I just dropped off the The Everafter LP at Magneto Mastering today in sunny Minneapolis.
I’ve been getting a lot of messages asking about it lately and I figured it would probably be best to just make a post that explains where everything is at.

The Everafter LP is not the same album as the full length record I’ve talked about from time to time.

It’s a collection of some new, some unreleased and some rerecorded material to mark the end of the “Ever” series of mixtapes I’ve been putting out since 2005. It was originally intended to be an EP of the new stuff going on my Japanese release, but I decided to flesh it out a bit more and eventually it became a bit too lengthy to call an EP.

The rerecordings of older material are not my attempt at becoming George Lucas. Japan wanted some stuff from the The Ever Since EP, but the sound quality of the originals didn’t really mesh very well with my newer recordings. I decided to release a handful of those rerecordings stateside as well, since I still play them live and Ever Since has been out of print for a while. Ever been to a show, heard a song you liked, bought the CD and found it wasn’t on there? Yeah. I hate that too. That’s why I did it. It serves as a nice primer for people unfamiliar with my music.

The whole thing took way longer than expected to finish. Mostly because I wanted to gain experience making a professional studio album before I began work on the full length. Unfortunately, making a record in a studio is not as easy as doing it in your bedroom. There was a learning curve.

As for a release date? The record will be back in my hands from mastering next week. I’ll be able to make an announcement then.

The album has been mixed down by Joe Mabbott, a very talented sound engineer responsible for pretty much all the Rhymesayers stuff you’ve heard since Atmosphere’s God Loves Ugly. Since the source material varies from year to year, the quality isn’t going to be as flawless as it will for the full length, but this is by far the best sounding record I’ve released thus far.

So what’s next?

I’ll be shifting all of my focus towards my first official full length effort. You can expect that sometime next year. I won’t be wasting time. I’ve also recently finished up an instrumental mixtape that will be available for free download this fall. More on that very, very soon.

There’s a brand new Witness site ready to launch. New merch. New everything. Stay tuned.

-w

Ever see the movie Cocoon?

Did you ever think that if they never rediscovered their youthful vigor, the entire film would be over 90 minutes of a camera focused on senior citizens living the remainder of their lives at the speed of cough syrup? You probably wouldn’t want to watch that, right?

That’s exactly what it’s like at my grocery store here in Minneapolis.

Obtaining food for me is largely centered around guessing a time that I think the elderly are least likely to be out of their coffins beds. Unfortunately, this hour does not seem to exist on any clock known to man. If hunger has overwhelmed me to the point that going to bed means I might not wake up, I’ll occasionally venture out around 2 AM to join the leagues of hospital workers, the blissfully unemployed and people I can only assume are circus folk at the sub par 24 hour supermarket. This is the only way I’ve managed to get food without feeling like I’ve been dragged blindfolded through a nauseating fog of poor dye jobs and a smell that reminds me of a public holy water basin and Werther’s caramel candies stuck to a couch cushion.

This isn’t a deep seated hatred for senior citizens that I’ve been letting simmer over the years. This is the desire of a (fairly) healthy young man to get ingredients for dinner without losing two hours of his day  because Betty and Ruth both decided to turn their carts horizontally while they observe prices in an aisle that’s only big enough for two people standing side to side. I guess pasta will have to wait till next week. Thanks a lot, guys.

My grandmother was a queen. (Not literally, because if she was I wouldn’t have to wait in line for the length of time it would take to watch Forest Gump twice every time I want to get some fucking french bread.) She instilled within me a very deep respect for my elders. And all it took was one grocery store in Minneapolis, Minnesota to deconstruct 10 years of her handiwork. I turned my cart briskly around a corner yesterday to see an man of an age range usually reserved for forests, standing frozen in time in the soda aisle. (It’s not called pop, jerk.) He had a solitary drop of clear mucus hanging from that piece of flesh between your nostrils. He was also blocking the aisle. I considered killing myself.

People bitch about how senior citizens drive. Or that they get sweet parking spots. Or that they get into movies at a lower price. I’m fine with all of that. Maybe it’s just that I’m an East coaster who hasn’t yet adapted to the speed of the Midwest, but buying groceries should not take me two hours. And I’ll point my finger regardless of whether I need to direct it at the lovable folk who give out apples on Halloween.

When I first moved into my apartment here in Minneapolis, I was overwhelmed with the task of where to store the abundance of miscellany I’ve acquired over the years. My apartment is by no means a hole in the wall, but the building is one hundred years old and the archaic floor plan of my place isn’t exactly tailored to the excess of modern living.

I made the decision at one point to stuff some pretty unwieldy vocal booth foam in this awkward little cabinet inside the walk-in closet in my room. It was a poor choice, mostly because of how difficult it was when I attempted to retrieve it a few months later. I had to plant my feet firmly on the floor and use my entire body to try to extract this thing like I was trying to pull Excalibur out of god damn stone.

In probably one of the more cinematic moments of my life, I pulled hard enough to dislodge it, sending me falling backward. But when I stood up, I noticed there was a cassette tape on the floor, which I imagine was hiding inside the cupboard and somehow managed to avoid detection. It was a Never Ending Story moment.

My car has a cassette player (I keeps it vintage, yall) and I quickly ran down to the parking lot to pop this thing in and find out what was on it. It was far, far better than I could have expected.

The contents turned out to be a girl’s dream diary–presumably by the woman who lived here prior to me–and documented about a half a year’s worth of dreams she had. Listening to her felt strangely voyeuristic and at times uncomfortable. The dreams ranged from silly things like teaching kids how to swim and avoid sharks to creepy fragments of her past that slipped into her head in the middle of the night and made her wake up in tears. As far as I can tell, she recorded these every day only moments after waking up.

It was weird to try to stitch together information about her from the pieces she let slip from time to time. It seems she was in her twenties when she recorded this, wore dreadlocks, was in love with a straight female friend of hers and was plagued occasionally with sexual thoughts about her male dentist that made her question her status as a lesbian. Also, it seems that she was keeping this diary on the request of a fringe religion based out of Minnesota called Eckism, who believe that light, sound and dreams are communication with God.

Naturally, I’ll be including little bits and pieces of this recording on my upcoming record “The Everafter LP”.
Maybe I’ll upload some clips from time to time on here as well. I just wanted to provide a little background.

1. “I can be the nicest girl you’ve ever met, but if you cross me…”

I hear variants of this in the tri-state area of the east coast and it generally tends to be part of some kind of introductory sentence or self description. Not entirely sure why anyone would assume that such an unnecessarily threatening sentence would intrigue someone they just met, but can you imagine how unsettling it would be if a man said something similar? “I’m a fairly affable guy, but if you do anything I don’t like, I will fucking hurt you or someone close.”

2. “Not looking for drama or anyone who plays head games.”

A. The people who actually say this are the most dramatic people you’ve ever met.
B. This warning will not deter anyone interested in playing with your head.

3. “I just love having fun.”

Oh, word? Deal breaker. Fun is for assholes. This fits well with similarly profound statements like “I eat food” and “I have to sleep every night”.

4. “All of my friends are guys…”

If you’re reading this, you’ve no doubt met at least ten women in your life who say this or maybe you’re one of them. For one, it doesn’t particularly pique my interest when you tell me you have difficulty interacting with members of your own gender. And while I don’t think it necessarily has promiscuous implications, it definitely solidifies that you have some kind of mild social dysfunction. Ironically, most women I meet who say this have very few female friends because they claim other girls are “too catty” and not interested in being amicable. Unfortunately, the aforementioned “catty” girls they have trouble befriending also feel the exact same way. So…why aren’t you friends?

5. “Megan Fox is amazing.”

Sweet. Let’s get another generation of girls with poor female role models going. The last 20 years haven’t been bad enough. We need an abysmally shallow, faux bisexual with a history of eating disorders, cutting and general anger issues teaching our young women about the power of vagina. And all of you twenty something ladies can help lead them towards the light by glorifying this fine, upstanding woman. God Speed. (Also, shitty movies.)

But fear not, I have another 5 on the way for men.

I’ll keep running where the angels fear to tread
When the blood red children of the maple pirouette.

Minneapolis is beautiful in autumn.
The park looks like a kaleidoscope.

Misunderstood
Lost the footing and we fell hard
That’s when the fireflies died in the bell jar
I used to pray that they would be awake in June
When that origami sunset folds to a paper moon
The skyline blushes when it breaks dawn
The highway stretches and the interstate yawns
But, I never sleep when the give and take’s gone
When it’s freezing in the place that we used to wake on
I was too ambitious and too damn timid
Too thrilled that the glass was half-filled
To wonder what was in it
But you’re a cynic when the magic still exists
Till you stifle all the wind that sends the daffodils adrift
That’s the reason that the kite fell flat, love
But if we wanted, it could sail right back up
Just hold that tether tight when the black winds blow
And promise me that you’ll chase it
If you let the string go

I’ve been lost in fever dreams for the past 19 hours.
You were in a lot of them.
And I miss you, quite a bit more than you’ll ever understand.

I’m calling it “The Everafter LP”, which will be the final installment of the “Ever” series of EPs I’ve been doing for the last 4 years. It will consist of material from Eversince, Evermore, .45 Sweetheart and a few new and unreleased tracks. A healthy dose of instrumentals, a few remixes and a few songs completely reimagined. The record has a far jazzier feel than my last two releases, but I think it’ll be a fine ending to the last five years of music before I begin work on my first full length record.

It’ll see release stateside soon as well and I’ll be making an announcement about that as soon as the record is finished and shipped to Japan. And keeping with tradition, here’s a bunch of fliers that have my name on them.

Well, I did it.

I picked up and moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota.
And to be honest, I couldn’t be happier.

To recap the story, I fell in love with a wonderful, inspiring girl who lives here. She’s the Lisa to my David. After making the decision that I needed some change of scenery, needed to scare the hell out of myself and needed to explore as many zoos, fields, parks, lakes, forests and city streets as possible with the aforementioned lady, I picked up and moved one thousand miles from home. Music took a temporary backseat, but I don’t think one could ask for a better distraction than happiness. Though, I’ll be damned if I become another statistical musician who loses steam when he stumbles over a little sunshine.

So what’s new?
I got one of these.

The lady and I captured this young mammoth when he was but a few weeks old. We call him Shark. Or Sharkey. Or Lemon Tiger Sand Shark. Or Zharque. Or pop.

Getting a dog when drunk may be worse than getting a tattoo after a few drinks–namely because tattoos aren’t alive–but I’m very happy with this decision. Even when that decision wakes me up at 4 AM because he wants to find and devour small pieces of corn on the cob hidden under miscellaneous shrubbery in the park.

Skyline.

I have a hard time imagining this place becoming Antarctica.

Weeping Willow Islands. You heard right, son.

I live in the south side of Minneapolis. Directly on Powderhorn Park, to be specific. The picture at the top of this post, in additions to the ones above are one of the many points visible from what is essentially my front yard. If Powderhorn Lake weren’t covered in pond scum and dead fish penises, you can bet your bottom dollar I’d be swimming in it all week.

Minneapolis–Southside in particular–has a ton of epic restaurants, groceries and peculiar shops, often consolidated into the same building. For example, a bar that girl and I go to on occasion is a bowling alley, restaurant,  bar, cabaret theater and spoken word poetry joint. There’s also a laundromat/arcade/ice cream parlor not too far from me. A true artifact of 90’s excess.

Summer is serious business in Minnesota. Which I guess makes sense, considering how abysmally cold the winters are. The park in front of my house is a daily circus, home to people juggling axes, riding unicycles, practicing tumbling and tai chi and one woman who seems to think side stepping across the park is an acceptable form of public exercise. There seem to be festivals, outdoor concerts, outdoor movies and some kind of insane bar special going on everyday. There’s so much going on in fact, that there are about 3 weekly papers, 4 websites dedicated to daily activities in the city and a bulletin board dressed in a thousand flyers in almost every local business. And there are a ton of local businesses. Quirkiness is everywhere.

Vans are made of grass here. What else do you want?

Cars are sold with dinosaur hood ornaments. What of it?

As far as Hip Hop goes, it’s pretty much everything you’d expect. There are some very dope local radio stations which play a ton of local artists, the scene is ripe and growing and knowledge of the indie scene seems to be far more widespread than back home. I was even at a local show about a month ago only to see Ant of Atmosphere smoking cigarettes on the outdoor patio. Shit is tight knit and beautiful here. I’m looking forward to getting involved.

I’ve got many more stories to share, so I’ll be blogging about my experiences in Minnesota from here on out, in addition to the usual nonsense. I just needed to find a way to break the news and explain the story up until this point. Musically, I’m back on the ball and have some interesting things underway. I’m going to avoid making announcements because, well, if you’re reading this you know how my announcements normally turn out. Let’s just say it involves a full length record for next year, a new mixtape for this year and a ton of shows in places I haven’t played in over 5 years. I hope to see you there.

Below are a few other photos that I couldn’t cleverly weave into my post.

From inside the skyline.

Fish have auras here.

Butterfly exhibit at Como Zoo. Thousands of these things.

…and discovered that ignorance has opened a retail location in the Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport.

And while rushing to work…

… I was reminded I was in Philadelphia again.