REACTIVEradio

Over the weekend, I was spending time on my favorite internet forum SomethingAwful, and was presented with the opportunity to listen to a brand new album that one of a member had just finished recording. At first, I was a little apprehensive. I don’t usually like downloading full albums before I get the chance to hear a sample or two so as not to waste valuable time and disk space. But something about it grabbed me. I’m not sure if it was the title (“Sun Tales”), or the fact that it was simply labelled “Folk-Rock”; all I know is that for the first the first time in a long time, I’m glad my first instincts were wrong.

As I waited for the album to download, I started reading the reviews that fellow forumgoers had given him. The first comment in the thread was by someone going by the moniker Toastmaker; he wrote “A completely beautiful album.”

Well, that’s a good start.

The second comment, by JohnnySnitch, reads “Very nice album!” So, ok, maybe this won’t be a complete waste of time. On and on through the thread, the compliments keep coming, with nary a bad word amongst them. At this point, I was definitely over my so-called fear, and maybe even a bit excited. After all, the SomethingAwful forum members aren’t exactly known for their sugar coating; if they’re praising it, there’s got to be a least some reason for it.

15 minutes later (stupid slow Bermudian internet), the album was finished traversing the world wide web and had landed on my laptop. I unpacked the archive with anticipation, and threw on track number 9, “A Voice On The Wind”, the song that had received the most praise.

I was definitely not disappointed with what I heard.

A beautiful love song, very obviously sung from the heart, paints the very melodramatic picture of a past love lost. Waxing nostalgic about an old flame, you immediately feel a connection with Krueger, empathizing and sympathizing with him all at once. While being a very mellow song, it has the ability to send a flood of similar emotions through the listeners head, reminding them of their first true love. Being the only melancholy song on the album, it definitely stands out from the rest, but also fits perfectly between the other emotion-driven songs.

The 10th track on the disc, “Suriel And Azrael And Many Other Names [sic]” starts out with a very powerful guitar, but even so, you can almost feel Krueger holding back. A song about youth misunderstanding, you can almost feel the pure innocence coming from the speaker as if transporting you back to your childhood, naive and curious. It ends with an aural montage of sound bites from various news sources, mainly about the war in Iraq, bring the listener back from childhood, stripping away that same innocence that was granted mere minutes ago.

This album is raw in every sense of the word. Recorded in what I can only assume is his basement or living room with just himself and his guitar, each and every song brings you into his world, into his little bubble, and shares with you his most intimate of experiences. Throughout the entire journey, it almost feels as if you’ve been given a seat next to him in a time machine, as he narrates the intricacies of his entire life.

I could truly go on and on about how amazing this album is. I could write 10 pages on why you should do whatever you can to obtain a copy of this album, but it still wouldn’t do it justice. Sun Tales is a beatiful story told by a beautiful poet. This is absolutely what music should be about.

Artist’s Website | Purchase Album

As some of you may know, last night I had my first signing lesson. After work, I rode my scooter the 3 blocks to the Bermuda Cathedral, and went around the back, down the cobblestone steps and through the door, just like his e-mail told me. It was at this point, I started realizing that this was the textbook start to a horror movie, and impulsively started to worry a bit. The last thing I need is to become a hundred pieces of human shishkebab, unless Hy’s seasoning salt is involved, in which case, I’ll keep an open mind.

I sat and waited in the waiting room, working on my laptop with a piece of software called Reason. It’s basically an all-in-one music production suite, and I managed to get a rock beat, and a cello-based bass line down before the instructor showed up. Even though he was perfectly on time, while he was unlocking the door to his studio, he was explaining that he saw a director he worked with and had to stop and say hi. After I explained that he was on time, and that I was just early, we walked through the door to his office.

Wait a second. Director?

Oh yes: director. I soon found out that not only is this guy an amazing singer, but he is also into musical theater, and acting. In fact he just returned from New York after shooting a scene for the TV show The Sopranos. [Editor's Note: Just now I realized how fitting it is for a singer to be on a show named after a range of notes a singer can hit.]

We sat and chatted for about 15-20 minutes, talking about what my goals were in terms of my voice, and how he’ll be able to help me achieve those goals. We talked about his experience as a singer/performing artist (he’s been to two different conservatories of music to train) and how he’ll be able to use his skills to increase mine. As you can probably tell, I quickly realized that I’m in quite capable hands and have full faith in the fact that he will be able to get me where I want to be.

After talking, we went straight into vocal exercises. Even though I had only been in the lesson for half an hour, he’d already said some things to me that had made sense in terms of what you should be doing with your body (specifically the throat) to let the sounds come out more naturally. Keeping your throat in a more “yawned”/relaxed position allows you to hold the note with much more ease than I ever thought possible. That one little tidbit of information was so effective that by the end of the lesson, I had already increased my range by three notes in both direction.

I think the correct term for that is: progress.

While I’m sure a lot of it was just BS to use as positive reinforcement, throughout the lesson he was saying that I was doing great. (As an example, he was saying that one of the exercises we went through took one of his students over a year to master, and I had got it by the end of the hour.) I’m not totally sure whether or not I believe him, but it’s nice to hear that someone with classical training (and a lot of it) has confidence in me. Even if I don’t necessarily believe it, I think I was able to feed off it to a certain extent and in the end made some serious headway in terms of how well I’ll be able to sing.

Once we had spent about a half hour on the exercises, I brought my Zune with me and was able to play a few of the songs that I’ve written and recorded in the past year or so. To my delight, he said that while technically they need work (hence the reason for my taking lessons from him), they were really good songs, and with enough training, they could sell. A lot. If anything, that was what completely made my day.

At any rate, if it’s not obvious by now, despite the $80 per lesson fee (even if it’s 1-on-1), I am incredibly excited at the prospect of being able to one day go into the studio one day and record a CD without the fear of shattering any windows. I’d like Burton to produce it, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Now all I have to do is learn how to sing in Spanish.

Well, on my continuing journey to make myself the perfect person via self-improvement (and believe me ladies, I’m gettin’ there *wink and the gun*), I’ve decided to strengthen my vocal chords by taking singing lessons. Between Hazen being out of the house 2 or 3 nights a week with his karate, and Matt out every other night with poker, I thought it might be a good idea to find something outside of work that I can do to pass the time and what better way to do it than by trying to make myself sound less like a cat dying in an unlit alley at midnight.

Most of you know that after enough drinks, I might happen to mention that I’m a musician. Playing the guitar has at least got to rank me somewhere above the mark of “music listener”, even if I can only play marginally better than I did at age 3, so I’d like to take the first steps to making that sentence at least less of a lie than it has been.

People who really know me, know that music has been a part of my life, longer than my consciousness has. Apparently while my mom was pregnant with me, she went to a Supertramp concert (ROCK ON, MOM!) and even there I was kicking her to the beat. If that doesn’t scream “music addict”, I honest to God don’t know what does.

I’ve already got a good feeling about the teacher because he wants me to bring some of the music I’ve recorded already to get a feel for the kind of singing I’m going to be doing. I’m not sure why, but that just seems a lot more personable than just “You’re under my instruction and I don’t care that you’re trying to sing heavy metal. Here’s some opera; now get to singing.”

At any rate, I start the lessons tomorrow at 5pm and finish some time around 6pm. I’ll leave my first lesson and I’ll continue telling people that I’m a musician; I guess now it’ll just be true.