News
Not Much in the Mood
PARIS - "Not Much in the Mood" is a song I wrote when I was 16 or 17 years old, and that for some reason I managed to remember the words to all my life since then. That may be because they are about as simple as they can get, with a very straightforward song structure. But I still enjoy singing this song (although I had to transpose the chords as my voice aged). This video is simply a collection of relevant photos from my life since I wrote the song, from teenage time to today.
Borderline - Last from Melodium Sessions
PARIS - Today I released the fifth video of my songs recorded at the Melodium Studios in February. This is my song Borderline, which I saved until the end, as I had the most fear and confusion in how to do the right video for this one. In the end, the video is a bit of an amalgamation of all the other previous videos that I did: A bit of me in the streets of Paris; some public domain film moments; some Bugs Bunny; and some fun and joking. This time I've gone a little further on the animation as well. Borderline, yet another song in my theme of the mad world and mad people we live in and with....
Mad World Video is Out - It's Mad
BARCELONA - Today I released the third video of my songs recorded at the Melodium Studios in February. This is the only cover song that I did during the session, and it is of the Tears for Fears classic, "Mad World." The song had a second life with the Gary Jules cover version in the film Donny Darko in the 2000s. I have often had people tell me that they feel my version falls somewhere between those two versions. Oh, and I used my mad former talents to animate the film.
First Tracks and Videos of Melodium Sessions
PARIS - In the last couple of weeks I have released the first two of five tracks recorded in the Melodium Studio recording sessions in February, in the form of videos. This is the beginning of a series of videos - see the video page on BradSpurgeonMusic.com - and Soundcloud releases for the four original songs, and one cover song, that I recorded in Montreuil in February (see story below). The plan is to make each video quite entirely different in style, although the music itself has the family resemblance.
The first release is "When You're Gone Away," which features me playing my song in, and walking around, various parts of Paris; the second is "Crazy Lady," in which I have told the story of the song through the images of old films that are in the public domain. Next up of the three remaining songs will likely be the cover song I recorded - or then again....
In the Melodium Studios for 5 New Songs
MONTREUIL, France - Four years after my original recordings at the Point Ephemere studios in Paris, I finally got back into the studio at Melodium in Montreuil to record four of my songs and a cover. I now have the material for a CD, with nine songs recorded in full band mode, and one in solo acoustic - I may add one live from an open mic somewhere....
Aside from my own guitar playing, singing and songwriting, another thing that ties together the recording sessions from 2010 and this week in 2014 is the presence on the tracks of the lead guitar player, Félix Beguin. Félix is the lead guitarist of the bands The Burnin' Jacks and Velvet Veins. These are two fabulous up-and-coming young French bands, the former of which had one of its songs featured on the Rock&Folk compilation CD last month. Raphaëlle - whose video "Mississippi" I put up on YouTube - also contributed chorus and a fabulous vocal part on one of the songs.
Félix did much, much more than just play lead guitar on my songs as he did three and a half years ago - by the way, we first played together at the Lizard Lounge open mic in November 2008! - as he played lead and keyboards and did some backup vocals, and he engineered, recorded and even basically produced the five songs we did this week, along with Scott Bricklin and Jeremy Norris. Norris is the drummer for both of the aforementioned groups, and Bricklin is an American musician from Philadelphia who has lived in France for a decade, and who has an illustrious history of making music - he is a multi-instrumentalist, and a singer-songwriter (I have one of his albums on which he plays basically all instruments).
Working with these three guys was superb in many ways, but not the least interesting aspect to it - which helps in the music - is that they are all used to working not only with each other, but also at the studio where we recorded: Melodium Studios in Montreuil, which is a funky neighborhood located just outside of Paris. Félix and Scott are both regular engineers at the studio, so everyone knew each other and the working environment, and it paid off in the music. In fact, it was three days of bliss in this amazing, spacious cellar studio that has several rooms, some really nice equipment and a warm and highly competent staff.
WORLDWIDE OPEN MIC JOURNEY 2014: THE MULTIMEDIA CONSOLIDATION
MELBOURNE, Australia – My worldwide open mic journey began in China in 2008 after the Formula One race in Shanghai, and little did I know that it was a journey that would continue for six more years and cover most of the globe, every continent except Africa (where I once lived and played music in an open mic decades earlier) and Antarctica, and that it would spawn a book, a blog, an album, a documentary film, numerous podcasts, music videos and other multimedia projects.
This year, 2014, I have decided to finish all of the projects and tie them together into a consolidation of multimedia. As part of my personal impetus to gather it all together for myself, but also put it into perspective on this blog, I have decided to create a page for each city I have visited on the journey, tying together samples of the whole multimedia adventure linked to that city. Keep updated as the year goes by on my Bradspurgeon.com blog on the open mic journey multimedia consolidation menu at the top of the blog.
Photo Shoot and Out of a Jam on all Sites
PARIS - At about the same time in the fall I had a fabulous day in a hot, Indian Summer in Paris in a park and on the Seine River shooting with a photo group that wanted to do photos of musicians, and I released my CD, Out of a Jam, online. With the photoshoot, a Paris "meet-up" that I found on Facebook, I jumped at the opportunity, and found it to be a fabulously fun day - and it resulted in some nice photos. It felt more special with that coinciding with the release of my album, "Out of a Jam," on all the usual online music sites, a few months after the album came out in CD format. Check out the gallery on my photos page or via the link below; and check out the album at all the usual suspects: iTunes, Spotify, Bandcamp, and who knows how many others!