Cover art

A little about the album cover: I really wanted a painting—actual art—to adourn my packaging. A few years ago I watched Simon Schama’s Power of Art series (BBC), which is a marvelous journey “behind the scenes” of several famous pieces of art and the artists that created them. Mr. Schama turned me on to the magnificence of human interpretation of reality and unreality, the spectacular mystery of an artist’s ability to paint or chisel what they saw in their mind and coax that image from paints or rock for others to see. Incredible stuff. 

I’ve loved CJ Conners’ paintings since the first time I wrote a story on her when I was working for the local newspaper. Her visions of the natural and fantastical world are breathtaking. When I envisioned a record album, CJ’s art (cjconner.com) was foremost in my mind. I sent CJ a disc of some of the first songs from the record (“Cocoon” and maybe “Space Woman Yeah”) and asked her to consider allowing me to use one of her paintings for the cover of my album. On July 9, 2009 (I just read the printout, so the date is still on it), CJ responded with an incredible e-mail about how my music really touched her. The painting she suggested was one her son loved, “Life Cycle.” Not sure how large you can make my “profile pic” (the painting), but the subject is basically a woman turned into a tree, her form emerging from the bark and her fingers transformed into branches, reaching skyward. CJ also noted, “It has the life cycle of the butterfly along the perimeter—the cocoon, chrysalis caterpillar, and finally the bursting forth of the butterfly flying free—only to be eaten by the toad…yeah, being a butterfly is NOT all it’s cracked up to be. But we humans seem to always want more than we have or at least always think we should have.” 

Wow, CJ absolutely nailed the point of “Cocoon” both visually and verbally! What a fit. I knew this was going to be an extremely special album with an even more impressive cover. The story behind CJ’s involvement in my record is even more layered and incredible, but I’ll leave that for another time…

Thanks, CJ. You are one of my artistic mentors and heroes!

I think I may have determined the track order for the record. This may change, but right now I'm thinking:

1. Holy Cow (redux)
2. Funakoshi's Paperback
3. Hair
4. Happy As A Dog
5. New Soap
6. Checkout Line
7. Cocoon
8. Space Woman Yeah
9. Quiet Place
10. Emerald Plumes
11. Too Far (Jar?) Away
12. Meantime

Some of you may recognize the above titles from my college years. Believe me, they are NOT simple reconstructions of my previous four-track/live endeavors. They are re-imagined and re-engineered with muscle! More on the individual songs later...

IN BREAKING NEWS:

Greg Adams prepares for grand opening of new home studio! 

That's right, folks. Thanks in humongous part to my visionary wife, Laurie (thanks, Love), I finally have a decent, comfortable and welcoming atmosphere in which to record music at home! I've dreamed for years of having a small home studio and was finally able to amass enough savings (again, thanks to Laurie) to purchase an 8-channel portable digital recorder this spring. I've used the recorder for Good Guys Wear Wolf, my budding bluegrass band (no name--me and  my dad, basically), and The Niborians (me and my daughter Addy), but have yet to really settle into making more original music. That's all about to change.

Yesterday morning after a rousing karate class, Laurie said, "OK, I have an idea for today. You're going to hate me for the first stage, but you will LOVE me after the second stage." I never quite know what to say to such statements, so I just smiled and said, "Um...sure?" Laurie's mission was to clear out the north portion of the basement (mostly my miscellaneous crap and unwanted boxes of stuff), paint the floor and ceiling with water-proof paint, lay down some carpet remnants from her parents, then allow me to set up my home studio however I wanted. Damn! She was right--I hated the first stage. 

Before:

It was sweaty work: lifting, sorting, purging. We agreed anything that was going to Goodwill would go directly in the car; whatever we wanted to throw went directly into the trash. Laurie and I both found stuff we forgot we even owned, as well as check carbons and records of paid bills that were probably older than our daughter. Whew.

After a quick trip to Rice Lake--me to Goodwill for drop-off, Laurie to Menards for paint and supplies--and a couple of Arby's roast beefs later, we returned to work, covering the walls and floor with waterproof paint. The space felt so clean I could hardly believe this was the same space.

While the paint dried, we caught up on episodes of Sons of Anarchy (our daughter is at Girl Scout camp this week--wahoo!) and chillaxed. In the evening the work began again, this time rearranging and tidying up. The results? Well, I am totally stoked. What do you think? All that's left is thinking of a name. Suggestions?

After:

Ah, the name of the album...well, one day I was chatting with students before the first bell (I'm a high school teacher) and a student asked, "Hey, what's it called when you see, like, Jesus's face in a piece of toast?" I had no idea. Thank you, Google images! Check out some Pareidolia examples. Basically, humans are pre-programmed to make chaos into patterns. When we see a cloud that looks like an elephant, that's our brain filing the random billowing of the cloud into an image we can recognize and share.

Of course, in this digital age, it's easy to manipulate photos; however, there are tons of unaltered images that are quite incredible. In fact, just this week while I helped my wife can pickles, I discovered this funky cucumber guy on the right, whom my daughter and I dubbed, "Ghost pickle."

I love the concept of pareidolia: looking deeply and differently at nature, technology, buildings, etc., and seeing art that may not actually have been intended. Happy accidents: that's what recording music is for me. Often in the studio, Tom Kutrieb (producer) and I would try different approaches, hit strange keys or omit the most dominant sounds just to see what would happen. Most often a way more original or fantastic song would emerge from that chaos. Pareidolia. Keep your eyes open.