The day is finally here. All the bits and bytes fired off to the right places and my new album, Losing My Voice, is available everywhere I wanted it to be. Please go listen. Buy it if you can. Tell someone about it. I just want as many people as possible to hear it.
Exclusive? Of course it’s exclusive. Ha.
Anyway, I put up the first song from the album on YouTube so you can listen and tell a friend and do all those wonderful sharing types of things. Also, important to note that the album is available for pre-order at Amazon already! Click on the album cover on the right and go get it.
On March 6th 2014, I went to my home studio, set up a microphone and grabbed my acoustic guitar to record some music before it was too late. I had recently found out that I needed neck surgery to give me feeling back in my fingers and take the tingling out of my legs. During that consultation the surgeon casually mentioned that part of the surgery would temporarily relocate a nerve connected to my vocal cord and that one of the risks of surgery was that I could lose my voice.
As a singer and songwriter, this was terrifying to me. I am not prolific as a songwriter, but I always go back to it when I have something I really want to say. It was eating me alive that I had unrecorded songs that could be lost forever so I decided to do something about it. A week before surgery, I recorded these six songs to document that moment in time when I thought I might lose the ability to ever sing again.
My setup was simple. I used just one microphone. That means no overdubs. I didn’t even want to waste any of my remaining singing voice by warming up. These six songs are everything I was able to record that night before my voice tired and the numbness in my fingers got so bad that I couldn’t play guitar anymore.
(Here’s a snippet of “The Jackpot”)
The good news is that my surgery went well and I got my voice back. But, after listening to the recordings, I decided that I wanted to share it with the world anyway. There’s something about the performance to me, that perfectly captures that moment in time, that makes it worth sharing. I don’t know if there’s an extra little bit of desperation in there, or maybe an extra edge fueled by the nerves and doubt about my future. Regardless, I am proud of it and I hope you enjoy it.
We played a show for DoHM and The Family Riot on Halloween. It was a tough draw, but we had a lot of really nice fans show up. Here is how we opened the show with Blink. This song has been recorded recently for our first full-length album. Here is a raw version.
The Company Line has been working hard and we might have a payoff here in the next couple of days. We haven’t played a show in almost a year, but we are looking to get our asses back out on the stage and it looks like we will have a show announcement soon. Also, just to show you what kind of lack of rock star status we have, I will tell you that we have practice today, Sunday at 11:00 AM.
I thought rock and roll was about sex, drugs and debauchery. Not in The Company Line. My text to Mike the drummer last night was “See you tomorrow. I will brew the coffee.”
Show me your metal fingers.
Welcome to The Company Line 2.0
We have been gone for a year. We lost our drummer. We found a new one, who just happens to be a swell, and keen fellow.
We have been working on new stuff including the video I am going to include below. It is just a rough take that I did in my house by myself. Hope you enjoy it and I hope it whets the appetite for all the new stuff to come.
Until next time,
Craig
The Company Line
