It's Friday, August 25th, and I am very happy to announce that my debut album,
Look Inside, is finally available on iTunes (and wherever else digital music is sold).
It's been a long, yet rewarding process. Back in October of 2005, I set out to record a 4 song EP up in Redlands, CA at Papa Joe's Studio with Joe Marciano running the board, Dan Bailey on the drums, and
Tyler Chester on the bass, piano, and synths. We spent three days recording "
On The Outside", "
Fall Down" (which was later scrapped), "
Cape Town", and "
Nothing Left To Say".
I brought all of the tracks to my good friend
Nate Wood to mix and master, but due to touring, he had to wait a couple of months to even start the project. I am not one to settle for what I don't want, so I waited. Fast forward to January of 2006...
In the waiting time between October and January, I polished up some old songs, wrote a few new ones and made the decision to turn this EP into a full length album. On my birthday, January 3rd, I went up to
Nate's home studio in Highland Park, CA to start recording the rest of the songs, and to redo "Fall Down".
Nate played the drums on the remaining 9 songs, bass on 7 of them, and even a bit of guitar on one - all while handling the actual recording. Yes, he does it all. You can thank him for the badass opening guitar melody in "
Better All The While".
Also, Denholm Harding (of
Just Jinjer), came in and threw down some nice bass tracks on "
Look Inside" and "
Underneath This Blue Sky", and my good friend
Mike Baas layed down some piano on "
I'll Carry You" and "
More Love". We finished up the actual recording of the remaining songs in about two weeks. It all happened very naturally and effortlessly - except for the vocal track on "
Bird In A Cage". Recording vocals on 2 hours of sleep while wired on coffee is no easy task. Don't tell anyone, but I actually had not finished writing the lyrics for that song, so I stayed up all night writing the night before. I am actually shocked that we got a usable take between laughing attacks and me forgetting the words. I should have made a "blooper version" of that song as a bonus track.
After the recordings were done, I did a photo shoot with
Art Brewer for the cover,
Nate took off for a few months of touring, and then mixed it over the following month or two. We handed it over to
Alex Oana to master it and now, WHA-LA, it is finished and available for your listening pleasure.
1. On The Outside
2. Fall Down
3. Look Inside
4. Ocean Inside
5. Better All The While
6. Underneath This Blue Sky
7. Bird In A Cage
8. Summer & The Rain
9. I'll Carry You
10. Cape Town
11. More Love
12. Nothing Left To Say
Peace,
Alec
On December 9th and 10th, 2006, I partook (is that a real word?) in a very cool video shoot at The Brookledge Theatre (the original Magic Castle, built in 1932) in Los Angeles, CA. SongCheck Live gathered a very fine array of singer-songwriters to come in and do some very raw and authentic acoustic performances, all to be filmed in front of a very small group of people. 
