It has been far too long. Sadly with work, vacation, travel and other commitments my blogs have fallen by the wayside. Accordingly, I feel compelled to provide an update on what has become a recurrent theme...music.

Let's be clear, there are other things that go on in my life...it just seems that Kamazooie has become the vehicle for sharing my hobby. Mileage 51 has largely been in hiatus for the past 3 months due to scheduling difficulties and availability of some of the members. So we are terribly behind schedule on the production of our first CD. That's the bad news. The good news is we have just finalised a schedule to move forward with full force.

Previously we spent every second Saturday (or so) jamming at our bass player Solle's house. This is both fun and productive in that it helps develop our sound and preps us for gigs. That said we have only done one so far (an 8 song set played at a bluesfest) and due to our various schedules, it isn't realistic that we would do more than 2 or 3 per year in any case. So we have decided to set aside the jams and go into studio.

Over the past year we have managed to write and produce scratch tracks (rough drafts) for about 14 songs about 10-12 of which we hope to include on the CD. The creative process varied dramatically and each song has its own unique story/approach. We all contributed in some way, largely my role has been to write lyrics and develop melodies usually set against a structure that Roy and/or Doug have formed.

In parallel I have worked with our creative director Rich McCausland on the development of the Mileage 51 logo and CD artwork. So we already have both in the bag which is different from the last time when it was a bit of a mad scramble to produce it. We have a pretty cool concept for the CD which I look forward to sharing. We have also set up the requisite social media and digital channels as most music distribution is done online nowadays. That said we still want a CD to establish a brand presence and have on hand as a physical manifestation of the album. We are also considering the potential of running off some vinyl as our music is retro blues/rock and vinyl is making a bit of a comeback, albeit at a small scale.

Please understand we are not suffering delusions of grandeur. We fully understand that the odds are against any of our work getting much traction as there is such a high volume of high quality music out there. But we figured we might as well give it a shot and at least have the basics set up so we come across as being somewhat professional.

So going forward Fridays/Saturday afternoons will be spent re-recording, arranging and producing all of our tracks. Our producer Roy will bring them all together with a distinctive style and sound and work his usual magic. He's a very talented musician/producer. What has elevated this experience over stereotypes, and I don't mean to demean the value of that at all as it was incredibly rewarding, is the fact that we wrote and produced everything ourselves. And we are excited to share it with our friends, family and beyond.

Additionally, I was recently contacted by a business acquaintance who runs a PR firm in Dubai who is a talented guitarist and has gigged extensively in the local market with another band Suburban Voodoo. He left that band last year to put together a new group "The Tundra" which is, at least initially, a classic rock cover band. He was kind enough to invite me to test the waters as lead vocalist at a rental studio in Al Quoz (an artsy area of Dubai). He sent me a song list of 10 classic tunes which I had a week to frantically prepare for...I knew most of them but there were 4-5 that I had never tried to sing. Anyway, it seemed to work and now I am in a second band. To be honest it felt odd and somewhat disloyal to join another group. But this is apparently quite normal. Still I cleared it with the guys at Mileage 51 and agreed that the former would take priority etc.. So everyone is cool with that. And they are all great guys.

So what started out a few years ago as singing Purple Rain at a company talent show has blossomed into something unexpected and thoroughly enjoyable. Thankfully my wife El has been very understanding and supportive in that I spend anywhere from 8 to 12 hours a week on it. Well that's about it for now. Thanks for reading! Sorry I don't have any new pics but will be sure to add some in after the weekend.

Cheers
Lorne