Skeletons in the Cloner

Mike Adams, "Skeletons In The Cloner" (acoustic version) 9/26/10 from Flannelgraph Records on Vimeo.

here's a video of me playing live at this year's celebration of Bluesanct's 15th anniversary. (shot by Jared Cheek) This song, Skeletons In The Cloner, will be on a new record called Oscillate Wisely which is being co-released by Flannelgraph / St. Ives Records on January 25. It's a very different version than the one on the record.

Five Man Walk

deep breath

Helium from Torlando Hakes on Vimeo.

earlier this year i had the pleasure of working with my good, and very creative, friend torlando on this short piece. he wrote, directed, and animated the thing (with his partner, william) and i was responsible for the music. i had a real blast coming up with this tune, although we both agreed that it was a bit of a miss, in the end. i mainly blame that on the amount of time we had with everything. all of this was done on an extreme time budget, for the two of them, and for me. i wrote the music based only on my understanding of the plot line and a few stills that torlando sent to me via e-mail. i think we had two meetings to discuss what the music should be like before i really started working. i also did one revision from the original version i submitted before their deadline approached and we were left with what we had. the main shortfall is that i feel like i didn't quite capture the spirit of the images and the story with the music. i let it get a little too dramatic, and it came off feeling a little too sinister. i'm happy with the music overall, i just think it didn't quite get us to our goal when paired with the video. hopefully next time we'll have a little more time to develop things and let them evolve together. also, i'll hopefully be able to consort with my usual collaborators on our next project together, which i think is the best way for me to work in a situation like this. music for visual media requires much more of a balance of emotion than music that stands alone. you aren't required to paint nearly as much of the picture aurally (duh) and i think two heads are definitely better than one for getting there.

Do You Love Me?

another relic from the annals of my childhood mind. i especially love the rack-focus during the steel solo, and the curtsey at the end.

Home Stretch

Two accomplishments of note for me this week. First is that the bulk of the tracking for Bro. Stephen's new record "Baptist Girls" is finished. This record seems to have come in spurts, beginning last Fall in Warsaw, then some tracking done this Spring in Bloomington and now, thanks to the lovely and very talented Cheyenne Mize, finished up in the dog days of Summer. It's been a long time coming, and it will still be quite a while before this record sees the light of day, but believe me it's worth the wait. Next we'll move on to decide where the mixing is going to happen and who's going to do it. I've had a good time working on Scott's songs. They make for a really strong melodic structure to get creative around. And, most of them are short, so there's never any threat of belaboring anything. It's a nice and easy way to work. Loads of fun.



Second accomplishment this week (which actually had very little to with me) is that the mastering for my solo record is complete. This record has been about a year-and-a-half in the making. We did the mastering this week with Eric Day at Sleepwalk Recording here in Bloomington. Adam and Eric really impressed me with the amount of life they breathed into these songs and the amount of TLC they spent mixing and mastering this thing. I couldn't be happier with the results or more grateful for these two bums. Treat your friends nice, they probably deserve it. This record should be coming out relatively soon.

And finally in the sad news (for me) category I'm sorry to say that my good friend Adam Jessup, who engineered the first Bro. Steve session, and entirely mixed Oscillate Wisely, just left Indiana today for the great state of Texas. He's become a great friend of mine over the last 2 1/2 years that we've briefly known each other and I'm heartbroken to see him go. I've relied heavily on him professionally and creatively and he'll be sorely missed. I'm sure we'll work together again, but for now, best of luck to Adam and Stephanie.

i'll say she is

this is beautiful.


this is comical.


this is wild. watch the whole thing.

the winner loses all

Here are three things i've been very interested in this week:

First is this George Jones song. Namely, this video and performance of this song. It's a really catchy tune that absolutely infects my brain. Apparently, it's done that to millions of people over the years...but I am one sucker that falls prey to it's trappings. Concerning the video, that make-up job on GJ makes him look like a corpse that crawled out of it's casket during his visitation because he forgot he had this one more tv appearance to do real quick. In a good way. I also really love his body language and the way he moves. Very unique and stylized. I'm also jealous of the drummer. Watch him go!


Second is this live bootleg of a Cass Mccombs show from sometime after "Prefection" came out. This show was recorded at the Hideout in Chicago. It had some pretty glaring phase issues when I originally obtained it, but i've fixed those best I could. There are also some interesting tuning defects, which actually adds quite a bit of character to these recordings at times. These versions of the songs are much more laid back and prettier than the originals. Not better, just different. Also, I'm totally into the intense vibrato he exercises on a couple of these performances. I don't know much about Cass Mccombs, which probably has a lot to do with why I still like his music. Musically speaking, I like the decisions he makes. Makes me want to make some decisions of my own.


Last, this song came up randomly in my headphones while I was half asleep on vacation with my family recently. At first, I had a hard time telling what language it was in (and what planet it was from). But, without waking up, the whole song started to get really clear. I was making out some of the lyrics and could begin to anticipate where the music was going. Then I fell asleep completely. I still remembered the experience in the morning, so I guessed it was worth remembering. The performance here is really awesome. Especially the diction and delivery of the lyrics. really cool.