"Full House."

Cards slam against the table and some frustrated sighs and snickering fill the living room turned poker hall. I don't fancy myself to be the most stellar card player I've ever met, but occasionally, providence smiles on me and I can wrestle a few good hands. The trick is, so I'm told, to always keep the players around you guessing - if you always wait to play until you have a good hand, most players will fold and you won't get the big pot when you play...if you always bluff, people will recognize it and call you out and you'll lose all your money much more quickly.

Sounds like fairly practical advice for playing poker, right? Alas, many of us stick to our tried-but-not-necessarily-true means of playing the game because, frankly, we've always done it that way.

So, if it's not broken, should we try to fix it?  Not necessarily, but as any good carpenter I know will tell you - there's always room for a few modifications.  

This lesson is especially poignant in the writing, recording, mixing, and releasing of my new record, History. If the answer to any question is, "Because we've always done it that way," I've purposed to not do it that way. There are 3 categories where I think this is really helping me grow:

1. Artistically - Think of any jazz tune that you've heard in a live setting. It's never played the same way twice, is it? (Unless you're listening to "smooth jazz"...and if you are, you need not finish the rest of this blog) If we as "pop" musicians would adhere to this standard in our process of writing music and incorporating different kinds of instrumentation, I think the sonic landscape will continue to grow and be more challenging, but it will advance. I'm going for an 80's pop feel with more synthesizers and big drums, but more ambient sounds with electric guitars as well...some may love it, some my hate it, but at least it will be something new.

2. Practically - Mixing, producing, and engineering of a record is going to be a vast difference every time you step into the studio. Each record has been a beast all its own, and I think it needs to be that way.  It encourages growth, and creativity always arises when we are challenged with obstacles that we may not know how to overcome immediately. Ben Andrews and I have had a much larger amount of outside influence and help as far as producing and engineering this record goes - many from individuals much more experienced (and in many cases, just better) than ourselves. The result?  Hopefully, the listener benefits from this in the end, because the songs will be presented in the best way they possibly can be (to coincide with the budget we've had to work with)

3. Logistically - The world is changing ever more quickly than before. (Sorry, that made me think of the intro to "Lord of the Rings" anyway...) This shouldn't be a mystery - when I consider the route to record creation to release back in 2005, it's a world apart from what it is now.  You, the listeners, have hundreds of means to hear new music now, and in most cases, I'd say that's an awesome thing.  The fact that such a vast amount of great music is available to you (and me too, I'm a listener too!) is enabling and can be a bit stifling too.  So where does History sit in terms of the rest of the music out there?  Well, that's where I continue to ask and listen as far as how people discover and learn about new music. This is not a self-reference criterion based equation whatsoever, I have to know who you are and where you are and how you are listening. Thanks for the challenge, I'm up for it :)

I hope that everyone can grab a small something from this post - whether it's encouragement to "not do it that way" with your job/relationships/life, or maybe you just got a quick 3 minutes of entertainment from reading this on a Friday in the office. Either way, I hope we can trade a little convention for invention and keep moving.

-TRMJ