"The rolling hills and willow trees of Carolina wait for me.."

..and the extreme heat :)

After a couple weeks of intense packing and moving, Melissa and I arrived in South Carolina on May 28th :) It was an epic journey filled with an ABF self-loading moving truck, a smooth sailing GW Bridge and a my first ever Moon Pie in North Carolina. :) This week has been busy as we have sorted through our belongings to make sense of a temporarily scattered life, working from home and hitting up happy-hour for the cheapest Margarita's this side of South of the Border. The storms here are wild and when the darkness engulfs us it reminds me of my years in Florida. In some ways it feels like I'm back there, minus the art classes and triple night partying. There is a calm here that invites for breakfast in the sticky morning air while the Carolina Wrens sit in their nests and the meter man waves a friendly hello; where neighbors come over to play in the lawn and the cotton-candy sky bids farewell to a warm and peaceful day.

So while I've been enjoying all this beauty and organizing my new life down here in South Carolina, What To Keep & Let Go has taken its place on the back burner- until now. It's good to get this update out to you all as I know it has been a while. But rest assured that just because I have moved, it doesn't mean that the project will fade away! In fact, the timing of the events for recording vs. post production are quite astounding as I will be able to do most work long distance with Dave, (can you say Postal Service?) and hopefully have the whole thing wrapped up by the winter (yes I am thinking an extension is in order but I feel the winter theme makes that some-what appropriate so I'm good with it.)

So where do we stand? Well during my last session at the end of May, Dave and I were able to get some of my back up vocals recorded and even though we had to cut it short during Horizons due to time constraints with my move, we were confident that with a few of my returning trips back north this year and with the help of some vocalists in the Boston area, we will be able to finish up the vocal side of the record. I have requested that Dave send me all the songs as rough mix-downs so I can see, rather HEAR, where we're at with the tunes. It will take some time but Dave is going to get me the files soon. At that point, I will go through each song, deciding where things need to go and conversing with Dave about the direction for each. I suspect that we'll need filler instruments, in most cases, and with my M-audio keyboard I will work on symphony arrangements for Circles and City Lights.

More to to come from Charleston, SC in the coming weeks including a new poster, the return of video updates and a more structured website is looming in the near future. Thanks so much for all your patience! Much love.