Jody Whitesides

Tag: Independent Music Journey

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
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
The Dropping of Politics: Music, Tech Recovery, and Personal Growth

Digital dilemma and a rare double sighting. Learning about the man, the myth, the legend, Wyatt Earp and eating a very gourmet dinner from Gordon Ramsey. Prepping the drop of Politics. It’s been a wild weekend in more ways than one.

Starting with last Friday night, there was an insane amount of traffic that I have not seen the likes of in quite some time. Certainly not in the previous 7 months. A drive that normally takes an hour, took 2 hours. Ouch.

Dinner

Immediate turnaround to a sushi dinner after all that traffic. Nothing puts a smile on my face like a good sushi dinner along with sake and Sapporo. This particular place loves when my girlfriend and I show up. Mainly because we probably one of the few clients that will drink alcohol with a meal.

They’re so nice to us, they give us free dessert. Along with calling us by name when we arrive. It’s a bit like being Norm when he enters Cheers. Don’t ask me to out the place as they’re already busy all the time.

Digital Meltdown

After dinner I found that my phone wasn’t operating properly. Pick up my iPad, same story. Open my laptop, same story. Uh oh. Cluster has suddenly had a major problem. No clue as to what caused it. That leads to a multi-hour rush to fix things.

Thus if you tripped by my website it was unfortunately down from sometime Friday evening thru Saturday afternoon. Nothing trivial.

Despite that meltdown, it’s obviously back, and fortunately it’s working better than it was prior to the meltdown. As I’m writing this, I’ve finished something of a goal that I set for myself to achieve. I’m now one step away from that.

Musical Things

Coming later this week is the release of Politics. The animated cover art for Apple Music is up. The lovely items that coincide with it are ready and will go active on Friday of this week. This week should also find me getting almost all the way scheduled out with the rest of the album. At least until the first week of December.

The plan for December is to switch gears and make sure I’m helping everyone get into the Holiday Spirit!

End of the Holiday

As Americans may know this past weekend was a holiday weekend known as Labor Day. For me there wasn’t much for traffic and people. Kept things mellow (other than the meltdown) with making a lovely Lamb over Crushed Peas – via a recipe from Gordon Ramsey. Tasty, very tasty.

We took a road trip yesterday. It’s something I like to do from time to time. Pick a random spot on the map and drive there. It’s an incredible way to explore the relatively near world around you and learn more about your state. On our way back I was nearly rear-ended by a truck while I was slowing down on a 2-lane road.

I was attempting to avoid a car that was making a right-hand turn. In the rearview mirror came the grill of what appeared to be a large ass RAM or F-350. After passing the car turning, the truck slowed down a bit and backed off.

less than 2 minutes later a Range Rover came barreling past me, via passing two cars behind the truck, the truck, and myself all in one fell swoop. The truck immediately decided to pass me as well and as he’s positioning back to the right side of the road – his flashing red/blue lights lit up. No alarm, just lights.

Turns out that truck was some undercover UHP or something. Pulled the Range Rover over. I’m happy he didn’t rear-end me.

Heading Home

On the way home, I was fortune to not get caught in traffic. The opposite side of the canyon was backed up farther than I’ve ever seen. Easily 2+ miles for its 2 lanes. Then again coming out of the next town, backed up for roughly 1.5 miles.

Rested, relaxed, and ready. That’s how the rest of this week is going. More music is coming your way.

2025-09-02

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