Today was a good day in the world of Jack Cade and the Everyday Sinners. Whilst kickin back and drinking my morning coffee down at the Workhouse I received an email about a new review for 'This Fiery Road' album.
As with any review the immediate reaction is excitement followed by trepidation. I needn't have worried the review which appears on the excellent From Under The Basement blog, based in Austin Texas, was extremely complimentary.
Rebel Rod Ames wrote 'Take
about two cups of Johnny Cash add a dash or two of Tom Waits, and a
smidgen of the psychobilly or punk roots that began molding him years
ago, and you have Jack Cade.
I love this album for so many reasons. It’s honky-tonk or is it? It’s
country, or is it? It’s blues, or is it? It continuously keeps the
listener guessing. I on the other hand, after hearing the first track,
the title cut, “This Fiery Road”, decided not to categorize, but
instead, simply enjoy this extremely unique brand of whatever it is...'
It's been three weeks since the launch of 'This Fiery Road' and I have to say 6 months in the studio seems a breeze compared to a month trying to promote the album out to publications, blogs and radio stations. It's not until you start that you realise how many thousands of tresses there are in each genre of music. All vying for the same coverage largely from the same groups of dedicated bloggers.
Having run the Freebase music site for 3 years from 1997 I can appreciate how much time and work goes into running a blog reviewing and commenting on the music you love. There are a few blogs that have caught my eye over the last 3 months, in researching and checking out around a 115 sites the ones I'm visiting and enjoying the most are being added to my website as links. Ninebullets.net is particularly good well written, some good humour and a great weekly radio show. I've also been spending a lot of time on No Depression, check it out, loads of good articles, posts and forum. Oliverdiplace.blogspot.com is always a good and varied read as is fromunderthebasement.blogspot.com also with it's own cool weekly radio show.
Last week some of the album tracks went up onto Jango. Fir those who have not come across it before it is an Internet radio service that sllows the use to pick stations based on an artist or genre, same as last FM. The difference is that as an artist you can upload your tunes and buy credits to get guaranteed plays. You pick the artists you want to be aligned with, target locations and off you go. In the first week I've had a great amount of positive feedback and picked up new fans and sales.
The album has also been picked up by various Internet and specialist radio stations, mainly in the states. The only downer for me so far is that I've not been able to get one bit of coverage in my own local press or radio stations.
With any luck the next week will see a few reviews coming out, as soon as they do I'll be posting links up here, in the meantime if you're one of the good people who have bought a copy of the album then you'd do me a great favour if you posted a review on iTunes, Amazon or any of the other digital sites.
Just a quick post to let you know that This Fiery Road is now up on CD Baby, iTunes and Amazon to name just a couple. It's also available in CD format from my website at:
well it's been a busy old few weeks finishing the mixing on the album, although in truth Tom has been doing most of that :-) whilst I've been concentrating on setting up our new label, PRS, PPL, websites, payments and all that tedious stuff you really don't want to have to deal with as a musician. Nearly done now and we finally have a release date for the album, which is the 7th September, can't wait.
We're off to the mastering studio on Thursday 11 August down at Cyclone Music in Medway Kent
To celebrate the launch of the album 'This Fiery Road' on Collision Music I'll be playing at Betties Blues on Saturday 3 September with the album available on the night prior to its official release on the 7th.
Hey all, at last I can report that the Jack Cade album This Fiery Road is all but complete. Tom Anderson has produced a first mix, and as a consequence I went back in the studio and re-recorded vocals to three tracks 'The Fiery Road', 'Hotter than the sun' and Hanging on a thread. All three of which I'm now happy with.
We also have a couple of additional parts going down on two tracks on Monday, a new piano piece on 'Walk Away' and a fiddle on 'Parkside Road' then it's final mix time. The plan is to get the album into mastering by the end of next week, with a planned release date set for 19th August when I'll be playing The Borders Bash in Scotland.
The album as it stands has been played to a few select people to date and the reaction has been great. I'm very happy with all the tracks now and 4 in particular have gone way beyond where i expected them too. It's always a strange thing when recording that the songs that are your strongest live aren't always the tracks that stand out when recorded, often it is the less obvious tracks that shine out. I'll leave you to decide which you think work well once the album is out.
On the live front I have a busy few weeks playing The Butler, Deja Vu, the Rhu Bar and the excellent Betties Blues stage at Caversham Festival _ What a great day, good weather, great friends and an excellently run festival which was completely free.
The next big event is the Borders Bash up in Galashiels on August 19th to the 21st, tickets are available from the site www.bordersbash.co.uk get em quick as they're going fast.
Hope you are well and enjoying the brief glimpses of the summer sun. I was lucky enough to get out in the best of it on Sunday for the first photoshoot for the new album.
The session only lasted an hour but Raymond Lee who was behind the lens captured some great shots that really captured the atmosphere I was looking for. The first of the shots is up on my site www.jackcade.com if you want to see the results. I hope you'll think, like me that it's really kinda cool. It's shot in the style that was used during the 70's on a lot of blues and Motown album covers. For those of you into your photography I'll be posting up some details on the site later regarding the equipment, setup and postproduction photoshop work that was carried out.
We're now into the mixing of the album, with a provisional mastering date set for mid July with a release date set for mid august to coincide with the Bordersbash (more on that later).
Along with the album completion myself and Tom are setting up a new label, resurrecting my old label name from the 90s, Collision Records.
As well as the Jack Cade album we'll be looking for other artists to record and release, we have a few in mind already, but are looking for more Berkshire based talent, for more info email jack@jackcade.com
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/jackcadeandtheeverydaysi
