Evan Valentine, Stay-at-Home Dad

Well, Steve spent maybe ten hours here yesterday. I think we finished our album, at least the recording aspect of it. I just have to get everything in order and make sure all the fade-betweens are perfect. I'm happy with it. It's the best of everything we have, and it's 78:45 out of a possible 80:00 that can fit on a cd. Couldn't squeeze more on there if we tried. So, we'll see what happens. It seems the rates for mastering have gone up, but I'll try to get the old rates honored. With the new rates it will cost us between 900-1000 dollars. Ouch. We now have gathered about a hundred bucks through our bandcamp site, and Steve has put forty bucks into the pot. Not quite there yet by any stretch, but we'll make it happen.

Steve and I are going to try to set up a scheduled weekly time to work on stuff. We can't exactly call it band practice because we don't practice, but it's like a combination Super Nintendo and audio recording time.

We went bowling this morning and Stephen's nap schedule is completely screwed. He has slept for a total of 30 minutes all day, when he should have woken up from a 2+ hour nap a little bit ago. I just made the suggestion that we go grocery shopping right now so we could be finished by the time football starts, but then I realized the error of my ways when Stephen started to lose his temper and remind me that he needs to nap very badly. Jaime is upstairs feeding him and trying to put him down right now, and it doesn't sound like she is having much success.

I contacted a title company to get the title of this house transferred to me and Jaime's names. It is currently listed in me and my father's names. We'd like to get it squared away before it becomes an issue down the road when/if we sell this place. I throw the "if" in there because ideally we would rent this place out when we buy a new house. We have less than 9yrs to go on this mortgage. Money situation is good right now. Hopefully we can pay off our new car or Jaime's student loans (or both, but probably not) after taxes this year. Will be nice to not have a car payment again. If we paid off the car (which we just got last April) then we'd have 303 more dollars per month to play with. We shall see.

It's time for Evan to pass the hat. Steve and I need money to get our album mastered. We get a surprisingly good response to this old album when we give it out, so we thought we'd set up a system for donations. If you click "download" on the link below, it will bring up a Paypal payment screen. If you have a Paypal account, it couldn't be easier to donate seven dollars. If you do not have a Paypal account, it is still easy to purchase/download the album with a secure credit card payment. We have it set up for a minimum of $7, in case our relatives wanted to give us more as a Christmas present or something. You can stream all the tracks for free below, or visit the actual site on which it is hosted. It is an easy, convenient system. Anyway, throw us a bone! $7 for the album means a) less than 34 cents per track and b) less than ten cents per minute of audio. Also, if you like it, you can click the "share" link below and post a link to it on your Facebook/Twitter/Livejournal/What have you. Thanks in advance.

This is a set of self-produced home recordings. All 21 songs run together seamlessly to create the feeling that the listener is hearing a jam session. This album will never be released as-is except through bandcamp.com. Proceeds from downloads of "innovation avenue" will go towards the mastering of our next album, for which we will be seeking representation from record labels.

CREDITS:
Released 19 July 2009
All songs composed, arranged, performed, recorded, and produced by Evan Valentine and Steve Bower
Cover art by J. Adam Morris
Hosted by bandcamp.com
©All rights reserved

earsauce (no majuscules allowed) is a studio music project involving only Steve Bower and myself. We have focused solely on the recording of songs. We make something up, slowly record the parts in my basement (over a period of weeks or months), then forget how to play them. On to the next song. Don't look back. We have begun well over 50 songs using this method, and finished about 60% of them so far.

There are obvious drawbacks to making music this way. With two albums worth of finished songs, we have no way to play most of the music live. No way to reproduce the layers and parts with just two people on stage. So now we're going back and making stage versions of the songs (take the 'album version' and cut out the guitar/bass/vocals, and leave the rest as a fake backup band). Even still, we have to go back and re-learn most of our own parts.

My plan is to have a mastered album that we can promote sometime in the first half of 2010. That would still mean it took us five years to make one album.

I don't know how to describe the style of music--not because it is unique, but because it is so varied. Between the two of us, there are many musical influences, and we try to let them all shine through. Some stuff is electronic (my department), some stuff is folksy (both), and some of it has a tinge of rock (Steve). We also split the duties pretty evenly:

Songwriting - both
Lyrics - both
Guitar - both
Vocals - both
Bass - Steve
Hand Drums - Steve
Harmonica - Evan
Piano - both (but mostly Evan)
Banjo - both
Violin - Steve
Synthesizers - Evan
Recording Engineer - both
Production (beats, levels, etc) - Evan

At times we're really interested in recording new stuff, and at times we're not. That's the beauty of the arrangement. We're not 'on the clock' paying for studio time. No schedules. Nothing is forced. That's the way it should be. Hopefully the relaxed attitude comes through in the music, because that's what I like.

First off, I'd like to say that this show is enraging. I'm sure it's edited specifically to show the negative aspects of the stage parents, but I just shout curses at the TV when it is on. I hope these parents watch this show and feel like awful, awful people.

I have my first non-CRT monitor. 19" flat panel. My father-in-law got an extra 19" for a hundred bucks so I snagged it. (S&S, the check is literally in the mail for that, by the way). Now I just have to figure out how to calibrate it. The neutral colors are all coming out bright blue/purple. I think maybe it's set that way to counteract regular bulb lighting. I can't edit pictures until I get this properly calibrated, and it's driving me crazy. All my black&whites look purple. Sometimes I wish I wasn't a big nerd and I couldn't tell the difference between a calibrated monitor and an uncalibrated one... or I couldn't tell the difference between a high quality mp3 and a low quality one.

I only have one more week of work before I try my hand at being Mr. Mom (and we try our hand at being poor). Cool. So cool. Worrisome, too.

earsauce is really churning out some songs this year. We have scrapped half of our "finished album" and are putting new stuff in its place. My plan is to have a complete and mastered CD we can try to market by the new year. We have not yet incurred any cost in all of our recordings, and paying $500+ for mastering will be a huge blow, but I think it's worth it. This is the best thing I've ever been involved with, musically speaking. It's pretty amazing to suddenly check the earsauce folder and have 40+ songs in there.

We didn't go bowling this morning, so we were able to do our chores early. It will be a nice evening, not having to worry about grocery shopping and finishing up the laundry. Soon Mr. Mom will be doing both of those tasks by himself. Scary.