shinksma
What? I get a title?
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2014
- Messages
- 5,424
My band, Hard To Port, has just released an album called Transhumance. It can be previewed at CD Baby:
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/hardtoport
It is all original songs except for two medleys of traditional Irish and American Folk tunes. We categorize ourselves, somewhat reluctantly, as "Celtic Fusion". As I described it:
Rock'nroll/Folk/Singer-songwriter influences include Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Janis Joplin, Jimmy Buffett, James Taylor, Neil Young, Pink Floyd, Porcupine Tree, and a million other artists, I'm sure - we listen to a wide range of stuff. And we are also steeped in trad (and not-so-trad) Celtic tunes and songs.
Four of the five of us have vocal leads, with three of us contributing the majority of the songwriting - one of the songs was co-written by a member's sister, who came up with some great lyrics. Strong story-telling lyrics are important to us.
I do a fair bit of lead guitar work on the album (using a variety of PRSi), along with rhythm guitar (using my SE Angelus Custom), mandolin, electric bass, and banjo (!).
Other members play guitar, whistle, recorder, fiddle, bodhran, cajon, stand-up bass, and a variety of other percussion instruments.
We recorded in a personal home studio, and mixed and mastered ourselves too. Artwork and layout also done by the band, with cover art by the wife of one of the percussionists. Here is the album cover (cdbaby link, so it should be more permanent that my photobucket, for example):
The album is by no means over-produced - we aimed for a slightly raw feel, to match how we typically perform the songs. I held myself back from doing a full-blown Phil Spector wall'o'sound.
So feel free to listen to the 30-second samples, I'm trying to judge whether one or more full-length previews are a good idea.
You can also check out some videos posted on our website (audience recordings, so not the greatest audio):
http://hardtoportband.com/
We're very proud of what we have released, and hope our fans like it too!
Additional backstory, for those interested:
So I'm in a band - I mention it every now and then. We're serious about our music, but we are all well out of our 20s, and all have day jobs that are far more steady and lucrative than trying to start a music career. Most of us have played music for decades, but only a couple have been "serious" musicians for most of that time (i.e. in gigging bands) - for example, I've been in garage/basement bands with friends for years, but we never did any gigs, just messed around - I've only been gigging for about 4 or 5 years now.
Nonetheless, we love playing, and one of our members, Jenn Weidley, has been making CDs for a couple of decades in other bands or as a solo act.
Jenn was working some of her latest songs for another solo album with the rest of us as session musicians, essentially (and we were OK with that!), but two other in the band, including me, have started writing and coming up with material that works well with our "sound". So it transformed into a band album. A couple of songs were essentially in the can, and then we spent a weekend doing the basic tracks for the remaining songs. We listened to the rough mix for a week, spend a couple days the next weekend cleaning up the mix and adding additional nuances (like cow bell!), re-doing my guitar leads for the older tracks that had already been in the can, and wrapped it up late the week after. So a total of two weeks, really, and we had an album done! I'd also put together the album artwork package in the meanwhile, which was fun - I'm not a graphic artist by trade, but everyone seems to think it looks good.
We have over a dozen songs already written for our next album...so Hard To Port's sophomore release could be out within a year or so!
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/hardtoport
It is all original songs except for two medleys of traditional Irish and American Folk tunes. We categorize ourselves, somewhat reluctantly, as "Celtic Fusion". As I described it:
Rock'nroll/Folk/Singer-songwriter influences include Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Janis Joplin, Jimmy Buffett, James Taylor, Neil Young, Pink Floyd, Porcupine Tree, and a million other artists, I'm sure - we listen to a wide range of stuff. And we are also steeped in trad (and not-so-trad) Celtic tunes and songs.
Four of the five of us have vocal leads, with three of us contributing the majority of the songwriting - one of the songs was co-written by a member's sister, who came up with some great lyrics. Strong story-telling lyrics are important to us.
I do a fair bit of lead guitar work on the album (using a variety of PRSi), along with rhythm guitar (using my SE Angelus Custom), mandolin, electric bass, and banjo (!).
Other members play guitar, whistle, recorder, fiddle, bodhran, cajon, stand-up bass, and a variety of other percussion instruments.
We recorded in a personal home studio, and mixed and mastered ourselves too. Artwork and layout also done by the band, with cover art by the wife of one of the percussionists. Here is the album cover (cdbaby link, so it should be more permanent that my photobucket, for example):
The album is by no means over-produced - we aimed for a slightly raw feel, to match how we typically perform the songs. I held myself back from doing a full-blown Phil Spector wall'o'sound.
So feel free to listen to the 30-second samples, I'm trying to judge whether one or more full-length previews are a good idea.
You can also check out some videos posted on our website (audience recordings, so not the greatest audio):
http://hardtoportband.com/
We're very proud of what we have released, and hope our fans like it too!
Additional backstory, for those interested:
So I'm in a band - I mention it every now and then. We're serious about our music, but we are all well out of our 20s, and all have day jobs that are far more steady and lucrative than trying to start a music career. Most of us have played music for decades, but only a couple have been "serious" musicians for most of that time (i.e. in gigging bands) - for example, I've been in garage/basement bands with friends for years, but we never did any gigs, just messed around - I've only been gigging for about 4 or 5 years now.
Nonetheless, we love playing, and one of our members, Jenn Weidley, has been making CDs for a couple of decades in other bands or as a solo act.
Jenn was working some of her latest songs for another solo album with the rest of us as session musicians, essentially (and we were OK with that!), but two other in the band, including me, have started writing and coming up with material that works well with our "sound". So it transformed into a band album. A couple of songs were essentially in the can, and then we spent a weekend doing the basic tracks for the remaining songs. We listened to the rough mix for a week, spend a couple days the next weekend cleaning up the mix and adding additional nuances (like cow bell!), re-doing my guitar leads for the older tracks that had already been in the can, and wrapped it up late the week after. So a total of two weeks, really, and we had an album done! I'd also put together the album artwork package in the meanwhile, which was fun - I'm not a graphic artist by trade, but everyone seems to think it looks good.
We have over a dozen songs already written for our next album...so Hard To Port's sophomore release could be out within a year or so!
