Hear

Unsung Heroes Project On Sale and On Line! + Progress Report

Saturday, October 23rd, 2010

The Unsung Heroes Project , Volumes 1, 2 and 3,  is finally live and online in its finished form! Thank you, everyone, for hanging in there patiently while I’ve been putting the final touches on the digital art and such.

Listen to all the music and buy the digital version (including full downloadable booklet) at http://brianlynch.bandcamp.com/

Next up is completing the design for the physical CD of Vol.1. I hope to have that ready in about a week to 10 days. Knowing how the process goes with manufacturing, I would say about a month from the time I turn in the materials will be when I have CDs in my hands. So, maybe around Dec. 1st? – I’ll have it ready in time for Christmas.

Play along track “prints” are being generated here at Hollistic Studios whenever I have spare hours – it’s a fairly simple process but time consuming since there’s 5 to 10 possible variations of “minus one” for each performance. It’s coming along – the trick is to figure out a way to master all this stuff cleanly, efficiently, and without undue expense. The multi track stem project will be addressed once I’ve achieved more traction on the play alongs.

Video? My man Nick Myers has been working away on the footage and achieving great results with the raw material synced up to the tracks. He’s a little less that halfway there; we’ve got seven videos up now for streaming on Vimeo. When all the tracks have been mated to image, then we’ll get to hooking up the DVD. The documentary is in process but a little farther back in the queue.
Here’s one of the Vimeo videos:
Access more Unsung Heroes videos at:
Household Of Saud:  http://vimeo.com/16032400
Terra Firma Irma:http://vimeo.com/15920034

Mastering Finished; Kickstarter Support Project Launched

Monday, July 5th, 2010

I finally have a master in hand of Unsung Heroes – really! I know you’ve heard this before, but this time it’s for real. It’s been a long but rewarding journey. I learned a lot of new skills this time around; it was crazy to take on the mix from the ground up but I’m happy with the result and elated with the accomplishment. Thanks, Dave Darlington for taking me through it the first time through, and also to Tyler McDiarmid for all his assistance and tips on the second go round.

Now it’s time to design the liner materials, both online and physical, get the CD manufactured and publicity to help send this child out into the world. The point has come where resources are a little tight, so I’m reaching out to fans and friends for help through a cool fundraising tool called Kickstarter. Kickstarter projects enable independent artists like me to raise funds for their creative work and offer cool stuff in return. In the case of my Kickstarter project for Unsung Heroes, I’m offering pre orders of the CD and downloads, additional products and some other real hip stuff. I invite you check it out and contribute! Believe me, I’m offering good count. My Kickstarter project “Get My ‘Unsung Heroes’ Project Out To The People!” can be found at:

http://www.kickstarter.com/e/K0DAS/projects/1927361678/get-my-unsung-heroes-project-out-to-the-people

More Tracks Recorded for "Unsung Heroes"…

Thursday, December 31st, 2009

It’s been always at the back of my mind since recording the material for “Unsung Heroes” that somehow I managed to track 12 different tunes without a single ballad. Nothing says that you have to include a ballad performance on a jazz record, but I always have had done so in the past (or an bolero on the Latin records), so I’ve been a little uneasy about it.

Now, at the last moment, I decided to correct this “oversight” by going back into the studio with the rhythm section to track what I thought would be two or maybe three ballads. Fortunately, the cats (Rob, David, and Pete) were available. Though we didn’t have time to rehearse and I selected the tunes on the spur of the moment, I think it turned out well, and we were able to record seven tunes in about four hours on the Tuesday evening before Christmas, Not all of these may make it on the project, but I’ve got good stuff to choose from:

Orange Blossoms (Idrees Sulieman)
Short Steps (Sulieman)
Heleen (Joe Gordon)
I Could Never Forget You (Tommy Turrentine)
Gone But Not Forgotten (T.T.)

The Sulieman and T.T. tunes I got through Don Sicker and Second Floor Music, and I believe are debut recordings, like some of their tunes from the original sessions last year.

We also recorded two more up-tempo quartet numbers, Donald Byrd’s “I’m So Excited By You” and an original blues I wrote on way way out the door to the studio, “Unsung Blues

This is not making it any easier to get this thing out the door!

Killer Ray Appleton

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

Next week (Dec. 4) I’ll be making a hit up in East Harlem at Creole with a very old friend and one of the jazz world’s truly great drummers, Otis “Killer” Ray Appleton. We go back a long way; Killer Ray played on my senior recital at the Wisconsin Conservatory Of Music. At the time, he was a part of Buddy Montgomery’s Trio (Buddy, a Milwaukee resident throughout my formative years, was a great influence on me as well as other Milwaukeeans such as David Hazeltine). I think he was the best drummer I had ever played with at that time, and I still can’t think of anything more swinging than his cymbal beat. He is a master of the art of swing, a philosopher of rhythm in jazz music, an architect of group orchestration in the tradition of Art Blakey and Philly Joe but with his own lexicon of thunder. (more…)

Unsung Heroes – a little sneak preview

Saturday, October 24th, 2009

Here’s a little taste of what the Unsung Heroes record will sound like. This is a tweak or two away from the final master print, but I’m getting a little impatient and want to have a few people hear something from the project. This is Tommy Turrentine’s “Big Red”; for personnel check the Unsung Heroes page .

Big Red.mp3