At the same time I moved back to Jacksonville, my buddy Wilson moved back to his hometown of Winchester, which was nearby. He also played guitar and had a solo project called My Bicycle Emergency. We hung out a lot and did some tours together. It made perfect sense for us to do a split cd, so we did. The cover art was done by a real southern guy named Chris Mantle, who Wilson and I met on our first tour together.
Upon deciding not to limit my number number of planned releases, I planned a ton of split cds. Emily and I decided to do a split, and record songs with an assigned restriction, for instrumentation were to only use bell sounds from a keyboard. She was more of a piano player than a guitarist, so it made sense to me. My tracks were recorded in my parents' basement while I still didn't have a room. I think some of them are pretty good, and I think it's silly that I haven't recorded more Just Keyboard songs. You might be wondering why I didn't include the beautiful art from the other side of the split. The truth is Emily and I don't talk, and I didn't get her permission to share anything of hers on here.
In the fall of 2006, it was an imperative that, if I were to remain Emily's boyfriend, that I would need to go back to school and get a good job, and support her financially until her career as an opera singer took off. FYI, I don't think she did find a career in vocal performance. The only school I could afford to go to was Illinois College, where my dad worked and got me some free classes. So I moved back to my hometown. Most of my friends had moved away, and I no longer had a room at my parents' house. I slept on the old couch in the unfinished part of the basement. I was very depressed about this bad decision, and wrote songs about death. With my music, I didn't want to do what it took to attract the younger crowd of new scenesters. In fact, for a long time, I'd wanted to write music for grown-ups and hipsters. The only way I could figure to do that was to start singing with a weird, fake accent. So I did, and it worked. As a cool freak folker, I got a label called Tract Records to put out this cd.
Life was pretty good in the early summer of 2006. I rented a very cheap room in a very cheap house in Decatur, IL. I'd gotten fired during my first tour (during which I played many songs from this upcoming album), and I sold plasma to pay the bills. For the summer, Emily had gone home to the burbs, and I had a lot of time to read books and write songs. With such vibes, I made this little cd and decided to put no limits on the number of albums I release as Super Famicom.
When I was 19, I played guitar in a metalcore band called Lori Ann. It was cool and we played big shows for scenesters, and made money playing those shows. I thought I would do that for a while, and as our fans grew up, I would focus more on playing acoustic guitar music for grown-ups who were not scenesters. Later on, I got re-addicted to playing loud music to rowdy kids, and forgot about that plan I'd had. Back to 2006, The Inside Voices was my first attempt at writing music for grown-up non-scenesters. It is an epic story in song, about a fictional journey to the bottom of my self. I experimented a lot, and my vocals were somewhat mumbled. I was really into The Microphones. For the recording of this cd, I locked myself in my room for about 4 days, and I did nothing but write and record this album. It was a cool time.
Stream it - YouTube Download it - Nextcloud Here is yet another album from Super Famicom, my solo project since the year 2002. As ...
