Category: Recordings

I’m delighted to announce the release of Am I Not Alien? b​/​w People I May Know on Berkeley Cat Records.

A Tale Of Two Songs

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

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

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.

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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.

New Matt Jaffe video is just up –

I played guitar on that recording, along with young Matt and his fabulous Distractions. He’s a helluva songwriter and musician, and it’s been a pleasure to work with him and watch him go from open-mic wiz-kid to budding rock star. I’ve been by turns, a session player, confidante, and even tour manager for this band, when they supported Blues Traveler in the US tour last fall.

“Holding On” is one of my faves in their live set, and I dig the “rollercoaster” metaphor in the vid. Occurred to me also, that “holding on” is like attachment in the Buddhist sense, the cause of suffering, and that gives the chorus its power. But I think too much. “Holding on, cos I don’t know what’s true.” Amen.

Recently I’ve been making some new recordings of my own, and young Matt actually played guitar on one of them. Full circle! More on that later. Cheers all!

“… And Out Come The Wolves” is my favorite Rancid album, and “The 11th Hour” is a collaboration I’ll always be proud of. Tim Armstrong and I wrote it in about three hours spread out over as many days, as the band was deep into the finishing stages of recording. I was surprised that Tim wanted to push one more song through the works, but it not only made the cut but ended up being track #2 on the record. There’s a 20th Anniversary remastered edition that just came out, more on that at Epitaph Records.