Wisconsin Cheese Studios

I’ll be playing at the Brew for the Cure benefit at Deer Creek Manor in Bloomington, Indiana on Friday, October 17, 2014.  Come out, listen to great music, drink great home brew beer, give recklessly.

I’m heading out to Denver to play for a backyard benefit gig (Anya’s Friends non profit – raised 7K in one evening last year!), all money goes to an orphanage in Haiti that my brother has been to several times.  I’m excited about it, it’s going to be fun, I’ll be sure to play all my best “easy listening crap” (as one fan described it in the past).   I’ll be playing the Stick and guitars and any other instrument thrown into my hands.  Might even sing a couple Brazilian tunes by Joao Bosco.  Fun!

I ran across these 2 very short videos (each about 5 minutes long) on another site, they are totally worth everyone’s time, it’s about what happened before an artist did something noteworthy, or, in Dizzy Gillespie’s words “Ain’t nuthin’ easy.”

part 1

http://vimeo.com/84022735

part 2

http://vimeo.com/87448006

Yes, it’s June, half the year gone, solstice, hot, humid, blah, blah, blah…  more importantly, it’s time to begin the Steve Sobiech Christmas album.  So, to make myself do it, I am publicly announcing to both of you out there reading this that I will do a Christmas album, ready to be in the hands of my adoring public by Christmas 2014.  Hold me to my promise.  Not like government no child left behind in  battle education programs promises, but a real promise to write, record and publish covers and original Christmas music.  Don’t let me sit on my strings and make excuses.

It’s summer, and time for Christmas!

The new Ray Wyatt CD, recorded, mixed and mastered at Wisconsin Cheese, is available at

http://raywyatt.bandcamp.com/

It rocks, great music from the man named Ray – or does he have another name?  You’ll have to buy the cd to find out.  Or just ask me who it is.

We just wrapped up a new cd by Ray Wyatt (aka Matt Novak) last night, it goes public later on this month on CD Baby, Bandcamp, and more.  More info to come in the next couple weeks.

It was a long haul, but it sounds great, feels great to birth another bit of music into the world.

I have a 5×7 card in my studio that I need to look at more often.  It says:

1 – Just do it

2 – Do small pieces

3 – Do bad first drafts, good second drafts, great third drafts

4 – Relax and enjoy!

These are not my words, they come from the book, “The Artist’s Way”, by Julia Cameron, a great book that all artists can benefit from, I know I did.

I just got back last week from the 2013 Taxi.com Road Rally in LA.  It was well worth the time, expense, the hassle of getting things ready at home before abandoning my wife and 3 young children for 5 days.  I’ll cut to the chase, my epiphany was 3-fold:

1- play/record to my strengths (ie, the stringed instruments I play)

2 – keep it simple (I have a mountain of simple songs that come through me)

3 – knock out a whole bunch of them

I knew this before, but hey, that’s why they call it an epiphany, right?  It finally hits.  When the student is ready, the piano will fall on his head, or something like that.  I play quite a few stringed instruments, from good enough to very good, they hang on my studio wall, I need to use them.  I’m a simple guy, simple songs and arrangements come through me easily.  Duh.  I have mastered all of the necessary elements of recording and playing to perform and record these songs relatively quickly, and with high quality.  So, what’s my problem?  Nothing, I just have to push that big boulder a little bit.  I believe the creativity comes through all of us without exception, but you have to do it to make it exist in this world.  You can’t move a boulder with a plan, you have to actually move it a little with your arms and legs and brain, and whatever else  you have hanging off of you.  There has to be a progression of movements over time.  Not that I’m telling you anything you didn’t already know.  Maybe this is your epiphany.

Focus

1- strengths

2- simple

3- a bunch

I’ve been working with a client on a group of his own tunes, and I’ve seen that the honeymoon is over.  Everything is cool, everything is in progress, but it’s that inevitable moment in any project where there is just plain hard work to be done.  And no one else is going to do your project.  In many ways it’s a good sign, it shows that you’ve actually finished about one third of the project.  Enough to keep you in, but enough left to do to make you think, oh crap, there sure is a lot left to do.  It’s the hard part of a project that will pay off in the end if the focus maintains, the commitment revives, the goals get reviewed.  We had a choice after several tunes had been roughed out, a choice to re-do quite a few  because of the key they were in, that they should have been done in a different key.  My opinion, if it serves the song, if it serves to better convey the soul of the song and your message, then change it, re-do it, just do it.  Of course, you may be saying to yourself, Steve, you dumbass, why didn’t you make sure of the keys in pre-production?  Well, fictitious reader, sometimes all of the planning in the world isn’t going to avoid an unseen change.  If it serves to better convey the song, it needs to be done.

Awesome news!  Just finished final touches on John Jeffries latest cd, “Murder and Mayhem”, and we just got it out into the ether via CD Baby.  You can check it out at the iTunes store, just click on the link below:

John Jeffries “Murder and Mayhem”

The album sounds great, John and Wisconsin Cheese Studios are very proud of a great set of songs, some goofy and some serious,  always fun to listen to, beautiful guitars and voices, mandolins and violins, washboards…

You won’t be disappointed.  If you are, we’ll paint your house.  Actually, forget that, you’d  be disappointed with our painting skills.

Amazing, that practice.  It really works.  I’ve been sitting in the garage with the garage door open lately,  practicing guitar for the crickets.  It’s been awesome, great to realize that it really  doesn’t take much to make music, just a guitar and fingers, and half a brain ( I speak for myself).  It’s so low-tech, yet it produces something that the world really can’t capture.  Music, it’s the most immediate of art forms, and the most fleeting.  I kid around with my classes –

What time is it? – Now.

Where are you? – Here.

What are you? – Nothing, but in a good way.

Some students realize I’m just trying to entertain myself, and I am.  But I also mean what I’m saying.  The smart phone can make us dumb.  The guitar doesn’t let itself be used so easily.  It’s a struggle to practice enough, then let go in order to speak through the instrument, but then, on a beautiful, sunny day, with the garage door open, it lets you speak, allows some music to come through you, and it’s wonderful.