – mixed it, and done. So where “Alien” took 25 some years, “People” took just a few hours from conception to completion. A tale of two songs! A tail? A tail of two songs. On Berkeley Cat Records. Of course. Every song is different and like cats, they make their own rules.
I hope you enjoy! Listen, I have been making the songs I share via Bandcamp (we LOVE Bandcamp!) “free or pay what you like.” Reasons for this are simple – I want you to have my records if you want them. Absolutely I love it and appreciate it if you can kick in something to help cover my costs and encourage more of this sort of tomfoolery, but if you don’t have the extra dough right now (WE UNDERSTAND THIS!) please don’t hesitate to put “0” in the download “purchase” amount and save the file. Or, if you’re Jeff Bezos, you can buy it for a million dollars! Thank you, Jeff!
We recommend selecting FLAC because it is lossless, highest resolution (sounds best) but honestly MP3s are fine too and my kittycat ears often can’t tell the difference.
I set the streaming services release date to Caturday, Sept. 26! This gives us a little time to promote the songs and see if we can get them on some popular playlists. That’s about it. You can click through the song title links on:
https://ericdin.bandcamp.com/album/am-i-not-alien-b-w-people-i-may-know
to read the lyrics and credits. Thank you for your time, please stay well and safe, and of course feel free to share this all any ol’ which way you may care to.
Much love
What did I do this summer? Oh, I started a record label! Here’s the true story. In 2015 I start recording some songs of my own, and releasing them online in Bandcamp and to the streaming services thru Distrokid. Now, when you put stuff out through Distrokid, they assign a unique number which becomes your default label name. Mine was “676723 Records DK” and that was fine for a few releases, but at a certain point I wasn’t having it and wanted to name my label. So I upgraded my Distrokiddie and set out to come up with a good name. I asked on FB and crowd-sourced for fun, and some really cool and creative names came in! But I didn’t feel any of them enough and I was flummoxed and stopped thinking about it for a while.
Berkeley Cat Records popped into my head one day and I knew instantly that was it. I immediately called Shannon Wheeler and asked can he draw me a cat, sleeping in a circle as they do, on a record player? Done, couple days later he sends me the logo and voila, a label is born.
What does a record label do in 2019 and beyond? Well for me, we upload stuff. I don’t want to print CDs or vinyl because it’s a hassle and we cats must have our naps. Besides, “hard product” is very hard to sell if you’re not on tour, and I’m not on tour, and touring costs a lot and because naps. The basements and mom’s attics of the world are filled with boxes of CDs and LPs from artists who pressed ’em up with high hopes. I don’t have storage space for that.
Do I miss physical media? Am I nostalgic for it? Well, yes. But the wonderful thing about digital product is that it doesn’t exist. I mean it does but it doesn’t. It is created on-demand only when someone wants it. And there’s no shrink-wrapped chunks of plastic to eventually choke some poor dolphins.
The song that made me want to make my own label is “I Can See It Now.” Not sure why, but that was it. And I’ll release whatever of my own stuff thru Berkeley Cat that I feel inspired to, and I don’t know exactly what all that’ll be! Which I find entertaining and exciting.
More recently, my UpTones mates and I were talking about re-releasing some of our early stuff, which has never been on iTunes or even on CD. Just vinyl and cassette. So this record, OUTBACK, a six-song puppy from 1986, we re-mastered and got ready and now it’s coming out. Rescued from the oblivions of time.
Paul Jackson took his original cassette artwork – which was a photo of a painting of his – and recombobulated it into the new cover image. Paul also joined me at Coast Mastering for the transfer from analog and mastering job, which, was a bit suspenseful at first! Will this work, we wondered? Worked beautifully by the sure hand of Michael Romanowski, record mastering master.
After this appointment, Mr. Jackson and I repaired to the Missouri Lounge for pints. It’s right by Fantasy Studios, where Michael now has the room which was the legendary Studio C. Studio C was also one of the first rooms the UpTones recorded in 1983, and by gosh I have some tapes from those sessions which I hope/plan to release by and by. It’s a bit more of an endeavor because they need to be mixed.
Sitting in the lounge there as countless other musicians have done pre- and post- sessions in the Fantasy building, we reminisced a bit and howling laughter ensued. And, we agreed that after getting OUTBACK out into the wilds, we’d revisit some other material we’ve made, within and without the UpTones, and release that too. Why not?
There are also a few records in the brewing that I didn’t make, that friends of mine made, or are making, which also will likely come out on Berkeley Cat! I have to remain mysterious about these for now, but dang, I am thrilled about it.
Buy the OUTBACK! Share the OUTBACK. Pick up a Berkeley Cat Records two-tone coffee mug. Follow us in the Facebonk. It’s all on our site:
https://www.berkeleycatrecords.com/
Thank you! And Happy Caturday.
Haven’t posted here in a while! Been busy. Here’s my latest song, hot off the presses. Hope you enjoy! It’s a free download or you can buy it if you like. Please feel free to share this any ol’ which-way ya care to. This is me on guitar and vocals and bass, Michael Urbano on drums. Michael Rosen recorded and mixed it at his studio. Myles Boisen mastered it up. Shannon Wheeler drew the cover. These gents all did such beautiful work, and I’m so very grateful to them. Happens to be ready on this holiday, so, I’m glad to share this today! <3
Well look who’s here! The full album version of Matt Jaffe’s debut, produced by Matthew King Kaufman with yours truly on guitar, has finally been released into the wild. This was a really fun record to make, and it’s a wonderful listen. I have bleated often about what a great songwriter this kid is. Here’s why! Also, Alex Coltharp and Sammie Fisher, what a scorching rhythm section. Yep, it was a slice! Listening now brings the moments back. Matt J and I both played guitar on everything here except the title track, which Matt produced solo at his home studio. Blast Off, babies! On iTunes and Spotify and probably other wabbit holes I am sure.
Making this song summed up the second half of 2017 for me somehow. It’s redundant to say I’ve had enough of last year, who hasn’t?! I’m looking forward to good doings in 2018! Let’s go.
I wrote and recorded that in October right after the North Bay fires. BandCamp didn’t make me shorten the title, bless their hearts. I had to shorten it to distribute to the streaming services. Oh the humanity!
My fellow Uptone Mike Stevens played drums. I played acoustic guitars and sang. There’s just one electric guitar part on the song, the 8 bar solo in the middle. We turned Mikey’s old Champ amp up to eleven and I let ‘er rip on the same mutant “Tele” hybrid I’ve been playing since 1983. This thing:
The guitar, not the cat. The cat helped me do overdubs at home later.
I’m excited to announce that my next solo track is ready and I’m putting it out this week. The song is “The Laughing Man,” which I co-wrote with my Uptones band mate, brother Paul Jackson. My EP is slowly but surely growing into an album. Oh and I got some more CD’s finally! If you want one, please ping me or order from here. It’s also in Spotify and iTunes if you prefer those wabbit holes. The other song in this new pair is called “Everything Is Wrong,” and it will follow soon. Here’s the artwork by Shannon Wheeler. I look forward to sharing these tunes! That is all. Cheers and thanks <3 E
Well here is a first, in my foray into self-releasing self-made stuff — I’m putting my EP out in (gasp) the regular channels!
I decided to try Distrokid to distribute my EP to the streaming services – Pandora, Spotify, Apple and a few others.
I just uploaded Peace and Love and Rock and Roll part 1. So now it has a UPC code and ISRC codes and it’ll be in those entertainment gizmos shortly.
You can still get the EP directly from me of course, click the record cover, 4 clams for 4 songs –
UPDATE Nov. 2023 (wow!!) This is out of print! Other things happened
Thanks! Hope you enjoy.
And in order to keep this post focused and concise, here are some bears, playing in a hammock.
