Your latest EP is entitled “The I Love Yous” – what inspired that title?

“The I Love Yous” is actually a direct translation of the French title of the first track on the EP, Les “Je t’aime”. The five songs on the EP are all about love in a way or another; what I mean is that they are not all about romantic love but they all say somehow how much I love the person that I have written the song for. Love in all its forms is definitely still what inspires me the most. In Les “Je t’aime”, the French lyric of the chorus says: “Me, I prefer, whispers in the ears; Me I prefer sighs, toes brushing up against each other and the “I love yous”…

I feel that way everyday, so I thought this title would be a good representation of what I am trying to share!

Some of the songs are in English, others in French. Have you found that your English-speaking fans have embraced your French-language songs and vice versa?

Yes, I think that people really like it in general. As soon as I started playing more songs in French at my shows in the US, people would always come up to me at the end and say: “I LOVE it when you sing in French!!!”. So I feel more comfortable using both now and I know that it is what makes me different. It is the same thing in France even though I think it is a little bit easier to enter the French market with bilingual songs. The French are more used to listening to music in many different languages than Americans and I have gotten the comment from industry people that French is not really marketable in the pop world in the US… I intend to change their minds though!

Last year you finally performed in your native France for the first time. How did that go?

It went really well! People loved it and I have encountered a lot of support and got a lot of very positive feedback. I got some good press and after the show, Les “Je T’aime” started to get played on a popular radio there and it is still getting a lot of airplay. I was invited to play a second time at the well-known club Le Sentier Des Halles and so I played there again in December. It seems that things could move a lot faster for me over there. So I definitely intend to push that scene more.

When I first met you, you were performing under your first name only. You’re now using your first and last. What prompted the change?

Mostly for technical reasons… Google “Joséphine” and you will find many more before me but if you Google “Joséphine Ancelle”, you will find me right away! I think that is essential; you don’t want to lose people just when they start to get interested.

Also, I think it gives me even more of my French identity and I have now realized it is a good thing. When I had chosen to only use Joséphine it was because I thought that people here would never be able to understand or pronounce my name properly but it is actually not so bad and I have gotten used to saying my name with an American accent…

What are your musical plans for 2010 and what are some accomplishments you are excited about from 2009?

I am actually going back to Nashville in a week to do a few co-writes and record some more songs with my producer Paul Umbach; the 3 songs he produced for the EP was to experiment on our collaboration. We realized we work really well together and want to do more! I intend to extend this EP to a full album before the summer.

I also plan on playing a few festivals and maybe organize a tour in the North East and Quebec and also a tour in France. I want to keep the buzz going that we were able to create over there. So right now it is a lot of planning and the second half of 2010 should be a lot of fun!!

In December, I shot another music video so I was very excited about that and it should come out really soon.

I was very proud to be one of the artists featured on the popular IPhone App called Four Tracks. It is a great tool for musicians.

Finally, hearing my song get played and myself being interviewed on the radio in my homeland was obviously quite a thrill! 2009 was great and 2010 will be even better!

Learn more in iTunes

Noush Skaugen interview

As much time as Noush Skaugen spends interacting with her million-plus followers on Twitter, and answering fan questions on live chats, one might be tempted to wonder how she ever finds time to make music. But her digital omnipresence belies the fact that she’s currently holed up in the studio working on her next album. Noush took some time out from recording her new songs to give us a preview of what’s coming…

You were born in Sweden, grew up in London, spent time in Los Angeles and Nashville. How have those “citizen of the world” experiences impacted your musical philosophies?

Each place has its own unique music culture and perspective on what a good performance is. I have learnt a great deal in all places, which hopefully has made me more open to experiment and a more rounded performer. I grew up dancing round trees singing songs with my parents & guests merry on aquavite (a very potent Scandinavian alcohol) – so initially I guess I learnt that music is about having a good time!

In London you better be good because once the fellas get a few pints in, they’ll let you know if you’re not LA is all about entertaining and the passion of connecting with your fans. Nashville they don’t care what you look like or what’s on your CD, just play it to them on an acoustic guitar and you had better be good, because even the garbage man is probably a prodigy. It has made me step up my game, to compete with the best. I am striving to create the ultimate experience for my fans, from the music to exclusive deluxe content, with behind the scenes footage & interviews yet to be released.

A year ago you had a few thousand followers on Twitter. Now you have more than a million followers, more than Dave Matthews or Snoop Dogg, which seems an unlikely feat for an indie artist. Where are all these followers coming from?

It’s mad really… in a great way…The number keeps growing every day… The power of Social Media is massive. I suppose in the age of reality TV stars, I am the opposite – organic, real, my own creation from hard graft. I am transparent with my tweets, love to chat with my followers, letting them in on what’s going on behind the scenes of making a record.

I am not constrained by any label telling me what I can or cannot do or tweet – so it’s very fluid and brutally honest. There’s no smokescreen. It lets me connect on a one to one basis with them virtually, and for them to be on this journey with me, something acts 20 years ago could not have imagined. Born from this idea, I will do live interactive concerts in the new year and I have other really exciting plans for the fans in the new year that I’m working on.

Do you find Twitter more daunting now that each of your tweets is going to be read by up to a million of your fans?

Lol! Initially when it started growing at a big rate, I had that moment of pure fright, and didn’t tweet I think for a couple of days….but then I got over it You can’t change who you are just because more people are listening to you.

Being true and real is very important to me. I am very comfortable with it now. I imagine as if I am speaking to each person directly.

You’ve been making your songs podsafe for use in podcasts for a couple of years now. How has that worked out for you?

Great. I think podcasts are a fantastic way to get your music out there worldwide with a DJ in Missouri being able to reach someone in South Africa! The DJ’s are really passionate about the music they play. Podcasts have been very supportive of me and my music, Podsafe got me on Satellite radio first…. For me anyway to reach people with my music is a good thing. Red tape and rules can hinder artistic growth.

Many of your fans had been hoping for a new release from you in late 2009. I take it there’s a good reason you’ve chosen to wait until the spring to release your new album?

Yes… I had a whole new game plan set in motion autumn this year. I decided I wanted to release a full album, and held back the EP. My objective is to make the best album I can, one that is timeless and will still be played in decades to come. I am motivated to use the music medium to inspire people to dare to dream! I am taking the time to push myself to the limit in every way possible in terms of my lyrics, music and the whole artistic concept of the album. No fillers, no wasted words… a classic record.

Basically the thought and TLC any great album had back in the day, that seems to be missing today… I am lucky enough to have the fantastic opportunity to write with some of the best songwriters out there and am on an amazing journey. Hopefully my fans will understand the wait will be worth it:) I thank them from the bottom of my heart for their patience.

Dr. System and Run Baby Run, the two songs you’ve sent me so far, are both rockers. Is that indicative of where the new record is headed overall? 

Absolutely, this whole record will be rocking, taking no prisoners I am comfortable in my own skin, sexuality and fearless. This record will challenge the role of female artists today.

You’ve had acting parts in shows like CSI and Entourage. Is that something you plan to pursue more of?

Definitely. I trained at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, which showed me the thrill of delving deep into a character so that they get under your skin. I love all forms of artistic expression and would love to do a movie and TV once the album is done… Acting allows me to be someone else for a while… explore other realities and history… which can only enrich the art that in turn pours out of me. It’s a fusion which can create fireworks.

Your Twitter bio reads “Together we can change the world” – what are your plans for doing just that?

Using my voice to motivate people to chase their dreams and follow their gut… be who they want to be, no matter what those close to them expect of them or the system tells them they can or cannot do. Anything is possible, the only limitations are the ones we place on ourselves. Music and art used to affect change, and I would love to see us artists bring it back to empowering the people.

I will also be standing behind certain causes, one of them I have already started to take part in is the fight against breast cancer, which I lost my mother to. Some of the proceeds from my album ‘Lost and Found’ goes to the cause.

Life is short and we should use the voices we have to push boundaries, the human race and live a riot baby!

Learn more at NoushSkaugen.com

Adrina Thorpe interview

the iProng interview with independent singer-songwriter Adrina Thorpe who discusses her new album Halflight & Shadows, where she gets her songwriting inspiration, and how podsafe music has impacted her career…

interview by Bill Palmer

Adrina Thorpe and I are on the phone to talk about her new album of beautifully haunting piano-accompanied melodies, Halflight & Shadows, but before we discuss the new music I can’t help but ask her about something she first got involved with several years ago: making her music legally available to be played on podcasts…

You were one of the first artists to make their music podsafe back in 2005. I’m curious about how you first heard about it.

C.C. Chapman sent me an email on MySpace and told me about it when it was just starting out, and so I put all my stuff up there. And I think because I was one of the first people up there, I was podcasted so much that I was one of the top three.

I see you’re still at it, you put a song from the new record into the podsafe network. Do you think it’s had a substantial impact on your career over the past four years?

Hugely, yeah. I totally saw a correlation. I think that was a big part of why I did well with online sales, because I stopped going out and performing and I just let the internet kind of do its thing, and I was pretty happy with the results. I still like performing but there was a time when I took a break when I was recording, and everything just kept hopping along.

Your first record Elusive came out almost five years ago. There’s always a tendency on the part of fans to say “what took so long?”

I didn’t start thinking about recording it til like three years ago. At first I was going to do an EP, and then we kind of changed our minds afterwards. My producer was like “hey, let’s do a full album.” So we decided to do a full album, but my producer is in Italy and I’m here, so that’s one factor. He lives in Tuscany. Another factor is I’m very involved in my family’s life, and that takes a lot of time. And then another factor is I really wanted everything to be just right, and I was doing it in little spare snippets here and there and I was getting a lot more involved, so that took some more time. Being a perfectionist, that took some more time.

The last album I did, it was done in a month. We did it in a studio. I just came every day and we just recorded with just me and my two producers. But with this album we used tons of different musicians, we went to lots of different studios, we rented equipment lots of different times, went to a lot of different places, and it was sort of piecemeal, a bit at a time. Also I did the two trance songs [with DJ Shah] and that kind of diverted my attention for awhile.

Is it different going to make this new record now? Not only were you able to establish your own internal fanbase with the first record, but then also the external exposure with the trance songs. Is it tempting to think “I’ve got to make what people expect of me” or are you able to block that stuff out?

I blocked it out completely with this record. The last record I really, really cared about what people thought. But with this record I really did it completely for myself. The songs are not radio friendly in length. The majority of them are four to five minutes long. They’re just me with a broken heart, pouring it out, and just learning to fight for the beauty in life. The last album I was coming fresh out of songwriting classes and thinking about what people liked to hear, analyzing what kind of songs make it on the radio, happy songs, songs with successful people. These kind of things make it on the radio, you know? Analyzing song length, song structure.

I broke a lot of rules on this album, and I don’t know if that’s going to adversely affect sales. We’ll see. Little scared here. But I really did it just because I wanted to do it how I wanted to do it. That’s another reason why it took a little longer.

Speaking of breaking rules, the songs on Halflight & Shadows are arranged from darkness to light, from beginning to end.

That’s probably not very good for sales, but it was the way it had to go because the whole point of the album is that I really wanted to take people along a journey with me, from the darkest place in their life to sort of finding the light. I spent a long time ordering the songs progressively from dark to light.

With the kind of gentle, lovely, earnest songs you make, the stereotype would be that you could only create that when you’re sitting in the dark corner of an empty room, just you and your piano late a night, no one around.

I need silence, I need quiet, I need to be alone. But a lot of the songs come to me when I’m driving in my car. But it’s still solitude. You’ve got things moving past you and you’re sort of zoning but you’re focusing. They come to me when I’m doing some kind of mundane task, and then sort of feeling and having a chance to be slightly introspective on my own, and it’ll just pop out. It’ll just hit me and I’ll start singing it.

So that’s how I did a lot of them. And the other ones I’ll get an idea by playing chords around them. But usually it’s melody first, with the lyrics, then I add a few more lyrics in and play on the piano. Occasionally I’ve done it lyrics first, but mostly it’s in the car.

Can you see yourself writing songs for other artists?

That sounds like fun actually, once I have more time on my hands when things sort of settle down. I’ve had a couple requests to write for some people up in Canada, emerging Canadian artists. Yeah, that sounds like something I might enjoy doing later on.

Adrina Thorpe is performing at Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles on August 10th. Halflight & Shadows is available for download at HalflightAndShadows.com now. Learn more at AdrinaThorpe.com

The Atomic Love Bombs

Portions of your new album, and I mean this as a compliment, feel like they could be from forty years ago. Is that an accurate indication of where your influences come from?

Like any band, we have a wide range of influences. There’s a touch of Love & Rockets and The Church in our sound, and you’ll also find bands like The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Warlocks (and other contemporary groups) influencing us. Our biggest influences, however, are those mid to late 60′s psychedelic and punkadelic scenes from and San Francisco, and to a lesser extent, New York.

The Rolling Stones, The Velvet Underground, and The Beatles are all part of what we listened to growing up (and as adults), and lesser-known bands like The Del-Vettes, The Count Five, and The Strawberry Alarm Clock are in there, too.



So if you’re hearing the 60s in our music, we managed to do something right during the recording process.

The title track, Let It Burn, is listed as being “for Anton Newcombe” of The Brian Jonestown Massacre. Why him in particular?

This is one of Joe’s songs, and while I can’t speak for him, I think that BJM inspired Joe to write Let It Burn. I think he wanted to pay tribute to Anton by including him in the name of the song.

You and bassist Tim Rye are both lead vocalists. How do you divide up those duties?

Tim and I took over lead vocals last year when the band went through a lineup change. Most of our songs are written by Joe Mitch (the band’s founder and main songwriter), and we try to match them up in terms of style and feel to whichever of us has the most appropriate voice. Some songs bounce back and forth between us until we settle on who’s doing what, while some songs are just obvious from the onset. 

You guys have three guitars in the band – how do you manage that sort of arrangement?

It’s funny you should ask that…When I found out the band was looking for a third guitarist, I went to listen to them and thought they really didn’t need a third. I talked to Joe, and from that conversation, I understood that the third guitar part is intended to be another layer, not another lead.


That got me pretty excited, and I really like the way we craft those layers.

For instance, Ben plays all our leads, but he is also responsible for a lot of the feedback you hear. Joe and I share (or split) most of the rhythm work, but that third guitar, whomever is playing that role of “the third guitar” for a given song, takes on a role that is often more akin to a keyboard. 

On the songs where I play through a Peppermint Fuzz to get that really fuzzy sound, I often feel like I’m more Second Bassist than a guitarist in terms of my role. On songs where I am playing the main rhythm part, Joe is either doing accent parts or laying down feedback.

It’s all about the layers for us, especially with the guitars. On those occasions where we are shy one of the guitars during a practice, we find that if the song sounds empty, it affirms what we’re doing with that third part. If it sounds OK with just two of us, we re-examine the parts and the arrangements.

Butterflies is more than ten minutes long, which is rare for an album track. What was the process like in capturing a song like that for the album?

Painstaking? Difficult? Fun? Our running joke when someone asks us about having a song that’s more than 10 minutes long is to apologize and say that the other 8 minutes were accidentally erased. (Musicians always laugh, while non-musicians usually look a little confused.)



Seriously, though, we worked on that song more than any other before we went into the studio. It was the one song we were recording that simply couldn’t be played to a click track, and needed to be captured live. Those basic instrumental tracks were captured in one take, and then we did a couple of tracks of just feedback and Joe and Ben. Getting the vocals down and mixing it took far more effort than recording the rest of the instruments. There is a LOT of mixing on that song.

You’re also the Executive Vice President of The Mac Observer and Co-Publisher of The iPodObserver. Being a musician and being a journalist both require traveling, sometimes working odd hours, and so on. How do you go about balancing the two careers?

Well, at this point, The Atomic Love Bombs is definitely more of an expensive hobby than a career, and I love The Mac Observer, which is my career. It’s funny how many Mac writers, journalists, and editors are also musicians — just look at The Macworld All-Stars, for example!

When I was young, I had dreams of being a “rock star,” and there’s definitely an aspect of writing for a popular Mac site that kinda-sorta fills that same need. Perhaps that’s part of why the All-Stars are possible, you know?

In any event, when you can take your laptop with you anywhere, writing for a living gives me a lot of flexibility some other folks might not have. So far there haven’t been many conflicts, and until we go on a serious tour, that’s likely to remain the case.

Now, if we can just get a gig playing at Macworld Conference & Expo, I can bring the two worlds together, if just for a few hours! You hear that Paul?

Let It Burn is available in iTunes now. Learn more at AtomicLoveBombs.com

interview by Bill Palmer

Gretel in the Podsafe Cafe

Hailing from Boston, the trio that makes up Gretel delivers eclectic Americana-folk music full of instrumental surprises that fit together seamlessly. I love the description of the music off of their website: “Gretel’s songs evince an honesty and directness usually reserved for confessionals and bathroom stalls.” In that directness, their songs lyrics paint beautiful pictures and scenes that seduce you to keep their CD’s on repeat. Their latest release, The Dregs, was released June 2, 2009. Reva, the lead singer talked to us about making of the album, being on the road and finding inspiration.

Each song you perform and record is perfectly arranged with sounds that set the song apart from the others while bringing them all together in your own eclectic sound. How much time do you spend crafting each song and what risks did you take on this record?



Recording is a long and involved process for us. We started the recording process over on each song on this record at least twice (after they were well under way), and most of them didn’t start sounding right until after the third attempt. Even just writing the songs takes me a while. I tend to spend at least twenty hours on a song before it’s ready to play for the band, and then it usually goes through many incarnations before we settle into how we want it to sound as an ensemble–harmonies, instrumentation, dynamic changes, and the like.  

Recording is a really terrifying and exciting thing to do when you’re doing it yourself. All the chances you take will fail or succeed based on your own skill sets and vision. It’s very scary to know that if your record sucks, you can’t just say, “Well, the producer thought…” or “The label said we had to…”  If any of our records suck, it’s my fault.  I’m the producer. We’re our own label. There’s no wizard behind our curtain to blame things on, which makes my knees knock.  At the same time, it’s kind of exhilarating. When you have an idea–no matter how farfetched it seems–you can try it and see if it works.  I just make sure that the players I record with (my bandmates Phil and Melissa fall into this category) are really exceptional at what they do, so that I can make a harebrained suggestion and know pretty quickly if it will work or not.  If the idea is a good one, a good player will be able to do what I ask and it will hit in the way I wanted it to.  If an idea sounds bad when a good player plays it, I know my idea was off.

A good example of a successful, sorta weird idea that worked out (in my opinion) is when the cello comes in during the middle of Renegade.  I told Emily Hope Price, the cellist, that I wanted it to sound like our ship was going to go down and she was the storm that was dragging us to the bottom.  I sound like a crazy person when I say things like that, but when a good player listens closely and tries to put into sounds the things described, the idea takes on a real and valid shape.  Her interpretation of my description really worked because she’s a great player and a good listener.  I can’t make records without people like that.

How is The Dregs different from your last two albums?


The Dregs is darker–in terms of theme and soundscape–than our last two records.  I think it’s the best songwriting I’ve done so far, and the arrangements are much more full.  I’m also a better engineer than I was before, so things just sound better at their fundamental wavelength level. The songs are a lot shorter, and they travel a more appropriate distance within themselves and within the record as a whole.  We’re getting better at making things sound like themselves. We’re getting better at making us sound like ourselves. Overall, I think this is the record that shows the band most accurately.

Where do you find inspiration?


Inspiration from a songwriting perspective is something that I think I just bank and wait on until I have the necessary time required to turn out a song. Life is so full of heartbreak and wonder.  My friends’ lives, the world’s chaos and confusion, my own incompetence at being a human being, good books and poems–these things all lend themselves to song.  I also feel inspired by my friends and the musicians around me–to keep working and to keep the quality of the work high. Some of my friends make records with really inventive arrangements.  Some of my friends put on really great, high energy live shows.  Some of my friends can let loose in a song like they’re possessed by the devil. All these things go into the hopper of what is possible and what can be attempted. Art is a peeling back of a cheap veneer to reveal the true grain beneath, and when I see and hear people doing that, or hear of things in their lives that force that upon them – those things are inspiring. Not inspiring in an uplifting gosh-now-I-feel-better way, but in a way that makes me contend with reality anew. Reality – when it gets really specific – is inspiring.

How have you used social media to connect with new fans and promote your music?


We’re trying to do better with this one.  I work a lot to try to pay for things like making records and going on tour, so the time I could be spending on utilizing facebook or twitter as marketing tools doesn’t happen like it does with some acts. For this last record and release, we had some good friends really throw their energy into online promotion, and it worked really well. It’s still something I’m coming around to because I didn’t start making music in order to spend a lot of time on the computer (or for that matter, to work a ton as a waitress to pay for making music), so the thing that I try to make sure I do enough of and do well is the music–writing, arranging, recording and playing out.  Things stack up and don’t get tended to in ways that I’m sure would really help us out, but I don’t want to forego the music in order to do the marketing.  But yes, we do use online social media outlets on a regular basis and hope to expand into using them more.

The personal touch you take to your music with the Deluxe edition of The Meteorite and the hand stitching on your posters is refreshing. What inspires you to go that extra mile?


I think the things I/we do always go back to trying to answer the question: What do we want to make?  If I’m not interested in the thing itself, I don’t know why other people would be. I don’t like mass produced things very much.  I like one-of-a-kind items–from clothes to coffee mugs. If the packaging of a product is specific and unique and one-of-a-kind, I think it says to a potential owner of that product that the thing (in this case, the music) housed inside that packaging is also specific, unique and one-of-a-kind.



I try to make things to sell (or promote us with) that I would be excited to own. For us, the extra mile isn’t really an extra one–it’s part of the mile we’re already trying to walk. It does take more time, that’s true, but it fits within our overall aesthetic. The reason to sew on every flyer is the same as the reason to change the harmonies at the end of a song, or add an extra measure of silence in the middle of another one–it’s to refresh the eye and ear, pull the audience and ourselves in closer; it’s an aiming for the beautiful for no other reason than that it’s beautiful.  It’s a strike against utilitarianism and against a cost/benefit analysis that would trade good art for bad art if it meant the stack of dollars would be higher.  As individuals, we’re after a high quality of life for ourselves and everyone else–the good, the beautiful, the loving and the true. Our music – what it sounds like and looks like – reflects that.

What are your tricks for being on the road for long periods of time in close quarters? What do you listen to on the road?


We actually spend a lot of time on the road in silence.  We do listen to music together (full albums) and podcasts (our two faves are This American Life and Radio Lab). We’ve found that for us, the trick to being on the road is not doing it for over three weeks at a time without a good break.  People weren’t meant to live in cars or vans.  It can be tough, but playing shows every night for people who love to hear us is amazing.

What are you most looking forward to in the coming months now that the CD is released?


We have no idea what our next steps are, but I’m looking forward to writing a bunch of more songs, getting them into the set, trying to get out on the road again, and making another record.  Being in a band–unless you’re content to be a local band only–is kind of like flipping a coin to figure out your next move.  Except, when you don’t have any funding besides what you provide yourself, you have to hustle like mad to find a coin to flip.  What’s next?  More music.



Matthew Ebel interview

Singer-songwriter Matthew Ebel made his iProng Radio debut back in September 2007 with a live interview at the Orange County Podcasters booth at New Media Expo, and later appeared in the debut issue of iProng Magazine in December. No stranger to podsafe music, Matthew recently took things a step further by giving away free downloads of three of his songs to anyone who wants them. We checked in with Matthew to find out why he’s giving away free music and what else he has going on…



What have you been up to since we last caught up with you in December?

Well since we talked last December I’ve actually moved from Nashville to Boston. I’ve been here almost five months now and I still feel like I just moved, though, it’s a totally different world. I definitely made the right move, though, since there are a lot more conventions and seminars up here that relate to what I’m doing. I’ve already been to a couple of new media events and a PR boot camp for musicians. Hopefully I’ll actually be able to start playing more shows soon!



You make a living by selling your music, so why are you giving it away?

I do make a living selling my music, but good luck getting people to buy music they haven’t heard. Some people will take a chance on an album based off of one listening, but I’d rather give people the chance to mull it over. I’m pretty sure that the more they listen to some of my songs on their good headphones or speakers, the more my music will grow on them. If not, they haven’t lost anything but time… but if they really dig it, I hope they’ll go for the rest of the album.

I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t think the albums were worth buying.


What happened to the House Tour?

The house tour… well, a few things happened to the house tour. I mentioned a few things specifically on matthewebel.com recently, but the drift of it is that I would have gone broke trying to do it. God knows I wanted to make it work, but there just weren’t enough people buying tickets in advance to make the trip break even. At $4 a gallon, I literally would’ve come home from that 3,000-mile trip and had to get a day job. I’d rather try again later in the year and give myself a LOT more lead time to book other shows and promote more.



What have you got coming up next?

Right now I’ve got a couple of things on the horizon. First and foremost is Block Island; I spent a month there last year, but this summer I’ll be on the Block for 10 straight weeks. It’s going to be a hell of an experience, I know it. I was just getting into the rhythm last year when I had to go home, so hopefully it’ll be as great this year. I just hope my voice can survive singing 4 hours a day 5 days a week. The other thing I’m hoping to do by year’s end is release a Christmas album. I’ve been wanting to do that for a while, but I don’t want to just crank out some cheesy pop album where I’m butchering O Holy Night with vocal ornamentation. I want to do something classy and original, and if I can do that you’ll see it on round plastic by year’s end.