Did you see your shadow?

Groundhog day has come and gone. Punxsutawney Phil, despite Bill Murray’s best attempts, emerged from his hole at Gobbler’s Knob, saw his shadow, and predicted that winter is not yet over. Judging by the weather forecast here in Cleveland, that seems entirely believable.

While I was growing up, my parents were avid gardeners, and so I always thought of groundhogs as troublesome beasts, sneaking through fences and devouring tomorrow’s dinner. It struck me as strange that some saw them as sage creatures, prognosticating the weather. I also was confused because I was never quite sure if they were the same as woodchucks (they are), and if so, why there were no clever rhymes asking about how much ground a groundhog could hog (if one could hog ground). Since those days, I’ve learned that these creatures are also known as Whistlepigs, Thickwood Badgers, Canada Marmots, and my new favorite, Weenusks. (Any other good ones I should know about? Write me back and let me know!)

All of this is apropos of exactly nothing, except that it’s still cold outside, which means that it’s good weather to stay in and try to accomplish things to stave off crippling depression. One big thing I accomplished in January: I successfully got all the tracks for my new full-length record, House of Ghosts, handed off to Eric Bertagnolli of Eric Bert Audio for mixing! Which means it won’t be long before these 10 new songs will be heading towards your ears.

Every time I start working on a new record, I worry that what I’m creating won’t be as good as the last thing I released, and that I’ve already written my best songs. Having said that, I’m not trying to be self-congratulatory when I say that when I closed out the recording sessions for House of Ghosts, I felt truly proud of what I’d created. I really love this set of songs; I feel like I’ve written and recorded something that I would want to listen to, and I can’t wait to share it with you. I hope you feel the same way.

I’m starting to ramp up my show schedule a bit, now that I’m done with the heavy lifting of recording the new album:

As always, there’s a chance a few more dates may pop up on my calendar – you can always find all the upcoming shows on my Tour Dates page.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot – I’m also working on a 4-song audio-visual release called Almost Like Live, which will feature 4 tracks from House of Ghosts, recorded in a studio setting, but performed exactly like I do on stage – beatboxing, looped vocals and guitar percussion, the whole deal. Each song will be accompanied by an almost-like-live video shot by my good friend Mark Sowers – he was the videographer on the A Work In Progress music video, and if you’ve seen any press shots of me in the last few years, he’s also behind the camera on those. You can check out his Instagram here.

I’m not positive if Almost Like Live will come out before or after House of Ghosts. What I do know is that my next two releases are, abbreviated, ALL & HOG. All Hog. An apt description of my treatise on Whistlepigs earlier.

Thanks again for joining me on this journey, and special thanks if you made it this far in the e-mail, for allowing me to indulge in these digressions.

Cheers,
Michael