It has been over 10 months since I last posted which is about the same amount of time it takes me to respond to texts 🤦🏻♂️. I have been (good) busy doing a bunch of musical things including:
- Continuing to grow my piano playing ability and knowledge: As a student, my focus continues to be jazz piano because it serves as the foundation for everything else that I do. Most recently I have been studying New Orleans greats such as James Booker, Jon Batiste and Harry Connick Jr.
- Writing songs: Full songs, half songs, bits of songs; complete lyrics, single verses, one liners; my room at 3am, local bookstores, middle seats of planes; starts & stops, sounds good or maybe not, joy, frustration, confusion, sadness, happiness, therapy, insight… Songwriting is the best.
- Deepening my recording & producing knowledge: This is by far my biggest knowledge gap in the music making process so I decided to take an online course and have been practicing extensively. The course took several months and was fantastic. It delayed the release of Wells IV but hopefully translates into a better production quality moving forward.
- Performing: My intent is to ramp up live performing in 2025 and I've been out several times over the past few months doing open mics. Performing presents a whole different set of opportunities and challenges. Getting more comfortable and relaxed on stage is my main focus right now. More to come.
- Side Projects: A nice opportunity came my way this past year to play with TJ Welch & The Wasted. This is a group of really talented musicians and great guys. All have been in the Boston music scene for years and they are currently recording an album which will be released in the coming months. Their style of music is punk/hard rock/rock and I just love their songs. I get to be in the background playing keyboards while learning from them and having a blast. I'll be joining them on stage this Friday night (2/21) at the Midway Cafe in JP. Click here for more details. Also, I have been working on a separate project with a good friend which may result in us releasing a song together over the next several months. The song is really upbeat and has been so much fun to work on. Will hopefully be sharing more with you on this soon.
As for Wells IV, I will be releasing the album in two phases. The first 4 songs will be released weekly starting this Saturday (2/22) and the last 4 songs will be released sometime in the Fall. The first song dropping this weekend was inspired by an incredible trip to Croatia.
That's all for now. Thank you so much for your continued support
eric