Its a Game posterToday’s my 41st birthday!  And, not that one has anything to do with the other, but the time is finally right to talk a little bit about my new album It’s a Game.  It’s going to be released on CD and LP, on November 15th if all goes as we hope, or even if it doesn’t!  On Drag City of course, catalog # DC301.  What you’re lookin’ at up there is some proposed poster art, not the cover — I’m keeping that under wraps until we get it all finalized, but you’ll see it soon enough.  That poster photo was taken by Eric Ziegenhagen just last week at the Palmer House downtown — it got dolled up and pinkified by Dan Osborn, who’s doing the album layout like he’s done for all my rekkids.


This is my fourth album and I’m extremely proud of it.  It’s taken me forever to get it out to you — my last album came out in 2001 — but I wanted this one to be really good, and it sure is.  I’ve already talked about the recording somewhat here on my blog, but for those who are new here, the album was produced by Rian Murphy, who also produced my first and third albums Calling Over Time and Wonder Wonder, and the EP Love Is Real.  We recorded about half the songs at Mark Greenberg’s studio Mayfair Recordings (with Mark engineering) and the other half at North Branch (with Mark and Barry Phipps engineering).  It was masterfully mastered in Phoenix (like yesterday) by Roger Seibel at SAE.

I’ll give a more complete instrumentation list later on, but for now, the musicians who helped me out on this album are, in alphabetical order by first name: Azita Youssefi (AZITA); Dave "Max" Crawford (Poi Dog Pondering); Emmett Kelly; Jason Toth (Manishevitz, The Zincs); John Hasbrouck; Josh Abrams (Town & Country); Lindsay Anderson (L’Altra); Mark Greenberg (The Coctails); Rian Murphy (Chestnut Station) and Ryan Hembrey (Manishevitz, Can.Ky.Ree etc. etc.).  See, we started out to make a very stark album, but… one thing led to another I guess…!

Tracklist time.

1) Emergency
2) It’s a game
3) What’s the use
4) A mirage
5) Playmate
6) My lover won’t call
7) Lucky charm
8) Larger than life
9) Just a friend
10) If it weren’t for the words
11) Stars fading
12) Good to know
13) Lovin’ you goodbye

Anyway, suffice it to say I AM SO EXCITED!!!  I CAN’T WAIT!!!  I’ll be touring to support the album too of course, but not until after it’s been out a month or three. Don’t wanna be on the road during the holidays y’see.

More tidbits later…