Christmas Record
The most exciting news to report is the release of Dan Bryk Christmas Record which is “out now” along with the relaunch of this here site.
The deal: I recorded a song called “Love Me For Christmas” last December. I sort of knew that people actually cut their Christmas songs in May or July, but it was sort of a last minute idea that was fun to do and I figured I’d put it on myspace for everyone. I’d never recorded a Christmas song before, let alone written one. So I took it to my friend Jeff Carroll to master and figured I’d drop a few copies off at the local college stations. [As things turned out, not only I was too late in getting the track to everyone, but I also learned you can’t sing g-ddamn and shitty, never mind the f-word on American college radio.]
But when Jeff heard my line about “crying in the Starbucks at the Crabtree Mall” he was taken aback--he had never heard a Christmas song that mentioned anything in Raleigh before. A day or two later, a lightbulb went on over his head and he called me and said “Wow, you’ve given me an idea. I should make a Christmas compilation record with all Raleigh Artists on it.” (The whole story is here). Jeff started calling around and soon enough he had bands (including the Rosebuds, Schooner, Kenny Roby and Terry Anderson) and a backer in the Greater Raleigh Merchants Association. And a title: Have a Holly Raleigh Christmas.
Fast-forward to the beginning of October. I’m at the listening party for the finished Holly Raleigh CD, checking out everyone else’s stuff when I learn that the GRMA isn’t going to do a downloadable version of the record. So I’m thinking I’d like to at least put my song online so people who aren’t in the Triangle can put in on their Christmas mixes, etc. Then I think, well I might as well do a couple of Christmas covers and make it an EP, right? I figure I could do it entirely solo at home, like I did with Love Me for Christmas, and in the process I could mess around with some new drum loops I bought in the summer but haven’t gotten around to using.
I get kind of carried away. Six songs and three weekends later, I realize that the realistic deadlines for getting even an EP on the download services in time for Christmas may have passed. So I mix everything fairly quickly (by my standards at least) and call IODA, begging them to process it as quickly as possible. They pull out the stops, and a week later it starts showing up at iTunes. I breathe a sigh of relief. And I get away with not releasing Pop Psychology for a few more months. I hope y’all like Christmas Record. It was hard work but fun to make and as you’ll notice, more than a little cathartic in places. I don’t think it’s going to replace Sing Along With Mitch or Vince Guaraldi for anyone, but that’s clearly not its intention. Hopefully it will sit in your collection in between Low’s Christmas EP and Almost a Full Moon (the green one, not the blue one).
Postscript: After everything was done and sent to the services. I found myself under a little bit of pressure from the family to actually record “a nice Christmas song”. So I asked Erin “what song should I do?” and she replied (sang, actually) “Oh the weather outside is frightful...” and our fate was sealed. Another lost weekend (and a bunch of yousendits from my guitarist friend Tim Carless) later, it turned out so nice that it begged to be heard. Fortunately, I remembered that I still hadn’t sent Christmas Record to Zunior.com, the finest indie MP3 boutique in the world. “How about a bonus track, since everyone’s beaten you to the punch?” I asked Dave... and that’s why they call ‘em standards. (My original plan was to cover “Santa’s Super Sleigh” from About A Boy, but many Google searches, lyrics-finder searches, several DVD rentals and purchases later I was unable to find a start-to-finish version of the song NOR a full lyrics sheet (though every single blog/website review of the DVD claimed there was a set of lyrics in the bonus materials, it was not present on the DVD Netflix sent me, the NTSC retail copy I bought at Beast Buy for the sole purpose of transcribing the song, NOR the PAL DVD I put my London mate Luke up to buying for me. So I settled for Tin Pan Alley. I am now boycotting Nick Hornby and Hugh Grant for a good while after all the bloody time I wasted on the wild sleigh chase!)
Thursday, November 16, 2006