January 28, 2010

Hi again, everyone.

First of all, thanks to everyone who's been in to look at the new website and thank you for all your positive comments about the new look and the new songs. I'm spiralling in on having it static for a while and I've made a few more changes.

The first big news is that I've set the date for the official launch of Come From Away. It will be held at the Lunenburg Academy on Friday March 19th. I'm looking forward to it and I've asked several local musicians to join me on stage, including Eilidh Campbell, Chip Veinotte, Brian Tanner, and Barb Morris. I'm still working on a couple of ideas and may have a few surprises. I'll keep you posted.

Second big news is that Come From Away is available on-line through CD Baby. There's a link on the Come From Away page or you can link from right here. Click here to pop open a link to the CD Baby page. You can buy a copy of the CD or download the whole CD or individual songs.

Finally, there are a few changes to the site that you might be interested in:

The main addition is that I've added a link to
For The Sake Of The Song under the About Bob menu. My friend Sean McGaughey of Midland, Ontario is a singer/songwriter himself and an avid fan of the genre. He interviews songwriters about music and podcasts them from his website. He was kind enough to include me in his podcast some time ago and our conversation is now on-line here. There's also a link to Sean's site so you can listen to his other conversations.

I've also changed the Guestbook a bit. The original version had no spam trap in it and I was being deluged with junk entries. I eventually turned off the "Add a comment" feature inside the Guestbook but for the benefit of the spammers who went directly to the "Add" file, I put in a redirection to the YouTube video of the Monty Python "SPAM" sketch. It's one of my favourites and seemed appropriate. Now the Guestbook has a Captcha screen in it that asks you to enter a randomly generated string and click on an "I am Human" button before proceeding. I hope this works to keep the spam at bay.

Finally, the Press Kit menu has a link to my SonicBids EPK (which will probably interest you only if you're a booking agent).

Thanks for stopping by. Feel free to send me an e-mail, sign the guestbook, add a comment to the blogosphere here.

Cheers, Bob

January 8, 2010

Hi again from Lunenburg. The storm blew itself out after a couple of days leaving us to clear the driveway and ponder how many people have heart attacks while shovelling snow.

The exciting news is that the new CDs (and download cards) have arrived from the manufacturer so we're now live with the newly designed website. If you're a return visitor to the site, the looks are different but much of the old content is still here along with some new features.

The big feature is the new CD, called Come From Away. which has its own page. There's a sound player that lets you listen to clips of song on the album and you can read the lyrics there as well.

The history of the new CD and its title is quite simple really. Nova Scotians divide the world into two parts: Nova Scotia and everywhere else, which they call "Away." The term "Come From Away" refers to someone who has moved here from somewhere else. I wrote quite a few of the songs on the CD while I was in the process of moving down east from Ontario. Once I was settled I started exploring some of the history of the place, which started the muses working as well. There are a couple of relationship songs, one of which is a co-write with my erstwhile partner in rhyme, Jennifer Ives. Of course, it wouldn't be a Bob CD without a guitar instrumental or two.

Much of the recording was done in Lunenburg in a week in July, 2009 then later in the summer we added some of the other musicians in various places in Ontario. I am honoured to have such fine players who contributed their time and inspirations to the music. In alphabetical order the other players were Don Bray, Eilidh Campbell, Wendell Ferguson, Jennifer Ives, Tom Leighton, Mark Mariash, Barb Morris, Chip Veinotte and Alyssa Wright.

Along with the new CD, I have a live recording that's available only on download card. Yep, Bob goes digital. (About time, come the murmurings from the audience. *grin*) The download cards will be available at live shows while supplies last. The performance was recorded at the Harbour Folk Kitchen Party on July 18, 2009 at the Rose and Kettle Tea Room in Cole Harbour, NS.

Don Bray gets a big mention for both recordings because he brought a shedload of gear to Lunenburg for the studio recording, then dragged it all down to Dartmouth and back, setting it up and tearing it down several times during the week before taking it back home. Not only that, he plays mandolin and slide Hawaiian King guitar and sings some backup vocals.

I had the greatest of intentions of having everything completed at one go, only to discover I hadn't checked the size of some PDF files I'd created. They were far too big to fit in the website space and would have taken far to long even for the most dedicated follower to download. So it's back to the drawing board to shrink the files to a manageable size.

I've added some gigs to the listing - coming up next on January 23rd is the Carleton's Sing For Your Supper Songwriters Circle hosted by Kev Corbett. Kev and I will be joined by a couple of other singer/songwriters in a workshop setting. Come on down and enjoy the music - and the food too. The Carleton's a good place to eat as well as to listen to good music. Check the In Performance page for details

So now I'm off to try and shrink some PDFs. Hope you like what you see and hear. If you do, please sign the Guestbook or drop me an e-mail.

Cheers, Bob

January 1, 2010

Hello from the South Shore

Ah, it's a chilly snowy New Year's Day in Lunenburg. The snow is falling, the sky is grey and the foghorn is sounding its mournful cry across the front harbour.

Here we are into 2010 already. It didn't seem all that long ago that Don Bray was here and we were almost taking root in the attic/studio laying down the tracks for Come From Away. I'm told that the CDs will be in my hot little hands on Wednesday and the official release can begin. It's been a long fun trip getting this project complete and there's more to come.

There's a new design to the website coming along with the new CD. Much of the information is the same as in the old site and we've added some new links, changed things around to make it easy to navigate, eliminated the frame structure (which is a stylistic no-no any more). There are just a few more changes to make before the updating starts, next week sometime.

More to come in a little while. I've just set up the blog as part of the new website layout so watch this space.

Cheers, Bob