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A little while ago I wrote about how I started a new job at the beginning of this year. About a month after that I had my first solo art show. Work has kept me pretty busy and to be honest, I've barely had the energy to create much art in what spare time I've had.

I don't think there will ever be a time where I don't have the urge to make some kind of art. Creative fulfillment is something that I need in my life, and the urge to pursue it never really goes away. I'm lucky because even though my job doesn't involve making art, I do get a lot of the same sense of fulfillment out the work I'm doing.

I still carve out a little time here and there to make new stuff. It's a slow drip, but here are some new pieces I've made over the last few months.

Small Works Holiday Group Show

I'll be showing a handful of pieces (maybe some of these new ones ☝️) at the Blueline Gallery again this coming month. It's a group show with a few other local artists and it'll be up until December 29.

I played drums on my first studio recording a couple of months ago. I've been in a handful of bands over the years and have played guitar and bass on studio records, but this was a totally new (slightly stressful) experience for me. We booked a Saturday back in September at Russian Recording and it ended up being such a great experience. Our goal was to get three songs recorded in one day, but we ended up finishing six! Here's the result:

I've mostly played with the same group of people for a while. A few years ago, our drummer decided he was no longer able to commit the time to rehearsing or playing shows. I've always like messing around on a drum set so I volunteered to quit playing guitar and become the drummer. This made more sense than looking for another person who's schedule we'd have to try and make work. We used the band money we had saved up to buy a cheap drum set and I started learning how to play.

Life can get pretty hectic with having kids, starting businesses, and changing jobs. Three years later, it's just me and my friend Alan left from the original band of four. We've mostly scrapped all the old songs we wrote during the first few years of me learning how to play drums. After a four month break at the beginning of 2017 we started rehearsing again as a two-piece. By the end of the summer we came away with an EP's worth of material and then some.

Our current set up is just vocals, a baritone guitar, and drums. There are lots of things I miss about a more traditional instrumentation, but I'm really enjoying how the minimal amount of instruments forces you to work harder on dynamics and phrasing. We've written about half of a new EP since recording this one. We're planing to play a few shows and then go back into the studio in the spring. I feel really positive about the new stuff we are writing and can't wait to share more.