Jody Whitesides

Category: News

Ties Are Truly Bound – New Mix, Story, and Fan Connection

It’s gonna be an exciting week. Yesterday kicked it off with some audio sample work that I’ve been helping a company with. New shirt designs were created and uploaded to the store for the next several releases. The real bright light was the email software for my Jody Army finally got to a running state! More good things are afoot.

Yes, my production skills are coming in handy to help out some friends with a new VI (for those who don’t know, a VI is a virtual instrument). There’s a lot of things going on with this new instrument and I’m not at liberty to say what it is. There will be more from me on it, when I’m allowed to speak on it.

As the parade of releases continues, there are several new t-shirts that were added to the store in the last 24 hours. Particularly for this week’s release, Ties Are Truly Bound. I’ve opted to run 2 different versions. One is of the cover art, because it looks cool. The other is for lyrics, because we as a people, a country, a world, need to come back together as a species.

If you want to find a discount on something prior to release and during the first week release, it’s at the store and you can find it with a little digging.

My day/evening got kinda exciting yesterday when a project I’ve been working on for the Jody Army finally started standing up. It’s on about 2.5 legs, so it’s not public facing and it’s still a little wobbly in terms of what it’s doing. However, it is running and I’m in process of getting it set up. The initial test runs have worked and that has me fairly giddy.

Crazy that an email system is something a musician can get giddy over. As I’ve mentioned previously, this is a giant step in a long-view direction that I’ve been working toward. The Jody Army will not be housed on a 3rd party server. This is a major thing for me as I’m someone who values my personal information being only for those who I want to give it to and not being spied on.

I should have it ready to rock n roll with new features within a week. Or at least sending emails within the week. The really cool features are likely to take me another week or two. It will allow me to create a member’s only section to the website. I’ll also be able to connect with your streaming service of choice to do some really nifty things. Cutting edge stuff for you and I.

Not just boring email updates like everyone else.

I have the feeling it will be pretty darn epic. And as someone who likes to push boundaries in a good way, it’s gonna be something I will want to share far and wide. Much like the upcoming release on Friday – Ties Are Truly Bound. The updated mix and master sounds great!

2025-09-30
With You Release – An Amazing Remix of Creativity and Sound

The late nights never seem so bad. Suddenly I’m having late nights again and it’s not exactly by choice. It’s a drive that has lit back up and there’s a vibe of forward movement that has been missing for about 3 years. And it’s a journey that I’m on …With You.

As I’m getting the technical side of things to finally settle down a little bit, it’s always hard when a little problem rears up with it. Last night was just such a thing. Then again this morning it had another mishap, that has since taken care of itself. It’s causing me to look into another bit of gear to hopefully solve the issue.

There’s a new fire under my feet with all this tech improvement. It’s getting the musical juices going as well. This week I’ll be finishing up a version of a wedding song for a friend, where I’m doing the music and my friend Claude J Woods of Earth, Wind and Fire is doing the vocals (I may sing on it as well). It’s for a private affair and I’m happy to see it come together.

There’s another slight change that you’re not likely to notice, so I’ll point it out. If you’re new to my musical world, and you want to sign up for my email list – you currently are unable to. I’m hoping to have that rectified by next week. I’ve dumped the 3rd party list server that I was using. It’s become long in the tooth, isn’t worth the money it’s costing and won’t be able to do some of the things I’m working on, to make it more enjoyable for you.

I’ll keep it at that until I have it up and running.

This week will see the release of …With You. A song that is a real amalgam of things. Different time signatures, different arrangement value and almost a backward feel to the type of music that was going on when the album originally came out. Now it feels more at home in today’s musical landscape.

I’m happier with this mix due to some of the effects that are now available that I didn’t have in the late 90s. Yeah, it’s that old. It’s not rerecorded, just remixed and remastered.

Remember I’m on this journey …With You and I want you to feel included. Thus, if you’re not already part of the Jody Army, do return to my domain in the next two weeks and join the ranks. Your data will only be between you and I and I have another trick coming up that sleeve that will make being a part of the army very worth while.

Until next week, remember to keep you ear to the grindstone, and float along in the Breezes.

2025-09-23
Breezes: Behind the Scenes of a New Instrumental Remix Release

You’ll notice a skip if you go back to the last post and this post. If you’ve been following things for the last several months, then you may have also noticed something that hasn’t been seen on my domain for decades. Beyond that, other BTS improvements are getting made. Oh, and there will be newly remixed music this week called Breezes.

The simple thing about last week is, it wasn’t a breeze. On September 5th a very unfortunate thing happened to the server. It created a situation that lead to the server essentially going down. I claim some of that issue as “my bad” for not knowing the best way to alleviate the problem.

Chalk it up to a lack of experience with the situation. Pure and simple. The fortunate thing is, I did not lose any data which was my biggest fear. I probably have over 15 years or more of blog posts that I thought would be gone. The rest of it is easy to rebuild if ever there was such a loss.

Sadly it took a week to get my email server and website back up with a lot of careful step to make sure the data did not get lost. But it did mean that my website was down and sadly I had no means to write an update. C’est la vie.

The great thing, I’ve added another machine into the situation. Plus I’ve ordered more power supplies to make sure each machine will have it’s best processing ability at all times.

Along with that there should be another nice announcement for next week’s post. But I’m not quite there yet.

This week it’s a journey into doing a new version of a song a friend of mine wrote for people who are getting married. She’s got a friend who is getting married in a few weeks and he is heavily into Earth, Wind and Fire. So I’ve been hired to re-record the song in the style of Earth, Wind and Fire. Easy enough.

But the linchpin to this is that a friend of mine who I’ve written a few cool songs with, happens to be one of the current singers for Earth, Wind and Fire and he’s agreed to sing it. Which put her over the moon.

In the mean time, as my week progresses this week’s release is called Breezes. It’s an instrumental song. It features some massive stretches for chord shapes and a whole lot of intertwining guitar lines that feel like they are set off in the wind. Including a middle section that is reminiscent of a storm. The drums definitely have a very airy quality with all the amazing hi-hat and cymbal work. It’s all in there.

Stay tuned, there’s more to come.

2025-09-16

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