Naked Singing

Yeah. I have a lot of masks I wear as a singer. Born of insecurity. About my voice, about myself. About whether people will love me. Just human being stuff really but for performers that can be trouble. If I build a performance from my need for you to be impressed then I'm not really singing from the truth of the material am I? I might impress you but ultimately what am I really communicating about the song?

Producer Gavin Bradley helped me identify a habit I had of over singing to try and communicate the intensity of feeling in the material…like a stage actor who is a ham and goes over the top. He pulled me back to being more like a screen actor who feels the emotions in a scene and allows the viewer to go on the journey with him. Thats how we approached the vocals on "Domesticated"..and it was a real adventure of trust and faith for us.

Gavin asked me to trust him enough on one complete vocal to prove to me that this more vulnerable approach would suck the listener into my world in a more compelling way. We chose "I'm Coming Home" which was a real challenge because I had been singing that song for years before Daniel suggested we brush it off and work up an arrangement for this disc.

The experiment worked for me (you be the judge) and launched us into the rest of vocals which we recorded at Gavin's home studio "Afternoon Tea" where we could take our time to develop the approach that would work best.

I like long takes as much as possible..and although at the beginning Gavin had to work me hard to keep me naked and "open" in my performance we got to a shorthand by the end of the disc. By the end of summer 2010 we were flying along stacking those back up vocals sweltering in the August heat and surrounded by a Futon for sound baffling.At one point it was actually close to "naked" singing with me stripped down to my underwear having been caught in a rain storm while biking over. LOL

Finding The Producer

Daniel and I started to think through who could guide this music through it's final recording stages summer of '09 while most of these songs were just being written. We had building and focusing the sound for a while and knew it would take a special touch to get things just right and so were interviewing producers that seemed like a potential match. I had been introduced to Gavin Bradley and his music through a few friends in the business and was songwriting with a batch of folks including him.. but something just clicked with Gavin and we ended up becoming good friends during the process.

We had been writing in his Afternoon Tea studio in the College and Young street area of downtown Toronto, slipping out for Thai food and to talk about music and love and life and Gavin seemed to have an intelligence about this music and who I am as an artist that really impressed me.

He had an understanding of both my R&B/Soul and Rock N Roll influences and how those elements would eventually feed the Orchestral Pop-Cabaret of "Domesticated".

One day during a session I just turned to him and told him I thought we should be asking him to produce the disc. Crazily he said yes! and we spent the better part of year sweating it out in the trenches to bring you the final product. Because this disc included recording organic instruments live off the floor Gavin had the bright idea to bring in engineer John Nazario to record the instruments just right and eventually to mix this puppy. Although that kind of process was new for Gavin a more meticulous and magical producer could not have been found for this disc. I'll be talking a bit about the whole recording process in the next blog entry.

Hi Folks! I want to talk a bit about the songs on "Domesticated" and how they came about. It took a long time and a lot of writing time to create the material recorded for this disc. We actually went after the beast three times!!

A few years ago my brother Daniel and I started collaborating and building the adult pop "sound" of the disc which included intimate lyrics with softer drums and piano based arrangements and Daniel singing back up vocals. A few tunes survive in the live show from that first period including our "take" on the David Bowie/Nina Simone classic "Wild As The Wind" and Goffin/King "Brill Building" chestnut "Up On The Roof".

On the first round we had feedback from our resident song person Catharine Saxberg, (who was the sort of de facto executive producer of the disc), that our first material was smart but meandering and not yet focused enough for a strong disc. So, excited to have such top level input we went back to the drawing board and wrote and demo'd up another batch of songs that tried to address the issues of length and form. None of them were actually from the heart but they were all very short and well fashioned. LOL. The demo's in Daniel's Liberty Village Studio during that second period gave us a run at arranging the vocals and instruments and so we found out a lot more about how to support this sound musically.

A third period of focused writing proved the charm. I went after the songs with all the knowledge and smarts we had accumulated over the period of development and gave myself over to talking about what was really happening in my life. Thats always how my best material has come about in the past. I seem to have to relearn the same lesson every recording project though.

I headed north to write sketches in the early mornings in the boathouse of the family cottage during the summer of 09.

The many moods of the lake kept me open and peaceful and I found the harmonies and melodies showing me the way to a batch of happier songs that described the deeper truths of my experience in a much punchier and more direct communication. I wrote early before anybody got up at the cottage and felt those hours as a kind of holy communion with the muse that was feeding me daily inspiration and joy in the foam of these songs.

Moving to a new location seemed important to get another perspective but Toronto proves too busy for me with my coaching business and friends etc. I asked my pal Bill in Montreal to recommend a spot and his pal Patti was finished off the Bed and Art apt above her art gallery. Perfect artist hideaway for writing.

By the time I was polishing off the lyrics there I could feel the simple power of these melodies working all together in a song cycle. Coming home to record simple piano and voice demo's at the Rogue Studio's in Toronto with JP (which has become part of my working process) I slid the finished tunes to my team of Daniel and Cathie with no expectations.

When Cathie said "you nailed it" we knew it was time to start the process of arranging and recording them. -phew- A three round process was finally finished!

"Domesticated" is finally delivered!

Sunday Oct 17th

Wow folks. Just handed over the final mastered version of "Domesticated" on Friday and am still unwinding from meeting all the deadlines.. (our Toronto release show is just 2 weeks away and we wanted the disc to be ready!)

The decisions about artwork happened just before Canadian Thanksgiving and thanks to Michael Wrycraft's speed and creative smarts we solved a whole lot of problems real quick. We only shot the cover photo during mix sessions the week before. Final copy on press materials happening at the same time as final mixes and mastering sessions. Yikes! I'll be unwinding until next year.

This disc "Domesticated" is the best recorded work I've ever done (and that includes the 2 discs with The Nylons that I am very proud of!) The songs reflect a new kind of happiness in my soul.. but also the rough journey it took to get here. I'll be telling the story of this disc in following blogs

but today just want to take a moment to breath and reflect on the incredible experience. Drawing a team around these songs has been a deeply fulfilling journey, one of the best of my professional life to date and I really look forward to your feedback as we bring this music out to you starting with the Hugh's Room show.

This music doesn't exist without you after all..if a man sings at the top of his lungs in the forest where no one hears him..is there really music?

Trash Circus

The unholy marriage of rock n roll and cabaret has always attracted me. This second track from the "Micah Barnes" disc tells the story of my touring the previous disc "Loud Boy Radio" across America. (We called it the "couch and cuddle" tour) :) The glitter and glam influence of the LoudBoy rock n roll experience can be felt in the lyric and edgy vocal even though it's performed on voice and piano. From the safe vantage point of the present day I sound like I am out of my mind. Hmmmm. Maybe I was.

Long Drives. Ugly Hotel Room. Bad Food. Medication for the Blues.Filthy Dressing Rooms.

We musicians are lucky to get to make a life of music but we pay the price for the lifestyle. The road can be a depressing experience that makes you feel unhooked from the world and desperate to put your feet on the ground. This song Trash Circus was written to capture both the allure of the road and also some of the sadness and pain I've experienced out there feeling lost and desperate.

I stared writing Trash Circus as spoken word sketches for a about a year and finished it off as a song in Vegas while working on the track "Good Soldier" for LA based rapper Deadlee's disc. His label had a whole bunch of us staying up at a hotel on the strip while we recorded our parts and there was lots of waiting around so I kept working on Trash Circus while I viewed the decadence of Vegas from behind the Neon sign outside my window. Perfect.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/micah-barnes/id324429103

Venice Beach

Los Angeles is so intense under the easy going vibe. It takes so much of ourselves just to feel like we're doing OK, let alone great, and you need a safe place to chill and feel protected and peaceful and that's how Venice worked for me.

It was built as an amusement park around the turn of the century by Abbot Kinney (Which is how it's high end shopping street got it's name), and designed as a version of the actual Venice in Italy, with little cottages lining sleepy canals and public bathing houses along the ocean back when the public thronged to amusement parks. The freak show boardwalk still exists giving the tourist a destination,(and the drug dealers an office front!).

Back in the day the trolley went out from downtown Los Angeles along Venice Blvd taking inland residents to the big party at the beach and many of them ended up taking up residence in the little cottages. Especially the artists and writers who were attracted by the beautiful light and the idylic lifestyle. Soon Venice Beach stood for "the bohemian lifestyle" and it's denizens including post war european artists, mixed race couple and gays and lesbians who created an enduring stamp on the town. The 60's and 70's saw Venice become one of the destinations of choice for traveling hippies and grew a beatnik culture of it's own. By the time I came along in the 90's after all those decades of being a safe haven for freaks of every kind the decay and drugs and violence had taken their toll.

We moved into a one room railroad style apt on a crack alley and I proceeded to write the material that would become a series of spoken word and music pieces. Digging into myself for the unfigured out chaos under cover of morning fog that would burn off by noon leaving a brilliant sunny day for the wandering and suddenly this Canadian used to four seasons had found a writers retreat that seemed to go on forever allowing me the time and space to cook the songs that became this album.

Blood On The Keyboard

All those years of singing classic pop material in The Nylons gave me a real thirst to talk about my own experience as a solo artist. After some years experimenting and stretching myself combining spoken word and electronic oriented music I finally bought an old acoustic piano and put it in my Venice Beach apt.so that I could get back to creating music the old fashioned way. In time I found that my own songs worked best for the listener when they emerged from deep inner world that I had no way to communicate other than in song. You know,the messy unworked out stuff that is hard to name.

AFTER YOU "I took this ugly room with the parking lot view, so I could small the cheap perfume of lonelyness my love"

Working with producer Clint Yeager who comes from a rock n roll background meant taking a risk. Clint pushed me until I was raw. Both as a songwriter and as a recording artist. He said he wanted the audience at home to hear blood on the piano. LOL. You be the judge.

The first song "After You" on my piano and voice disc is written as a communication to an ex-lover, detailing just how bad things have gotten after the break up. Guys tend to hole up inside and wallow and this song is a kind of celebration of that particular state.

Although "After You" was the last tune written for the disc "Micah Barnes", producer Clint Yeager really felt that it defined the overall mood and would work as a good introduction to this particular journey and landscape....http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/micah-barnes/id324429103

Making "Micah Barnes"

Greetings Folks!

I thought before jumping into telling you about the writing and recording of the new tracks we are making in Toronto, it would be good to have a little look back at the adventure of the last disc and how it all came together.

I was living in Venice Beach, Los Angeles, a single man recovering from a very messy love affair and lifestyle that had literally brought me to my knees in every which way. Sounds kinda ridiculous now that I am so much stronger but sometimes life gives you the kick in the pants that you really need. Buncha intensely personal songs came out of it and focused the album which we called simply "Micah Barnes".

I was writing and performing shows with my rock n roll band LoudBoy and we had recorded songs with legendary producer Geza X. at his Malibu studio which were already finding license for film and T.V. In the middle of all that my buddy (and the bassist in LoudBoy) Clint Yeager turned to me and said that he felt the songs felt more powerful when I performed them solo at the piano ...and suggested that was how I should record them. It was a resounding shock to hear the truth coming from someone who I so respect (and who can eat even more than me at one sitting). I had started my career at the piano and it really and truly seemed the deepest place for those songs to exist. So I told him great idea but he had to produce the recording. :)

After some fun distractions, (involving a Billboard #1 Club single called "Welcome To My Head" produced by pals Thunderpuss), we got to work on choosing the songs and perfecting the arrangements for my own disc in my little Venice apt on Breeze Avenue. Clint would come out from Silverlake (where we had met performing in bands and working the door together at clubs) and we'd have a good visit, we'd play through the stuff and go eat and go for long drives playing music and talking about how important rawness and passion and personal truth were to pulling off this new kind of rock n roll cabaret material solo at the piano.... more on the songs as we go..

Album available online from CD Baby and itunes!

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/micah-barnes/id324429103