Jody Whitesides

Author: Jody Whitesides

  • Reboot

    Reboot

    I did a little social media reboot. Not that you would have noticed.

    As much as I’d like to think I’m a household name and people hang upon my every little nuanced portion of life. I know that’s not my reality. Though it has been suggested to me more than once in my life that I should have a camera crew following me around.

    The reboot…

    A couple of weeks ago, I decided to make a change in my social media. Such that I took several hours, over the course of several days, to delete my Facebook posts history. I noticed a real stupidity in my own beginning there. The progression of posts didn’t get a whole lot better. But they were less stupid.

    I then found a means for wiping out my Twitter posts as well. Before I did that, I took the time to have Twitter send me an archive of all my past Tweets. I have no desire to go back and read through that history – but I have it saved in hard copy form should I ever wish to peruse my momentary lapses of reason on that platform.

    I continued the wipeout process by archiving a vast majority of my Instagram posts as well. I stopped short of completely wiping it out at the behest of an Instagram professional. He wanted me to leave a few posts – and start on a new schedule, which is what I’ve been doing there.

    Why did I do all that?

    The main reason for going on a social media reboot was to feel like I had a fresh slate. To make sure that I was more focused on what I was to post next. Each platform (Instagram, Twitter..) will get a more focused concept to what I’ll post on each. Have already made minor tweaks on Instagram that have yielded fantastic results.

    Quite frankly, I’m pretty much done with Facebook. Yes, I get the irony of typing that, when Instagram is owned by Facebook. Another friend recently tried to get me to start doing informative videos related to music and posting them to Facebook. However, with the recent spate of privacy issues and low reach Facebook gives to content creators at this point, it feels like a lost cause.

    The pivot

    2018 started with a huge amount of promise. I was to be going out on a major tour with a big artist, had a new band nearly finished and in the last lap of finishing the production on a bunch of singles.

    Suddenly, the artist I was too open for disappeared. Which required a quick change as my whole year was geared to being on the road. I hunkered down and finished up a new library of music. I also got into producing for other artists and helping them realize a goal of sounding great in a recording. There’s another project I’ve been working with that could result in something I’ve never seen a band do in the history of music.

    Goodbye 2018

    You’ve been a roller coaster of a year. Some really high highs and a near rock bottom low. I’m ready for 2019. The year where I’m not hyping anything – but rather letting you know when something has released. There will be new music released every month in 2019. If you got this far, I hope you’d sign up on my email list and join me for this reboot of a musical journey.

  • Forgotten Warriors

    Forgotten Warriors

    About a year and a half ago my friend Greg Watton came to me wanting to write another song. I mentioned that I thought it would be a great idea to write about Veteran’s, especially since he is a veteran and was going through some rough stuff at the time. So he came up with some lyrics centered around forgotten warriors of America.

    We tooled around with the musical direction. I had started one musical idea but Greg felt it wasn’t quite hitting the right direction. Thus I scrapped that and started something entirely different. He was excited about the new version, which meant it was time to go after the melody.

    Once I finally started digging into the words we had to work on doing a bit of rewriting and editing, as good songwriters often do. The hook became a double-edged hook after I suggested we remove the ‘of America’ part of the title. It didn’t sing or flow well. Once that was removed it became anthemic! Anthemic in two different parts.

    YouTube player

    Greg and I wanted a song that could strike up the awareness about how our veterans are treated after serving our country. Many are left fending for themselves and in dire need of help after seeing the ravages of serving the country. As a terrible and prime example, consider the recent shooting in Thousand Oaks CA. There is a veteran who was obviously having some trouble and had no-one listening.

    Our goal is to have you help make this song a national anthem for veterans. It’s easy to sing along for the chorus and feels wholly empowering in the process.

    Our original plan was to release the song a year ago, but due to unfortunate circumstances I had to forego the idea of releasing last year.

    Fast forward a year…

    Now it’s been released as of last Friday morning. The buzz of the feedback has been great. As I was doing the first live performance of the song last night in sound check at the local TV station, the production crew and host was already singing the song before airtime. It’s always incredible when people you don’t know are singing your words and melodies back at you. Flattering and humbling.

    I look forward to having you singing it back to me at a future show!

  • End Of Summer

    End Of Summer

    We’re quickly coming on the end of summer.

    If the trees are any indication, we’ve already hit fall. If you’re a student, summer has ended as school is back in session. Which means you’re summer romance, the fling of your life has also recently dissipated or is about to dissolve into the ether.

    Enter my new single “Till We Meet Again“, a candid song about those loves we’ve had in life that we hope to rekindle somewhere down the road.

    Till We Meet Again

    The journey of this song is one of several start and stops and finally a go.

    Originally the intent was to write an upbeat tune for a TV show and for a library. I pulled in a bass player friend of mine to co-write it with me. However, there was a bit of miscommunication and he got miffed about the situation, which ended the direction of the song as I had envisioned.

    Next I approached another bass player friend of mine, Jesse Stern, and we started working on the music. As a direction it was still to be a library track, however as we got going with it, lyrics started pouring out. He was going thru some dark stuff and was spitting out darker lyrics. Musically as it was speaking to me it had to be a bit more positive, maybe a little more longing. Suddenly we got a song that embraced all of that along with the sounds we were laying down.

    During the process of the demo we got to a section of the song and were discussing how to change one bar for it’s time signature. We spent a good deal of time trying to work out if we’d stick to the song’s common time signature (which happens to be 4/4), or go with either 7/4, 6/4, or 5/4.

    Multiple different drum fills were tried out. It was a songwriter’s producing exploration into the wild blue yonder until we finally settled on one particular fill in 5/4 that provided such a sly feel to the section of the song that it was as natural as an organic ripe tomato.

    Tracking the occurred in several studios. Namely mine for the acoustic guitars, synths, additional background vocals and drum programming. Yes, those are programmed drums. Jesse’s studio was were the bass was tracked and some additional synths as well. Finally the vocals were tracked at George Leger’s studio (Utopia Parkway Music) when it was located in Los Angeles.

    One moment during tracking stands out to me. At one point George turned around in his producer’s chair to show me his arms. The hair was standing straight up. He says to me, while Jesse is sitting there:

    “This is your Purple Rain. You’re giving me goosebumps.”

    Chances are you don’t know George. He is a massive Prince fan. So much so, that he once took me to see Prince perform when I was down in the dumps going thru some tough shit in life. It was a shining moment. I digress. George was so taken aback by the vocal we were laying down and the quality of the song that he felt it would be my equivalent to Purple Rain. My reaction was “I sure hope you’re right.” Damn right, I’d love to have a song be as popular as Purple Rain. Hell, even half as popular would be ideal.

    Another memorable moment came when George first noticed the bar of 5/4. He asked who the drummer was that recorded the part and who came up with the fill, he thought it was amazing. When I responded with, I programmed it, he thought I did a hell of a job. Very few people notice because of how natural it feels, it doesn’t feel like a bar of 5/4. This prompted a discussion between myself, George and Jesse, mainly because it was George who originally gave me the idea of adding an odd measure in a song.

    After getting all the vocals tracked, George and Jesse also sang some backgrounds. Once back in my studio, I felt I needed some additional voices for the backgrounds, so I enlisted the help of Val and Julia to sing some more parts.

    George and I tackled the mix and eventually George did the mastering (as he’s also a fantastic mastering engineer as well).

    Now it’s finally been released and is ready for your listening pleasure. I hope it gives you goosebumps like it did for George. Cause that would mean you’d tell others they need to hear and playlist it, like you will.

    More music coming soon.

© 1997-2025 ON RECORDS