We name this ship...

It's getting closer (March 1st, to be precise), the new album I'm making with The Blue Yellows has been recorded, was mastered this very week (see insta' post below), CD distributors and printers have been contacted with issues discussed, as as I write, artwork is being tweaked to fit the necessary criteria. The plan is to get a batch of CDs ready by January to send to out reviewers, magazines, bloggers and so on as the serious players are mostly focused on reviewing material 6 weeks or so before release. The pressure's on.

We are also planning on doing a facebook-live broadcast in the near future, answering any of your questions on the album, or anything surrounding it. So feel free to let me know ANY of your questions on this, don't worry about it being too daft or not knowing enough about recording or music, anything at all - fire away here or on social media! 

Questions so far include; "Will The Lorax be on it?" and "Is the album a girl or a boy?"...

What's your Question?

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Tonight, I picked up the final version of all the tracks for the forthcoming album with my gang #TheBlueYellows mastered by production maestro at #ColossusProductions, #GlynSutton! 4 tracks on here are produced by @timleesongs and this marks the final process on the musical side of things other than uploading/sending to the CD people and our music distributers for online and streaming services. Tweaking of artwork is now well underway. Pic 2 is lil', tiny portion of the front cover art! All excitement here at BYs Towers! 😉 #newalbum #newmusic #production #mastering #mastertracks #CD #CDMaster #streaming #downloads #musicdistribution #band #musicians #newrelease #coverart #albumcover #musicart #difficult2ndalbum

A post shared by Jonathan Tarplee (@jonniegitahhr) on Nov 22, 2018 at 11:08am PST

Some different moments in the recording of this album.. 

Recording preparation 1. Meet the producer.

I already know the producer for my soon-to-be-started solo record, one Mr Dan Logan, illustrious sound engineer, musician and producer of the great and the good at Orchard Studios. It is Dan who mixed and co-produced All these things right now by The Blue Yellows and also once made a fairly tipsy appearance with us on stage, tambourine in hand, at a Christmas show we did. 
Dan is a multi-instrumentalist but perhaps best known as a talented and really interesting, distinctive percussionist. I'm hoping he'll be playing at some of my solo gigs this summer too (at which point I'll have to stop calling them "solo" gigs I guess).

So, I know Dan well anyway but a meeting was required to go over the plan, so much as there was one, Dan's suggestions as to what are realistic ways to use our time and resources in the studio in the most optimal way, artistically. 

This of course involved real ale, and Radley.

Dan, the-man-with-the-plan's Pooch Radley joined us.