2012 was a busy year for making music here at Snoozeking. In addition to the annual production of a DD69 album (this year’s effort: Get Up), I spent a great deal of time working on the first new Foonspeeders album in over a decade.

Despite the fact that there’s no serious deadline for these projects, I try to set a schedule and stick with it. Given the history of some of our early records, if we don’t do this the music could languish unheard for 10 years or more. That’s insane.

I’ve found that setting a release date and trying to stay on target to reach it helps us get things done. Unfortunately this time around, my slavish devotion to completing the writing, tracking, and mixing, as well as arranging for mastering and manufacture, creating original artwork, and updating websites etc. wound up burying me. With all of those activities involved in making both records, in addition to, you know, the “day job”, playing shows with Skinny Moo, making time for family and friends, and all the minutiae that comes up daily… I got burned out.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m grateful to be able to pursue my passions, and I love creating music and art as much now as I did when I was a little kid. But as with anything, too much at one time can make you feel crappy.

So after the 6/9/2012 DD69 release was completed (at the last minute, with a quick and dirty mastering job on my part – more on that in a future entry), we wrapped everything up with the Foonspeeder release on July 4th. And then I didn’t even think about new music for months.

With a long break in the Skinny Moo schedule, and the unfortunate need to cancel most studio studio nights for months due to my usual collaborators having babies, going through their own flavors of burnout, or dealing with family issues, making music hasn’t been on my schedule for a while. I’ve enjoyed catching up on movies that I never watched, reading books from the library, and doing a little traveling. I’ve seen other bands play both here in Cleveland and out of town. I’ve started training for my fourth century ride with the Leukemia Society’s Team In Training, and have been raising more money to fight cancer. I’ve reconnected with friends that I haven’t hung out with for ages.

It’s only been in the last few weeks that I have found myself thinking about music and writing. I picked up my guitar a few nights ago and finished a song that has been unfinished for ages – and I am actually really happy with the result, which came all at once. I find myself wanting to listen to some works-in-progress, and it gives me the same feeling I used to get when I’d listen over and over again to a cassette mix of a demo I’d just recorded. I started to actually read the issues of Tape Op and Sound On Sound that had stacked up on the coffee table over the last few months. I picked up a new synth app (Arturia’s iMoog) for the iPad.

So it seems that after many months, there’s a wave of inspiration that is rising. I can feel a shift in the tide. I think I’m ready to jump back in and continue to create new music for myself and continue to work with my friends as well.