All the Clams...LIVE! AND Songs Containing The Brown Note "The place filler ones"

OK, I’m cheating here, I wasn't planning on adding these since they were basically “Not Full Length” or “Original New Releases” but I did feel they should get a little due since they are important to the overall story.

Released March 2019

So on the release of “Glamour and Filth” the band and I decided to put on an album release party where we would rent out a space, get a few of our favorite bands we’ve been playing with the last few album cycles and put on a big ass party to promote!

My “Backup Band” affectionately called The Critically Ashamed Band” were a well oiled machine now including Gary, Shawn, Helene and Noah with myself now playing rhythm/lead guitar (previously I was just singing, which is what I essentially wanted, but grew tired of revolving guitar dudes) and with around 6 months of sobriety under my belt, I really wanted to show the world how far myself and the band have progressed. I was still a raw nerve, but I was playing and singing the best I have been in ages without all of the chemicals floating around my system and was super proud of what we ALL had achieved.

Long story short, the night was a success we basically didn’t lose our shirts $ wise, all of the bands were great and our set went extremely well! Luckily since we hired our pals Jeff and Lisa to run sound we had a great mix recorded and Gary was smart enough to set up a camera and record the set as well.

Cut to a few months later, Shawn and Gary were able to play back the audio from the night and I was actually super impressed on how good it sounded! They did mention “you know, we could probably release this as a live album” and since we were taking our time in 2019 to work on a “Critically Ashamed” album (more on that later) I was all for it.

Are their a few mistakes in there? Sure. Did we talk too much between songs? Absolutely, but when listening back I wanted it to be a true live album, “clams” and all. Shawn did mention we could fix in post, but that’s not live now is it?

Listening back, maybe we should of removed all of the banter between since the recordings themselves, especially adding Noah on the keys, mandolin, etc. because they really sound awesome. Especially the songs we did from the past two albums since I mentioned the recordings were really pretty poor and having the band really do their thing live makes them so much better.

If anyone asks me where to start, I always pointed them to this album since It has the best representation of those prior songs the way they should be with a killer band playing them with me.

Released Nov 2019

Now this release is an interesting one, because of the background and the reasoning for it.

Now another “side effect” of being in new found sobriety was the amount of music I was writing spiked quite a bit! By the time the Live album was released, my GarageBand was already chock full of new songs I had demoed for the next release.

It seemed like I was on a roll and as I briefly mentioned above, it was around this time where since the band was solid now for a few years and putting their own stamp on the songs live, I decided it was maybe time to drop the whole “solo artist” moniker and release the next album under “The Critically Ashamed” and make it more of a full fledged band project.

I was still the primary songwriter, but the recording would be all of us, no more drum programs and the band would have a 100% input on arrangements, etc. I was excited to see how this path would take us! I had already demoed a ton of new ideas and was bringing them into the band rehearsals for them to “put their own stank” on them before we recorded.

However, personally things took a bit of a twist before then.

It was the beginning of this year where we had a massive fire in our home, which took myself and my family out of our place for 9 MONTHS while they repaired. We went from a Residence Inn, to a temporary apartment, back to the Residence Inn, thennnn finally home. To be honest it was a nightmare for most of it looking back I was shocked I was able to keep my new found sobriety.

However, it didn’t stop me from breaking out the IPad and guitar and still recorded ideas during that time.

Besides the songs that made the debut Critically Ashamed record, I had a few that didn’t necessarily fit that band. Either we tried them and they weren’t into them, or they were just too abrasive for what the CA was doing but I still liked them, so I told the band “hey I’m going to release these as an EP just to put them out there and get them off my hard drive” which they were more than happy with.

Also just for fun, I took two songs from old hardcore bands I was in way back when I was 14-16 years old and re-recorded them with my new found “recording talents” and put them on there. It was funny to send the tracks to my old childhood friends to show them what I did with the message “checks in the mail”

I barely promoted this at all, just a “hey, while you wait for the Critically Ashamed record, here’s a few tracks I had leftover I recorded on hotel beds yelling in the IPad enjoy!” and that was it. Listening back, I really do love the way they came out and even though it was done all over the place, I could tell I was finally getting the hang of this recording thing.