Jeremy Larson

Acoustic Beard Mood

Wow, I had quite the response to my post yesterday about horror movies, thank you so much!  This is pretty sad, but I believe I had seen every single movie that was recommended by all of you.  How many hours of my life have been wasted watching these movies?  Maybe months...

I'm feeling in a somewhat acoustic/nostalgic/beard mood today.  I think I'd like to link up some songs that fit my mood.  Here goes:

1. Ryan Adams- "Dear Anne"

2. David Mead- "Nashville"

3. My Morning Jacket- "Where To Begin"

4. My Morning Jacket- "Golden"

5.  Josh Ritter- "Girl In The War"

 

7.  Eels- "Dirty Girl"

 

8. Rogue Wave- "Christians In Black"

Hope you enjoy these songs.  I'm sorry that this post probably had you running all over the web, but I don't feel comfortable just posting other people's songs for download.  Thanks for reading and listening.

Jeremy

Drag Me To Hell etc.

I have a very strange relationship with horror movies.  I watch every single one that comes out, and I always leave feeling duped; not really sure why, since this has been going on for years now.  UNTIL...
 
Elsie and I went to see Drag Me To Hell the other night, and I was pleasantly surprised!  I'm not completely sure why I enjoyed it so much, but I think it has to do with the following three things:
1.  It was directed by Sam Raimi, who wrote the Evil Dead series. 
-which means-
2.  That it is a horror movie that doesn't take itself too seriously.  It's really hard to sit through a movie that thinks it's very scary, but is not.  In fact a lot of the time, Raimi seems to be poking fun at this genre, which was refreshing.
3.  The title is just plain awesome.

I have been instructed to give disclaimers about movies that I recommend.  So I will tell you now that this is not a Christian movie, none of the movies that I will be writing about here are, and if you have young children, don't take them to see Drag Me to Hell.  Ok, moving on.

It seems like at least a couple of times a week, I am scouring the internet looking for some gem of a horror movie that somehow went unnoticed until now.  I've seen all of the typical ones that make everyone's top 10 list, Halloween, The Exorcist, The Shining, and so on.  Those are fine, but I've really been looking for something new.  I DETEST all of the new American-Japanese-Watered-Down-Remakes.  You can only get chills from pale children so many times...  Elsie got a good laugh when she was doing a google search on her computer and typed the letter "s" and google filled in the rest with "scariest indie horror movies".  Yes, I typed that.  I really haven't had much luck lately, so if you have suggestions, please let me know.  Here are some of my all time favorites:
Jacob's Ladder

28 Days Later (this is one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen)

And Mulholland Drive (this is really not a horror movie at all, but it has a very eerie scene at a diner)

 

I should put an extra disclaimer on this one...  This one is what you'd call... um... "artsy".  Get the picture?  But the scene at Winky's Diner is a very strange one.  I watched it, didn't think much about it, and yet three days later, it was still with me. 

I'd like to post more, but I'm running out of time for now.  Please share if you have some scary/creepy movie suggestions.

I'd also like to mention briefly that my previous post "From James Childs", should be linked to http://jameschilds.wordpress.com That's his blog, and he has lots more pictures from our sessions together.  Go check it out.

From James Childs

The bass/guitar player for Daniel Renstrom sent me a bunch of pictures he took during their week here.  You can view the entire set here.  Sadly, there were no up close pictures of Daniel; just lots of gear.  But thank you James!!









      

Enjoy. Jeremy

KC

Happy Father's Day! 
Though I am not a father myself, I hope to be someday.  The whole thought of fatherhood would be much scarier to me if I hadn't had the greatest example of a father anyone could ever hope for.  I really mean that.  Being a dad should be much easier with such a perfect model to follow.  Happy Father's Day Dad!  Mom, if you're reading this, please email me an older picture of Dad to post.  Thanks!

 

 

Thank you Katrina...

And a special happy Father's Day to both of my brothers; another two amazing examples of what it means to be a good dad.

Elsie and I went to KC yesterday for my friends' wedding.  Here is a picture of the beautiful couple:

Pretty adorable.  Ryan is one of my most talented friends; I can prove it here, here, here, and here.  Plus, he must be pretty amazing to find such a beautiful person like Rachel.  Congrats to both of you!  While I'm waiting for Elsie to send me some photos, I'll backtrack a little.

So, last Thursday (around 5 in the morning) I finished up my last session with Daniel Renstrom.  Those were some of the kindest people I've had the privilege of working with in a long time.  Here are some photos from our sessions:

(These are stolen from Daniel's blog by the way)

I think the album turned out great, and I'm sure the release date will be sometime this winter. 

Ok, here are the pictures from KC:

My schedule has opened up quite a bit now.  I'm pretty anxious to get back into writing this week.  I haven't forgotten that I promised a preview of a new song.  I guess that was several months ago...  Sorry about that.  Soon!  Thanks for reading.

Jeremy

videos.

i won't have much time to blog today as it is our longest recording day this week. i did want to share a few videos with you that Daniel was kind enough to share with me. you'll get a small peek into the studio and a glimpse at the recording process!

i am having a wonderful time working with this band. i'll try to post photos tomorrow. 

enjoy. Jeremy

Today is day three working with Daniel Renstrom.  You can listen to his music here.  Things have been moving along nicely.  We have finished all of the drum and bass parts, and have moved on to guitar.  I will pause for a moment to check and see if I can steal any pictures from his blog...

Oh, even better.  He has video:

I will also have Elsie take some pictures tonight.

I'm sorry that this is brief, I have to get back to our session.  I just wanted to give you a little update and say thank you for all of the lovely suggestions about my yard.  There are some pretty amazing benefits to having a majority female audience...  (if you are new here, this audience comes over from my girlfriend's blog.  I'm not a "dude" or anything...)

4:22 AM

is the time that I am starting this blog.  It seems the less sleep I get, the harder time I have sleeping.  Strange.  I didn't sleep much last night, and I'm completely wired tonight/this morning/whatever.  I thought for sure I'd be tired since I actually worked outside most of the afternoon.

   I own a small house here in Springfield, and have my brother and niece for roommates.  Here is a picture of Elsie and Bella, my niece:

I bought this house three or four years ago with the intention of flipping it shortly after.  I spent months working with my dad fixing it up and getting it ready to sell.  We tried to go neutral with all of the colors, keeping most of the walls white, I mean, white-white.  After all the work we put into it, I was too exhausted to think about selling it, and starting another project, so I stayed.  I've lived with those same bland colors and decor for this entire time.  So, today I started my summer project.  Elsie and I went to Lowe's so she could pick out a color scheme, and I looked at some doors.  But like I said, I spent most of the afternoon outside.  I completely gutted the flowerbeds in the front yard (they were just weeds at this point) and put down some new paper and red cedar chips.  I'm still not sure what to plant there.  I'll gladly take suggestions though; I need something that needs very little attention...  Or something that can handle being watered religiously for a week and then forgotten about.  Let me know if you know of any flowers that match that description.  We will soon be starting the work on the inside.  Fortunately, I happen to be very close with someone who is an extremely gifted artist, and is open to the idea of doing some custom paintings to hang.  Yep.  Here is some of the newer stuff she's been working on:

Also, I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned this or not, but I'm also a big fan of Mark Rothko.  I dear friend of mine introduced me to his artwork several years ago, and it's always kept my attention:

I'm not an artist at all, so my taste is allowed to be all over the map.  I've also been growing very fond of Mark Ryden.  

I may be on here a little less this week.  Tomorrow I'm starting another project with an artist named Daniel Renstrom.  We're going to try to finish an entire album in a week.  Wish us luck.  I will post pictures.

Other thoughts for tonight since I don't have a Twitter:

Looking forward to ending my fast tomorrow

There seems to be a potential for some collaboration with Chris Merritt...

More people need to hear the new Animal Collective

Still have never seen that Benjamin Button movie

In the last week, I managed to watch the entire second season of "Extras".

Goodnight.

String Tones

It's starting to get a little bit silly now.  I mean seriously. 

When I first started recording music, I thought it would be a great learning experience for me to write and perform all of the parts myself.  In a lot of ways, it's been extremely helpful and gratifying.  But this year, I decided to take on some songs with real orchestral parts.  On my last album, I did a lot of MIDI (keyboard) strings with a couple of real violins or cellos layer in there with it.  Somehow over time, I've gradually started to loathe the sound of anything but real honest to goodness stringed instruments.  So, this means that for each particular song I have to get at least 15 good takes of the first violins part (to make up for the other 14 absent violinists), maybe 10 or so of the 2nd violins, and so on...  This is especially difficult since I am still very much a beginner on these instruments, and at times I feel very lucky to get even 1 pass with minimal errors. 

I suppose there is some good and bad news in all of this.  The good, is that for each song I record, I'm getting somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 hours of practice in.  The bad, is that I'm getting 30 hours/song of incorrect practice.  This means that if I ever decide to properly learn any of these instruments, I will have thousands of hours of habits to unlearn.  As of now, I am still holding the violin and viola much like a cello; sitting upright in my lap.  I will have Elsie take some pictures of this process, it's very strange.  Back to work.

Jeremy

Art Show

Tonight I played some background music for Elsie's mother's art show.  There was an amazing turnout, and  Elsie took some pictures that I will be posting.  It's really amazing that I still have no clue how to take pictures off of a camera and get them on to a computer.  Anyway, the show went incredibly well; CONGRATS ELIZABETH!!!

I spent a good part of the afternoon today trying to find some honest reviews on a particular mic I was thinking of buying.  This is always an extremely frustrating process for me, and I will tell you why.  Simply put, there is just too much money to be made in writing positive reviews of products.  Now, I have little, or no evidence of anything I am about to say, it's purely speculation.  But that's what blogs are for, correct?  

I always try to do some pretty intense research before buying any piece of gear that I'm going to be using daily in my studio.  I don't have money to throw around to experiment with different microphones or preamps to see which one I like, so I rely on the words of "professionals".  So I will start my research by google searching a specific mic, and start going through the list of all of the big name magazines, reading their reviews.  The funny thing is, they will all say the same thing about every single piece of gear that comes across their desk.  I can save everyone the trouble of having to do any research themselves and tell you right now what the mic you are looking for sounds like:

A Neumann TLM 103?- The perfect mic for any studio situation!  Warm bottom end, but not muddy, nice smooth top end to catch all of the nuances of any vocal!  Nice crisp attack on guitar amps; bass amps needed no EQing!

A Shure SM57?- An all around solid mic for any studio situation!  Warm bottom end, but not muddy, nice smooth top end to catch all of the nuances of any vocal!  Nice crisp attack on guitar amps; bass amps needed no EQing!

Fence Post with a Megaphone?- The last mic you'll ever need!  (see above descriptions for details)

and so on...

It's almost as if these magazines are acting more like QVC hosts than actual experts.  Seriously though, this is no exaggeration.  I started google searching things like "_______ , biggest waste of money" , just to see if any of these magazines ever found a product they didn't love.  You won't find anything.  You won't even find so much as a dirty look at a product, much less an honest review.  Ok, why does this even matter?  It matters because it is so much bigger than this.

I used to be a huge fan of a certain music magazine (I won't say which one, because although I can't stand them, I still have a strange desire to be accepted by them at the same time...).  They, like many other "independent" music magazines give away a CD with a lot of their issues.  You, as the reader are led to believe that this is what they are listening to.  This is the music you are supposed to believe is up and coming; a preview of greatness coming from the people who know best.  

Several years ago, I was meeting with a publisher in New York.  It was my first meeting with a publisher, and I was going through my list of stupid amateur questions.  One of them was, "So... how in the world do I get into {that magazine} ?  Do you think they would be into my music?"  He kind of laughed at me.  I could see the pity in his eyes for what he saw as some ignorant midwest kid.  He replied, "Ummm... well... anyone who wants to shell out the two grand can get in there.  We can probably have it arranged."  Yes, ignorant indeed.  It feels like elementary school kickball.  You are seeing everyone around you being picked first, then you realized that they had all slipped a couple of bucks to the team captain to make the cut. 

Do you see the pattern?  I'm seeing it more and more in this industry.  Have you ever wondered how big name bands pick the openers for their tours?  In MANY cases, it's because the little guy is paying the big guy to be there.  And you thought it was because of some kind of mutual love and respect they had for each other...

I really didn't intend for this post to go this long.  I probably could have made my point in a paragraph, but this will help me get to sleep now.  By the way, if you wanna know what I think the best mic for under $1,000 is, I'd say the AKG 414.  If you don't believe me, just read up on some reviews.  You'll find that it's the perfect mic for every studio situation.  Seriously though, it's a really great mic.  

I'm going to get rested up now.  I have the honor of playing at Elsie's mother's big art show tomorrow.  It's going to be lovely.  She is an AMAZING artist.  If you are in town, it's at the Hawthorn Gallery downtown.

Goodnight.