Black Storms Become Pink Clouds "the forgotten one"

Released April 2024

Sooooo this one was and kind of still is an interesting one..

So after “Bits…” was off my plate, I thought “OK, get back to band mode” and we would begin to FINALLY redeem ourselves and release a killer second record with The Critically Ashamed with my pals!

During this time, I did what I always did and started writing and demoing ideas to present to the band and see what they liked.

I thought I was really coming up with some good songs for this one and we went over and worked on songs like “Something Special”, “Show the World you Can” we even had this one we were playing in the set I kept specifically for this band called “Crumpled Paper” that they liked the most it seemed so that would be where we would start.

We had Gary lay down the drum part from my demo and we started working on basically recording the rest from scratch meaning fresh vocals, guitars and bass from everyone adding in their own to it like the first album.

I was excited to get back to it, but I started to feel “that pit in my stomach” that I felt looking back at the first CA album we did in 2019-2020.

I was trying to be impartial when it came to feedback/ideas in regards to the songs, but I started to notice myself feeling how I did last time. It really isn’t fair to the rest of the band, but when I would hear things back and for all of the cool things that showed up, most of them I would think “yeah, but that’s not how it goes”

I felt bad poor Shawn, in the song “Crumpled Paper” the bridge was supposed to have a “Bass Solo” before the guitar one and he’s playing his heart out doing all sorts of wild tricks and I’m thinking to myself “but that’s not how I did it or envisioned in my head”. It just to me sounded…off.

It got like that for everyone, Gary didn't want to hear any of the demoed drum tracks it was good for him to come up with his own stuff like he did on “Glamour” or the first CA record but I would hear back and there were certain accents and fills I was so used to on the demos that I liked that wasn’t there.

At least with Helene she tended to be the most “loyal” to the arrangements and she was a way better guitarist IMHO than me so she would add flavor that I couldn’t pull off when I was playing and singing.

plus when it came to solos, I tend to write out specific melodic ones for certain songs which I would keep, but some that I was not committed to and just noodling around, I would give to Helene and she would CRUSH it.

the two of us honestly worked really really well as a “guitar duo” she had the cleaner, more technical “single coil” style, where I was more heavy, distorted, swinging the chord rhythm caveman metal player that was a great combo. Once she joined, I would specifically write two guitar parts in this style and knew “this is a Helene part”.

So not only that, when it came to recording with the band, it was going realllllly reallllly slow.

this was also not fair for them, because to get the four of us in a room together to practice was one thing, but then to take time to sit in Shawn’s place to record on top of that, It seemed to be tough to get done. we all had husbands, wives, girlfriends, kids, jobs and LIVES besides this.

So here I am stuck in my apartment recording and demoing a bunch of songs that are literally in my mind arranged, recorded and ready to go sitting in my hard drive, why is it taking a year to get ONE SONG kinda done? Can’t we just have Gary record his parts to these like he did on “Glamour” and be done with it? Shit, record your own parts at home over these or with me like we did on a few songs on “Elephants…” Fuck, I’m sober and have good equipment now, it would be better!

But, I promised myself…”You need to be a team player now, trust the process and give the others a chance” so they sat in my hard drive for over a year. Hell, some I kept for the CA that were years and years old because I wanted to save for the band like “Crumpled Paper”

Now also what was going on during this time and basically since 2021 when I was separated, was my BFF and I started our own podcast called “Hey Pal, What’s New?” where we would get together every week at his house, live stream and chat about the latest and greatest in pop culture to a very small, but also very loyal audience.

Not only was the show picking up it seemed, this was THE MOST FUN thing I was doing creatively. No worries just hanging out with my best friend since middle school, shooting the shit and making each other laugh our asses off. Out of anything, this was the least stressful and I was getting to be creative in a different way.

So….while brainstorming, one of my bright ideas I had was “Hey, let’s take what we have both with the podcast and my music, let’s get a bunch of other local bands, performers, whatever and create OUR OWN LABEL!

My thing was why not combine forces with other creatives we liked under one “brand” where we can all promote each other’s projects, combine our audiences and start a “Local scene” of sorts like their used to be!

Back when we were doing Brady Bastards, there were local “labels” that we were a part of like Sling Slang Records or even Chowda House where it was a label with a stable of artists that would put on successful shows together, had fun and was able to cross promote. Now, we could do that, but do other things like Art, Podcasts, basically anything we wanted!

So it was then that Sack of Sin Entertainment was born.

John and I were super excited, he was more of the “tech guy” and basically ran the podcast, so he could head up that end and I could handle the music/band aspect of it. We reached out to all of our friends and immediately we were able to secure a decent stable of our own artists that were down!

We would plan and put on Showcases quarterly where all of the bands would perform too. If each band brought 5-10 people and there were 5-10 bands? We could have great crowds again where all would benefit!

So with all of this going on, the podcast, the cover band, etc. I was ok with giving myself time with The Critically Ashamed music. Sack of Sin could be my main focus and we can get back to new music organically. Maybe that will be “the fix” I needed to get over being so precious about the songs.

Well long story short, after a lot of work, we did two showcases with our new “stable of artists”. One was amazing, but the last? Not so much and it really took the wind out of me at the time.

I started feeling really insecure, unsure of myself and thought “what the fuck am I doing? Why am I even trying so hard?”

Turned out our second showcase we dubbed SOSS2 was the last time The Critically Ashamed performed as a band to this day.

We just let our own busy schedules and personal lives take over. I was always the one being “ok, let’s get going” booking the rehearsals, sending the song ideas, booking the gigs and pushing the others along. So when I just stopped doing that? Much like the response to everything else, just disappeared.

I wouldn’t tell people The Critically Ashamed broke up. We just….gave up.

I still to this day, love each and every member of the band. We had a ton of laughs, great chemistry and I will always love them for supporting my music and visions bringing them to life. We just…moved on.

So long story longer, once again I’m at home with a bunch of demoed songs sitting in my hard drive so I decided “ok, just finish them up on your own, try to do a big push and release it”

Manal moved in with me about a year before this came out, so things now were even tougher in regards to free time and space to record, but most of this was done before that so it was really just putting the finishing touches when I could.

I felt these songs really really had the potential. To me they were catchy, simple with hooks that I felt could really get some traction out there! Only 8 songs but literally half I would consider to be “singles”

So with literally no peep from the band, I literally didn’t even ask this time, I just started releasing singles and promoting the new release. I figured “well…this is it I have my solo music, and the CA was going to be a literal “side project” think Bowie and Tin Machine scenario” to be fair, every single I released from this one was presented to the band FIRST and when nothing came of it? Oh well you snooze you lose.

I also started searching for other avenues to promote and release my music on streaming this time. I was using LANDR since the beginning and they were good, but I thought “maybe there are better and easier ways to do this” they are excellent for mastering as well as distributing and analytics, but not really for promoting. Maybe there was one that did both?

So I decided for this release to try DistroKid they did the distribution, but they also had other “add ons” for promoting so I mastered the songs under a program called BandLab, dumped them in DistroKid and tried that.

So I decided to release the first single I felt was the strongest “something special” a few weeks before, with the others following soon after.

To my surprise, the response was super positive getting a good amount of listens and this was all 100% organic listens as well (I’ll get into that in another post)

Since this is becoming quite the novel, I’ll save the results for the next post since it relates to it…so stay tuned