Jody Whitesides

Author: Jody Whitesides

How Technology Transformed the Making of ‘Beside the Lies’

The game changes. Sometimes you’re in the middle of the game and there’s been some instructions on how to play and suddenly the rules change. Or rather the method of how it’s played changes. It’s enough to make you feel like someone has lied, and you’re Beside the Lies.

My week is off to a racing start. I’ve brainstormed out the cover art ideas for all the songs on the next round of releases that will start in January. Can’t let out a sigh of relief just yet. See, my distributor’s system was taking all of the files for the current release’s special version, then balked at 5 of them.

Here’s where the rules changed. Now I have to un-distribute something that was already planned because the way they now want that version delivered suddenly changed. After careful consideration I have to let out a giant ARGH! It also means that some of what had previously been distributed to a particular service, suddenly changes going forward.

In the meantime, this week will be a release of the song Beside the Lies. Kind of apropos for the snit I find myself in for the next 48 hours with fixing the full album release.

One thing about the release of Beside the Lies, the newer technology I’m now afforded allows me to tweak the timing of all the crazy sounds that open the song. Originally it was quite the task to get it relatively close to correct via hitting play & record on an ADAT machine to line it up as best as possible.

To get an inkling of all the things going on in the intro, I suggest hitting the song title to see the song notes. Hell, any song that has the song title allows not only for the actual lyrics but also a plethora of nerd information about any song and their IDs.

This is one of my favorite songs to play as it has a very tight groove and deceptive “1”. Andy and I had a lot of fun playing it in practice. If memory serves me, Andy nailed this in one take, the first take – but we did take two other takes for safety’s sake.

Next week we’ve got the complete picture and then some.

2025-11-04
From X-Files to Real Life: The Tech, Tone, and Truth Behind “Spiral Event”

Once upon a time there was a fantastic country that seemed to have everything going for it. Lots of people running around doing whatever they pleased and were generally happy. Underneath it all there were some people who wanted to impose their perceived way of life on others and things began to dwindle into a Spiral Event.

Add to that, a recent phone call informing me I was named in a rather serious situation. Something I had no part in, is out of character and all because of what? I have fuckin name recognition and a memorable look due to my height and hair cut. I pity the current culture of people throwing others under the bus because they can’t face the consequences of their actions.

The outlook is foggy now that our data wranglers have been fired and a giant mess is brewing because a narcissist wants everything for himself. Well, maybe he wants some for his other hoarder style friends. Which trods down upon others.

Hearing about others wanting to flee, or actually fleeing, before the whole system collapses on itself is a duality of what seems like a cop-out and also something to be desired.

Watching in real time as our rights are stripped away is utterly disgusting. Which is part of what I had in mind when I originally wrote Spiral Event. The kick off for the whole idea was sparked by something out of The X-Files. There’s an episode about history. That it can only live as long as we remember it. After that, we’re doomed to repeat it.

Sadly, now we have started to repeat history – despite having historical record to learn from. Compound that with skewed realities being spewed forth steroided (yeah, I know I made that word up) by a constant stream of made up facts.

We’re headed into a real life Spiral Event. One that was once a figment of my imagination. I hold out hope we’ll pull the nose of the plane back up before we smash it completely to bits.

Otherwise, I might pull the very same continent hopping trick that others have either already done, or in the process of doing, or contemplating doing.

Stay tuned for more next week.

2025-10-28
From Vaporware to Victory: A Story Behind “Coming Home”

It’s one of those moments when I need to remember that I should go back to my old way of announcing things, when they are already done. There’s an extremely prevalent issue in the music industry where things get announced and then they don’t happen. I’m sure it’s the same in the tech world too. They call it Vaporware. In music it’s just par for the course. In a way, it’s like Coming Home or full circle.

For the longest time I had lots of things going on around me early on in my career. Where lots of opportunities were getting promised, along with tours, merch, signings, etc… I immediately learned not to open my mouth about them because so many of them turned out to be hot air that went nowhere. By my 2nd album, I had learned that it’s better to have it all in the pipeline and on it’s way before ever uttering a word. Today’s artist that does this best? Taylor Swift. Say nothing until it drops.

Which is why, I’m bummed at myself for my last week’s update. I was so sure that I’d get a certain aspect of my email setup working that it was gonna fly on Thursday and be ready for Friday. Then plans changed. I didn’t get a chance to work on it, and even now a week later – it’s still not fully functional. ARGH!!! Thus, know that if you sign up on the email list right now, you can. That is working. Even the intro emails to welcome you in are working. That’s a plus. But it’s the true functionality that I was hoping to be ready, that is still not ready.

Which leads me into this week’s release: Coming Home. When this first came out, several decades ago, I had members around me that were gung-ho and labels that were on the prowl. While I like to express happy news and I don’t tend to harbor bad news (meaning I’ll straight shoot it at you), I had band members that were more willing to shoot off about all the good things as if they were already a done deal. Then the original release date got postponed – the manufacturer fucked up the initial run. Therein is the lesson – until shit is in your hands: “Shut the fuck up.”

Coming Home was an homage from that first album. An homage that wasn’t a secret, and yet somehow it still flew over a lot of heads. Very few people got it. Which is fine, but I couldn’t make it any more obvious from a writing and playing standpoint. Like the torch got passed along, I picked it up and passed it on again.

The remix of this particular song is something. The re-release of it is even more. A spark that sent me down a road I didn’t expect 2 years ago when I started futzing around with my back catalogue. To that end, it really was a matter of Coming Home. Figuratively and literally.

Coming Home has been one of my favorites for a variety of reasons and an upcoming version of it is the pinnacle of that, more on that soon. Though as the world learned yesterday, you also can’t always count on AWS (Amazon Web Services).

2025-10-21

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