Well, glad you asked! Random Emotion had a nice run but I'm off to hopefully bigger and better things in 2011. The first shot was the release of the song Locked Out and Loaded which you can preview by clicking a link on my home page. I'm told the song fits in the Outlaw Country category (one of my favorite stations on Sirius/XM radio btw - check it out) which makes me happy. It features Marty Richards on drums, Tom West on piano, Kevin Barry on guitars, Richard Gates on bass and Jim Fitting on harp. The plan is to record another song in the same style and then release both songs as a CD single. I'm thinking about covering the old Beatles song "Little Child" for the B side.
In the past few weeks I've been back at Straight Up Music recording a song I wrote a couple of years ago about our pet rabbit which Nina named Mozart. He was an especially cuddly little thing who died an untimely death after a little over a year in our back yard. The song is my first foray into ragtime and I enlisted the services of Billy Novick of the Black Eagle Jazz Band to play clarinet. Billy also came up with a few really nice arragement ideas on the fly. Along with Billy the track features Marty on drums, Jesse Williams on bass and Tim Ray on piano. Originally I had Nina sing the tune but I also was looking for a professional voice and found Debbie Pierre who's studying at Berklee and did a great job sounding 13 years old! I've sent the track to my uncle, Ted Sommer to see if we can add some of his inimitable percussion. I'll post the finished product on the site as soon as it's done.
I'm putting together a set list of classic soul, funk and r&b songs in hopes to doing a set at Sally O'Brien's sometime in the spring.
Well, I need a nap. Talk to you soon!