it’s gonna be good. reggae dj oscar of the ‘meiwenti’ crew is bringin his goodness, and we’re gonna have ourselves a time…jess’s new cd, DIVINE, is out first at 2 Kolegas (in BJ’s one and only drive in movie theater) **saturday night is gonna be just right**

November 14th 2009

it’s silly. so many years have passed and i have had substandard speakers. yesterday i went out and bought myself some good studio monitors. oh my god, the difference is SO much…better.

now i can hear clearly the mixes, and immediately i feel better, as well as very clear about what i want. so this task has become so much more simple. so simple and so so.

my beautiful friend margaret sent me some new music (and a righteous fuzzy disco purse). if you’ve never heard Ceu by golly, get out there and get this woman’s music. she is by far the best new music i’ve run across in a while. she’s innovative, talented, beautiful voice and amazing musicians playing with her. brazilian. check it yo.

sunday holds a big day of to do’s. between friends getting married, playing at weddings, friends and family having babies and friend’s birthdays and departures i am completely behind! my album remains the bright shiny priority in the moment, and everything else gets second place…my sincere apologies to you if i have neglected you, it will be worth the wait i promise. the album is sounding a lot better in my head and settling deeper into my heart. it’s strange how it has become what it has…it’s just like anything though – a process. i hope that this is a good refelction of the place i am in now. i continually reflect on the new intentions that i can add into my musicality, my abilities. i long for new challenges…

new york city will be one of the new challenges. a very very fun and enjoyable one. hee hee. top musicians…december in new york city – a great vibe going on at that time…with all the holiday frenzying…the energy is just sublime during this time. can’t wait to sINg there!

thanks to those of you who came to the YGYS show – we always have a great time up on stage – but that night the sound was funny and the vibe was a little scattery, but i think we managed to give the crowd the goodness we had in our hearts. sebastian (the new bassist) found out the hard way that when you write out charts, you should use a dark thick permanent marker, otherwise, on stage, the chart written in blue ball point pen will not show up under the stage lights (often red and blue).

november 14th is gonna be fun at 2 Kolegas (drive in movie theater) – meiwenti sounds are gonna dj for the occasion, and we’re gonna have a full stage of good musicians playing the new CD will be NIU B (chinese expression that means UBER COOL). stay tuned…

relistening to the mixes right now. feels better in some, in others i hear mistakes that i need to correct. so the recording continues on. time passes, it’s colder now. blue skies, sunlight coming thru the south window. a bird tweeterdee-ing.

just trying to remember all the brightness in this process, as the negative is minute and easily quelled with a few deep breaths. i had to teach 2 yoga classes last night in a row, and i really enjoyed being able to focus on something that wasn’t recording. breathing deep for 4 hours will align a human. feeling better.

so i’ll keep updating. my gig on thursday next week the 22nd is still happening at yugong yishan. it will be fun. federico is back, sebastian is new, and that means we will have a really fresh live show. who knows what jokes zac will tell, or if we can get him to teach us the muppet dance again. only one way to find out. show up! keep listening to the tracks on this little widget thingydoodle on the right. i am eventually gonna start selling my tunes on itunes, and i will begin recording a weekly podcast on songwriting featuring how i write or what i am working on. that’s gonna be uber fun.

and so it is
postponed. tim goes in 6 hours.
and i am filled with a well of relief
knowing that now i can relax, make some improvements, design with care and finish with quality.
new cd release party, dos kolegas, november 14th. my meimei’s birthday. great day.

more soon.

i have to trust that this is all gonna work out. it’s 9:44am tuesday. tim is packing to leave for ireland in the morning on a tour, and i am missing mixes. i have to trust that somehow in the next 4-5 hours he can pass me what i need before he heads out on the road. if he can’t, then i will have no cd to produce til november. it’s not the end of the world, a part of me feels relieved when i think of this as an option. but it would be nice to have it all follow the time table i was planning on, october 22 release party…

i have sworn to myself that the next time i do an album, i will be in the room with the engineer mixing. this is very challenging, like a long distance relationship tends to go – miscommunication, present realities (on different sides of the globe), the waiting for time to wake us up so we can communicate. no to long distance relationships as well as mixing an album long distance.

there are some problems with the tracks that cannot be re-done (unless we get another month) but i’m trying not to focus in on the problems so much as what is good about it. i lay on my livingroom floor last night in the darkness warmed by candlelights dancing around and listened to a few tracks with a friend. we both felt very magical about it, so i think it’s good. i am always the perfectionist, thinking of new ways to enhance.

oh, i saw “dead man” with johnny depp. dude. anyone i think will like this movie. it totally flipped me into a new stratosphere of hearing the words someone is speaking. the soundtrack is amazing, with the experimental sounds that neil young plays on his electric guitar. it’s just dreamy. i love the freedom of the soundtrack. there are themes and cool characters, and life is like it is. very well done jim jarmusch (think that’s how you spell it)

there is a wedding on saturday that i am playing at with zac and sebastian for some friends of mine. this will be the first gig with sebastian so it should be fun. ok. back to my present reality. the mixes…sigh.

it has been a fretful (not really) time, as my voice has been recovering from a cold. the gloop and glop slowly recede, but it’s been really tough to get some good live takes of me singing and playing guitar. that means that if i get almost thru the song and f up, then i have start all over again. this was hours of tedium and patience and breathing. but i think i got some takes.

fred flowerday (holdin down the fort of organ excellence in michigan) laid some track down on “ready for something good” and i am looking forward to hearing it all put together. the challenge now is for tim to mix everything and have it mastered by monday night before he heads out on tour…

i am tired. i felt a sense of completion when i finally decided on the take for “over” which, i realize, is ironically or prophetically too true to be last thing i record for this album. ha ha. meeting with the cd maker tomorrow. then it’s design.

i attended the wedding of a good friend, ember swift (www.emberswift.com) and her now husband reggae chinese rocker, guo jian. check out her music. she’s enthusiastic and her new album, lentic, is filled with glorious sonorous newness.

onward i go…wish me luck, love and/or light ***

this process is enjoyable. went to chaoyang park in a nice dress and shot photos with oak. astra and rachel came along to soak in the holiday sun and assist with the sun reflecting into my face. surprisingly, for a national holiday, the park was not swamped with blobs of people. of course, there were still lots of people (as bj has a population of like 15 million) doing the usual park thing – walking, wedding photo shoots, taking photos, riding in boats, cooling by fountains, eating meat on a stick (it looks like a shiny red popsicle from far away, but it’s meat)…

i am still learning how to interact with a camera. i need a model to give me some tips, or i need to spend more time in front of a mirror practicing. it is odd to induce a “look” from no where. i could dig acting, because you take on a character, but really photography also requires different kinds of moods or expressions…so i guess it is a little like acting, except that i am the character that i am portraying. i like natural, i like smiling and being goofy, and i like the sun. so with alot of help from oak’s great eye, we managed to get some really great shots. and now i know more about how to act like jess meider in a photoshoot. i did one last year at a professional photography studio, and after 8 hours, i was tired. tired of the photographer telling me to “open my mouth” (there is a model shot, you can see it in alot of magazines, this sort of draped open mouth with some teeth showing kinda sexy droopy but looks good in photos), tired of inventing new poses. even a little tired of looking at myself. haha. if you’ve never done one, i highly recommend it, you’ll learn alot about your body language.

anyhow, the photos a great. now for the final songs. the 4 acoustic numbers. all must be recorded…tomorrow…gasp! :) it’s all good. it has to be.

i can’t post photos today, but i will do so soon. hope you are all doing well out there. have you put my “songwriter” or “dao” album on to someone’s ipod today? share. listen. enjoy. share…it makes it that much easier for me  to travel the world playing music for you all.