Continuing Without A Pause 2025

1. Goodbye Note
2. Your Imaginary Friend
3. Proof Positive
4. Nothing To Say V2
5. Sad Eyes
6. Promises Sold Cheap
7. Black Ceiling
8. Blue Eyes

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18 August 2025

The last two and a half months have been dedicated to the release of Insect Accessories. I scheduled all the steps with plenty of time for any unexpected complications. In the end it all went smoothly. I engaged a new manufacture to do the new album. They were able print the cover I wanted and do the quantity needed. In this modern age a lot of sales are digital. Press runs have to be adjusted. The final results were more than satisfactory.

Promoting a release is a task I wish I could hand off to someone else. Paying a promotion house to do it is not in the budget. I have a good list of contacts. Every release requires a review of all those to make sure they are still there. College radio is in a very fluid state. Stations change or sign off. Gladly most will accept a digital press kit, which makes it much easier and cheaper. Still, it’s a lot of time. I do send out copies to the stations that request it and to our good friends in the media.

There was also the matter of creating videos. I actually look forward to this and have been thinking about it for a while. The first two singles are When You Try and Your Philosophy. You may have seen them on the home page. The Donovan’s Brain YouTube page can be seen here

Despite it all, there has been some music making in the background. I’d suggest to the band we try once again to record the Terry Dolan – David Hayes song, Sad Eyes. I’d tried this with Ric, but never felt the track worked. After much searching I found the tape of the demo Terry gave me back in the late 70s. Joe and Scott liked the idea. I left it up to Joe to cut a basic track. It took a while, but he got to it and did it very well. More recently I put together an idea I had brewing. It took a few weeks, due to the other obligations. Joe added drums to Black Ceiling this week. I can now get back to it to complete.

In July we drove up to Darby Montana for the second Woodtick Fest. Once again Sasha Bell put together a fun little event. She was able to secure Minus 5 as the headlines this year. That meant we got to hang out with Scott McCaughey and Mary for two days. Good fun was had by all. Sasha got to sit in with M5, as well as play the Friday night closing spot with her own band.

Recording and releasing Insect Accessories was a monumental effort. It left me drained. Getting back into the studio to work on new songs is some comfort. We have no plan at the moment beyond seeing what appears on the table. There is a good chance there will be a new album in a year. One thing I’m sure of is that there will be another digital EP for Christmas. A few months ago I finally dug into a box of Brain cassettes I’d discovered last year in the vault. I’d hope there would be Terrastock rehearsals. We’d worked up two songs which were dropped when we had to cut the set to 45 minutes. For some reason there were no multi track recordings of All Over The World or Two White Spiders. The cassette recordings are a little raw. The performances are not quite there yet. I can see why we had doubts about Two White Spiders. When we did play it at the warm up gig, Richard Treece was surprised that it came off well. The rehearsal shows us still getting the song together. Once it jells, Richard takes off.

The real surprise was finding a ten minute jam I did not have any memory of. It’s very together and developed. It comes from a night Colter wasn’t there, so it’s just Richard, Jeff, Ron C and myself. This was a huge find. The EP will include this, and probably the raw Two White Spiders as well as a fragment of another jam which was captured. A new long piece with Richard is a major discovery. Look for this in December.

Work on new material will move to the front in September. There are still a few tracks with Ric on the shelf. I’ll have to decide what to do with these. The Armchair Explorers album may see the light of day in the near future.

The recording diary will resume on a regular schedule from here on out.

24 May 2025
It’s that period now where the new album is done, but there is the business to be done. There is now enough free time to get back into the studio. The marathon mix sessions at the end were exhusting. I returned from the North West trip and pushed the last song to completion. I’ve found time to work on my one new composition. As soon as I finished a couple of days work I came up with a slighly different way to play and sing. That’s on hold for the moment.

While in Portland I wrote some lyrics. I discussed this with Scott McCaughey. He’s offered to help work it out. I’ll keep that one in the notebook for now. Today I went in search of a song I was working on a few years ago. Ric and I did a fairly good track. I thought maybe I’d ask Joe to redo the drums so we could use it for the net album. I couldn’t find it. I could not remember the working title, then remembered it incorrectly. Now that I’ve got it up, I think I’m going to start over. I may salvage Ric’s drums for future use. I found two more unsed song ideas while searching I liked bits of both and will most likely grab those for new ideas. That said, I need to check, I may have used one of those tracks on Faith In Failure. So much has happened since that album, it’s hard to remember. I’ve had the twenty=five new ones in my head.

I’ll try to keep the diary up to date going forward

16 April 2025
I’ve finally had time to tackle the remake of Nothing To Say. A bit of lyric came to me late at night. A new musical approach followed. I started with my original chords and then rewrote them. I worked up a front part, revised the verse and wrote an end section. I grabbed the bridge from Joe’s demo which wasn’t used. My first arrangement came in at over nine minutes. That is not what I had in mind. After some heavy editing I got it down to 6 minutes. I’ve now added bass and guitar to the track. There is a guide vocal. I’ll need to write more lyics and sort out the melody.

It feels good to get off dead center and back to writing. More to come.

For my part, I’ve returned to the song Nothing To Say. This was submitted for the double album at the very last minute. I did a simple demo and offered it up to the band. Joe Adragna asked if he could take it and do some work. He ultimately came back with an original idea that was influenced by my demo. I took the song back and added my parts. I also restored the bridge from my demo to the arrangement. Joe then took that to Scott McCaughey for help finishing the lyrics. No good idea goes wasted. I’m back on the case.

Finding time to work on the new material is hard to come by at this point. The cover art for the new album is completed. Now it’s a matter of preparing the press and creating a video.