Real-time, Echoplex Digital Pro guitar driven instrumentals combined into a musical narrative with ample adjunct instrumentation.

12 MP3 Songs
ELECTRONIC: Experimental, ROCK: Extended Jams



Details:
After an honorable discharge from the US Army, I started recording in 1990 or '91 and instantly became hooked. The process began when a company I worked for was disposing of its stereo reel-to-reel tape machine. It was "broken," though really it only needed a good, thorough cleaning. I then moved on to 4-track cassettes, to borrowed ADATs, and finally into Digital Performer and Apple computers. So, after years of practice I felt ready to be the sole composer for this album. I do want to mention that I'm a currently solo-act on a shoe-string budget, so this CD was an meta-indie effort, which means it's a CD with a cover in a slim-case and that's about it: nothing fancy... that is, except for the music!!! That's where the effort was focused.

The main idea behind Mr. Pickhead is that he "thinks" only in notes. (His "head" is a pick, so it's to be expected.) The music is his narrative translated and transposed onto a CD. The first track, Mr. Pickhead Is Cloned, is literally a cloning process, for whenever the song is burned or downloaded, that's what happens. So, as a listener, one also is a participant in the very act of actualizing the title of the song being heard.

As the story goes on, Mr. Pickhead evolves into a Pickhead/Star-child via space travel and momentarily breaks into song on track ten. The narrative finds him contemplating the vastness and emptiness of space in his space machine when suddenly a message from his sweetheart is broadcast to the Bridge, filling him with the resolve to return and to reunite.

Mr. Pickhead is intended to be a fun project, even though the subject matter is more or less real. Picks don't march, but people do. Star Wars is not just an interesting film series. Soldiers are not clones, but picks are. Thoughts can be wordless, but those are the kinds of thoughts that cannot be readily translated or interpreted into verbal or written language. Riffs and thoughts can be cloned. Make good ones!

I began playing guitar many years ago, backing my closest older brother who then played the banjo. We were a bit of a novelty act--two blond haired, blue-eyed kids whose favorite vacation destination was the deep woods of Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula, vigorously pursuing the sounds of Lester Flatts and Earl Scruggs. As a result of these formative years, I had lots of practice strumming in G. But that all came to a screeching halt, because no sooner had I trampled a fair amount of the Bluegrass map, I then allowed my previously groomed affinity for guitar-laden rock to take me even further into that particular bent. Bluegrass leading into Pink Floyd into Rush into John Scofield into SRV into Yes into Ozric Tentacles into Phish into the Allman Brothers ... is as good as any explanation that can be provided for the kind of music I make today. Sort of. There's really no end to amazing music. For instance, right now I'm listening to Miles Davis' Agharta.

Mr. Pickhead is built upon a kind of mixture of these musical elements: a blend of musical ideas from the amazing late 1960s through today, mingled and mangled with what I'd like to hear and shaped by what I can play.

I hope you like what you hear. Tell yer friends! Every penny I receive will be funneled back into experimenting into new areas of composition (i.e., new gear and time to use it). If you like what you hear, then spread the sounds. Here is the beginning. The follow-up, Baby Pickhead, is coming.