We have had so many warm days in  a row.  If I were an apple  grower, I would be worried.  But I love the reminder  that spring is  coming.  I want to un-winterize the Airstream, though I know it  is  still a little early.  But what great motorcycling it has been the last   week.  I rode downtown last night to a poetry event honoring a friend  and poet  who died ten years ago.  It was a fine reminder of what  lasts.  I have my pro  tools tutor coming over soon to help me with my  list of questions.  I can only  go a few months before my list gets too  long. 

I have a new song that could go  so many different directions  musically, I want to brush up on my programing  skills with virtual  instruments in order to check out some of the possibilities  of how this  song could sound  Speaking of recording, there’s a new studio in  town  that had an open house and I caught myself wanting to go check it out.    This is foolish I know.  It is like going to the Tesla dealership  (which we did  when we were in LA). Kinda fun, but I don’t pretend to be  a customer. But I will  probably go check out this studio because I  have some sort of nostalgia for  times when people actually bought music  and recordings had budgets.  I love the  intensity and focus of doing a  recording project in a beautiful, great-sounding  studio, but at this  point it is not cost effective for me.  It sure feels fun to  remember  my ride on the whirlwind though.  I got one of the last rides as the   industry was closing down.  It was like getting the last chair up the  ski hill  before the lift closes for the day. It’s kinda sweet and sad  and beautiful.  So  I am feeling a whole constellation of emotions each  time I tour a studio that is  so new and beautiful that it rents for way  more than I could afford  I am glad  they still exist, though.  Maybe  their time is almost up.

The studios in  Asheville that are the most beautiful are the pet  projects of people who have  already made all the money they need in  software or whatever. The control rooms  almost have a museum vibe.  You  walk through as if it were a re-creation of a  New England village full  of people in costume who remind us of the way the early  settlers  lived.  Except these studios are a tribute to a time only a few decades   ago,  a time when lots of studios were busy making a living. The ones  that are  left feel a little Huxleyan.  They have all the cool old gear  that they bought  from all the dying studios in New York and LA, and  they arrange it so it adds  its emotional authority, but it doesn’t  necessarily sound better.  And everyone  knows that most people will  listen to the final mix after it has been dumbed  down to MP3 anyway, so  there is always a futility in the air that is never  talked about.  So  as I write this, I ask myself why I would ever want to go  visit another  studio!  Who cares how things used to be?  That time is over.  I  can  make great sounding tracks in my own studio.  I have the best sounding  mics  and preamps I have ever heard, and the best sounding guitar I have  ever played,  and the room sounds cozy and real: no parallel walls and a  controllable  brightness. The birds are always in the background when I  record in summer, but  that is nothing to be ashamed of.  But what I  should be doing is not mourning  the loss of the industry, but living  the most inspiring life I can, and singing  the best songs my heart can  write. 

So enough nostalgia!  I’m gonna go get to  work on the song I wrote  yesterday and try some different rhythms and grooves.  Then maybe a  motorcycle ride up the mountain in the late afternoon when it gets   warm.