I posted a remix of What You Wish For, which still needs a bass track. I'm hoping to kick my current illness overnight (yeah, right...) so I can spend my two days off being at least somewhat productive and get that done along with a few other songs that need attention. (This is what you get when you work tons of overtime and are surrounded by patients and co-workers infected with this year's nastiest cold virus -- nothing gets done like you wished.)
Anyway, thanks to Postcard David Partridge fo…
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Added by Jo2 on September 7, 2009 at 3:37am —
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An ad found on Craig's List for musicians:
musicians to develop an original show and take it to the big town.
1 flute needed
1 violent player
1 female vocal
**********@yahoo.com
Just had to share. :)
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Added by Jo2 on June 5, 2009 at 9:30pm —
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http://www.myspace.com/johrobinson is the url of my new myspazz page, featuring some of my solo work that doesn't quite fit in with The Hollis-Robinson Project. I have two incredibly rough demos up, just tinkering with new songs and fleshing out possible arrangements.
I'll put those two gawd-awful demos up here when I get up in the morning. I was going to go to bed about 2 hours ago, and ended up customizing the myspazz page and all that crap, and I'm whupped.
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Added by Jo2 on May 22, 2009 at 6:33am —
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...another one creaks open unexpectedly.
After a few email exchanges about the folk group that was allegedly forming, I never did hear anything back, so who knows what's going on with that.
However, I am the newest member of the one-year-old Ukulele Orchestra of Cleveland, and will be starting with them in mid-August, after the Gathering Stateside '09. :) This is undoubtedly one of the strangest jags ever in my music career.
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Added by Jo2 on May 19, 2009 at 5:32am —
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Richard and I are slowly but surely plugging away on the double-disc trad set. Currently being worked on is In the Pines, a demo of which we put up a few days ago. It's since changed a wee bit, and will change a bit further before it's done. We have other songs lined up to work on, amongst them a few Child ballads and an Irish trad tune (if I can ever get the banjo part!), as well as Sumer Is a-Cumin In, which dates back at least a million years, before humans roamed the earth.
Other tasty mors…
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Added by Jo2 on May 10, 2009 at 12:22am —
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The CD on which Richard and I contributed tracks, is now available on CDBaby, at http://cdbaby.com/cd/taylorjonathan8. It's called A Useful Fool, and features a few other guest artists. Cool stuff...one of my faves is Eene Meene Miste. Jonathan also has a MySpace page, which you can find on www.thisisjonathantaylor.com, and where you can hear complete versions of some of the new material instead of the snippets provided by CDBaby.
We're very proud to be a part of this wonderful collection of so…
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Added by Jo2 on May 1, 2009 at 12:46am —
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2009 is turning out to be very productive, in spite of the way it started off, with nearly tossing my instruments and recorder out of the window.
When Richard and I started working together in April/May of 2006, I wrote a dozen songs (most of which we haven't done because they're really not all that good).
In 2007 I wrote 7 songs, but I chalked up most of that to my father's illness and eventual passing. And truthfully at that time, music was the absolute LAST thing on my mind. Even when I wro…
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Added by Jo2 on April 30, 2009 at 3:02pm —
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I had my first violin lesson on Monday afternoon. I was nervous, worrying about what hideous habits I'd picked up from being self-taught. Although there have been numerous fiddlers who've been self-taught, or taught by someone who was a student of someone who was self-taught (etc. etc.) and their playing was more than adequate for the particular style of music they made, I knew that proper training was what I needed due to the fact that during the 3 years I've had my violin, I still sucked at it…
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Added by Jo2 on April 2, 2009 at 4:52pm —
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This song was sent to us by our singer/songwriter/radio broadcaster friend, Jonathan. He said he'd had it laying around for a while and asked Richard and me to add bass and banjo to it, which we did. It's a preliminary mix, and undoubtedly will be fiddled around with a few times before its final mix is settled.
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Added by Jo2 on March 25, 2009 at 11:54pm —
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I tried to post this on the Cleveland Gatherings page, but the site is being a butt, so it's going here instead.
We are definitely booked for the Phantasy Niteclub/The Symposium, a sort of 2-in-1 venue. The manager of the place watched Gather 'Round the Mic, and told me that he's very interested in hosting us this year! I'm almost certain that he will give us both stages, which will be really great because there will be plenty of room and time for all those who are participating. See…
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Added by Jo2 on March 17, 2009 at 7:00am —
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It never ceases to amaze me that these demos go from being rough, freshly dug-up chunks of songs full of glitches (and bad singing) to arranged, polished (more like heavily tumbled) actual listenable songs. The singing is still bad, but Richard cleverly masks a good deal of that noise with his studio work, and thank heavens for that!
The latest two, "How You Said" and "Following a Dream," were recorded yesterday during a fit of ennui. It's really never a good idea to start recording when one is…
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Added by Jo2 on February 3, 2009 at 3:46pm —
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This afternoon I began the miserable task of my monthly and yearly budget planning. I went over old utility bills to get an average that will be owed (assuming, probably stupidly, that they won't raise their rates TOO much), how much my monthly food bills come to, the rest of the roofing that needs to be done along with other household work, my property taxes, and so forth. No matter how I crunched the numbers, I discovered that what I need to spend will come to several thousand dollars more tha…
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Added by Jo2 on January 23, 2009 at 2:18am —
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The date of this year's Cleveland Gathering will be the 8th of August, which is a Saturday. Venue TBA. :) Start saving your pennies!
That's all...
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Added by Jo2 on January 12, 2009 at 2:30pm —
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I've got a few more gigs lined up for those who would like to drive hundreds of miles (or fly thousands) to see me live. Uh huh, as if... ;-)
Alexander's in North Olmsted, OH on January 5th and 19th, and The Winchester in Lakewood OH on January 13th and 22nd, starting anywhere between 8:30 to 9pm. Unfortunately, these will be solo outings as Richard will be unable to make it. One of these years....
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Added by Jo2 on December 19, 2008 at 4:44pm —
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Richard and I are hard at work, ditching the last of the CDs (sold a grand total of 5 at the shop so far, and one more is being mailed out this Friday!) and making progress on the next one. So far we have the first tune done for the acoustic disc, and the last tune done for the electric disc. Today I did the lead vocal for another song, and will finish up the backing vocals tomorrow--well, today, actually, as it's after midnight--to send back. It's a trad song that was done by Steeleye Span, and…
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Added by Jo2 on December 16, 2008 at 5:30am —
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They're all out on my end, except for one, for which I'm waiting address confirmation. I sent out 4 on Saturday, 12 yesterday, and 5 more today. I have locally distributed 3 and have 4 to go. I know Richard sent out a few on Monday and is sending a few more out today, and will be sending the rest by the end of the week to those in the UK and Ireland.
On the way home from the post office, I stopped at this weird little shop up the road, a place that sells hand-made clothes, jewelry, and some oth…
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Added by Jo2 on December 2, 2008 at 3:30pm —
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Richard and I are now taking pre-orders for Major In-Roads, our latest CD. We're still awaiting the original artwork from my daughter for the cover, and should have it within a few weeks so we can begin production and start mailing them out by the end of this month.
We have approximately 40 to give out (we're making 60, but 20 are already reserved) so if you would like one, please message either me or Richard with your snail mail address and we'll send them out as soon as they're available.
Th…
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Added by Jo2 on November 9, 2008 at 1:00am —
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My 14 year old son and I are in the process of writing a very non-PC song.
It's about stupid people and stupid things (a dog features in one of the verses), and will be sung a capella by the two of us. The chorus is...well...going to upset those who are easily offended.
Expect it up in a few weeks...my son currently has a bit of a sore throat. I might even get my older son involved. Should be a lot of fun!
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Added by Jo2 on October 24, 2008 at 5:14pm —
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This was my reaction to all the political bullshit running rampant in the US, from loss of jobs to farmers being forced into using genetically mutated seed to government bailouts to lack of separation of church and state...the list goes on. If you're in the USA and you haven't registered to vote, please do so, and soon. It already may be too late in your individual state.
Note that this is just a rough demo. The vocals are going to be redone tomorrow and Sunday (I'm writing this Friday evening)…
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Added by Jo2 on October 4, 2008 at 12:24am —
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I've never had so much technical difficulty trying to get
anything done as I have the second installment of Americana Showcase. From getting recording errors on the media card, to problems with sound levels and a bad edit (or two or three or four....), I was about ready to throw in the towel. But I finally gave up and uploaded it to FF, even
with the mistakes because I simply couldn't stand to listen to those songs one more time, as much as I love each and every one of them. So the…
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Added by Jo2 on September 16, 2008 at 3:45pm —
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