John Gawkowski
May 1, 2011
First of all, thank you so much to the many many people who have sent me such kind words about our music, and especially to those who have linked our video from their site. i am totally humbled by the response we have gotten from the single "Sad Lisa". As you can guess the album is taking longer than expected but i've come to realize its best for a project like this to move at it's own pace. We've decided on the final song list now and are just in the process of tracking the last couple of songs.
A couple of other quick updates:
Sad Lisa - Getting Radio Play in Germany!!
I'd like to say a special thanks to the folks from Germany who have written to me to let me know they heard "Sad Lisa" on the radio and they loved the song. I was so pleased to learn that a Berlin radio station had picked up the song and was playing it.
Article in Pajamasmedia
Recently blogger Richard Fernandez wrote an artice in one of the country's most infleuential blog sites - "Pajamasmedia". The article dicussed how with technology today amateurs can create and publish professional quality content. I was thrilled to have Richard use our video as an example of such content. The article can be found here.
May 14, 2009
Just a quick update. It has been so cool to have so many people find this site and listen to these songs. Especially the incredible number of friends, family and even outright strangers who have sent me an email letting me know that they have downloaded and listened to my songs and have put them on their iPods, etc. Very Cool. What a trip!!!
I continue to work on my album. Honestly, this has become less of a project for me and more of a personal journey now. It is coming along - albeit slowly. I am learning so much and I am becoming more humble with each step in the process. We have about 3 more songs to do and then there are endless touch ups, mixing, mastering steps, etc. We are shooting for the album to be finished in the fall. The album will have mostly new songs with at most one or two of the songs below being included, and even those will be redone to a large extent.
Available Fall 2009 on iTunes and CD Baby
Sad Lisa - Video
Well, after several months of fun (uh - i mean hard work), we finally completed a little video for one of the songs from the album, a song called "Sad Lisa."
Sad Lisa appeared on side one of the 1970's album, "Tea for the Tillerman" by Cat Stevens. As the title implies, this is indeed a sad song, but at the same time, I think a very beautiful one. To me, the song is about wanting to help someone you care about who is deeply troubled, and ultimately understanding that you can't help.
The haunting arrangement was done by Patrick Feehan who plays the keyboards on the song. It also features Kris Yenney on Cello. I'm personally pleased with the vocals on this, mostly because of the level of emotion that we were able to capture. As part of recording this, I learned that a great arrangement can inspire and guide the right vocal performance.
The video was filmed, directed and created by a young filmmaker from Oakland named Ben Flanigan. We thought it would be cool to try and capture a little bit of the recording studio experience for this song. We had a lot of fun on a Friday evening getting everyone together and making this in the studio. It was filmed in Studio A of The Annex in Menlo Park. If you are interested, I have posted some behind the scenes photos and details about the process of making this video. You can click here.
For best results please listen to the soundtrack with your earphones not your tiny computer speakers ;-)
