Although these are scratch tracks, I went a little furthur on a few songs, because I was composing parts as I recorded. I have removed the click tracks here, because it can be a bit annoying and distracting.

1. grampadrew - Could Be About You.mp3


The first track, "Could Be About You" is a good example of adding compositional parts during the process. There are several parts layered toward the end, and the whole thing is intentionally over-long so that I can fade out as desired. This also leaves plenty of room here for me to noodle on the guitar, and for additional instrumentation to be layered as I am inspired. The lead guitar tracks are totally improvised, and will be expounded and tightened as needed when the time comes.

2. grampadrew - Undersized T-Shirt.mp3

"Undersized T-Shirt". I'm really struggling with this song on record. It always goes over really well live, and has a lot of potential, but everytime I build it up on record, it sounds cheesy and contrived. I added some piano parts that I thought would really beef it up, but they did the opposite. Also, I've been composing the drum tracks on a drum machine, which I think contributed to the cheese effect. So I've stripped it back again, and hopefully the addition of some new musicians will breathe the life back into it.

3. grampadrew - Letter from Prague.mp3

4. grampadrew - All I Have.mp3

5. grampadrew - Myra Says.mp3

If you check the ID tags on the mp3 files, you'll notice I go from track 5 to track 7. There is a song missing here. Michael Cooper of Transfer has a great drum track for this missing song, and I'm waiting for him to record it (Hear that Coop? Get your ass over to my studio). The song is called "Only Kids" and is an old punk-rock tune I wrote when I was 16 years old.

7. grampadrew - Butch.mp3

"Butch" is another good example of composing while I record. I added e-bow parts and distorted guitars and basically built the song as I recorded. Some of these takes may make the final cut. You'll notice the same lead guitars parts are cut and pasted throughout the song. Part of the compositional process. Those parts will have to be fleshed out a bit. The song is now basically arranged as I want it, and just needs to be filled out with the bass and drums. The tone of this is much louder than the rest of the record, as it is the emotional climax in many ways. Two big themes of this record are clothes and family, and finding yourself through them both. This song confronts the uglier aspects of family, and I'm sure it will cause a stir among my kin. Names have not been changed to protect anybody.

8. grampadrew - Above Beneath.mp3

9. grampadrew - Tell Me.mp3

10. grampadrew - Wishes.mp3

"Wishes". This is an outtake from my "clairvoyant adventure" EP. It was supposed to be on the EP, but my hard-drive crashed during the recording process and I lost all my working files. This is a scratch-take made before the crash. I'm going to re-record this from scratch, but thought it would be cool to include the old version here.

11. grampadrew - Moving Home.mp3

12. grampadrew - Long Way From Wolsey.mp3

"Long Way From Wolsey". I am going to have to give my grandfather co-writing credit for this song. The lyrics are taken directly from his memoirs and just re-arranged to rhyme. Everything about this song is his, lyrically.

13. grampadrew - Cut From The Cloth.mp3

The title track. It may be finished. I really like the way it sounds as is. I will experiment with drums and the boys in Transfer were singing harmonies to me in the the van when we were touring out to Texas for SXSW, which I liked alot, so we'll give those a shot if I can pin them all down in my studio. But there is something very nice about the starkness and honesty of this as is. This may be ready to go to mastering with very little tweaking. This record isn't a concept album, but I have arranged the songs to reflect an emotional journey. This song wraps up the major themes quite well, answering the identity crisis brought up in Undersized T-Shirt at the beginning of the album. This song, written after the death of my grandfather is a nice set with the song before it, which was co-written by my other grandfather (who is still alive and feisty as ever).

And that's it for now. If you like what you hear, share it with your friends. Check back often to see how things progress, or just sign up for the Podcast to be updated automatically with new versions of the songs as they develop.