Jody Whitesides

Tag: independent musician journey

  • How Technology Transformed the Making of ‘Beside the Lies’

    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.

  • Making a professional go of Music in Los Angeles

    How did I manage to live with a famous singer in Los Angeles? A question I tend to get when people find out one of my good friends and former roommate is Jeff Scott Soto.

    Getting disappointed living in Boulder Colorado after graduating from music school, I was looking around for places to go. Two things happened. First, I was still friends with a musician named Julie whom I met at school and we would chat on occasion about music and life. Second, I got an offer from a guy who had a teaching situation that he was wanting to give up in Los Angeles.

    Item two gave me a good reason to get out of Boulder. Another reason of wanting to leave was I was having a difficult time finding players that were into the music I was into and had a strong sense of musicality. I didn’t fit in there. Despite loving the area.

    Back to item one. At the same time Julie and her boyfriend were living in Florida and wanting to move to LA. I had briefly met her boyfriend the winter before at NAMM and again a few months later in New York. Anyway, he was from LA and she knew the area fairly well.

    The plan was for me to meet up with Julie in LA to have help looking for a place to live. Timing wise, she flew out and I drove down. For several days we’d go tooling around the Burbank & San Fernando Valley area looking at various apartments. Mainly for her and Jeff, and by proxy, I might get lucky and get an apartment in the same building to have a couple of friends nearby.

    There was one moment of frustration when we were driving south on Laurel Canyon. We were coming up on an apartment complex she wanted to check out, but traffic was rough and she got a tad demanding. I ended up turning too sharp to get into a parking spot and popped my front passenger tire on the curb. FUCK!

    There’s a whole story behind the adventure of getting the tired replaced. Maybe it will appear in a book about my life.

    The apartment complex where I popped my tire ended up being a bust as well.

    A day later Julie finds a condo in Burbank. We go check it out. She totally digs it, but the price was beyond what her and Jeff could afford. Jeff at the time was in a u-haul driving across the US with their belongings and was going completely on her word about the place.

    She’s so enamored with the condo that talk comes up of asking me to be a roommate. I liked the location and the condo as well. I decided I’d be willing to split the rent 3 ways and live with them. Jeff arrived a day or two later. We signed the lease and moved into the condo overlooking Burbank and the entire valley.

    It was weird being the youngest tenants in what seemed like a retirement neighborhood. It was quiet, it was safe, and we all got along.

    That’s how I ended up being roommates with Jeff. The rest as the saying goes, is history.

  • Jellyfish, Guitars, and a Compliment I’ll Never Forget

    Based on my upbringing, I’ve never been one to freak out over meeting someone with any kind of celebrity status. Gotta thank my parents and their friends for that. Cause they had some super famous friends and to my sister and I, they were just people.

    When I first started living in LA, I was living with a singer that fans of the metal genre would worship. To me, he was Jeff. So yeah, I don’t really freak out. Jeff turned me on to a band called Jellyfish in a big way. He wasn’t the first to get me to listen to them, but he was the first to really insist that I pay attention to their music.

    That’s how I became aware of a musician by the name of Eric Dover. Eric was a guitar player and background vocalist for some of Jellyfish’s tours. Any student of the Jellyfish knows you had to be a monster musician to be in that band.

    There are stories of Eric going home from Jellyfish rehearsals in tears because they were so hard on him.

    After Jellyfish, Eric went on to front Slash’s Snake Pit for a while. Fronted Imperial Drag and a band called Sextus. I admire Eric for his voice, and his tenacity. There’s a quality to his musicianship that I really think is special.

    There’s the preamble…

    My first gig as a solo artist in LA was at a place called The Gig. Located on Melrose Ave. Don’t bother looking it up, it’s closed down now.

    The Gig was a super nice club. Good atmosphere and the people booking it were actually nice. The woman that booked me there liked me enough to give me a decent slot on a Friday night for my first chance. Which isn’t how it normally worked in LA.

    My band had the second soundcheck as we were the second to last band on the bill, soundchecks always run reverse order of the lineup. Or at least they usually do. Anyway, we were in the process of loading our gear in and about to be called up to the stage when this guy walks by me, and I think to myself – damn he looks an awful lot like Eric Dover.

    “Eric!” I say.

    The guy stops and turns around.

    “You’re Eric Dover!” I blurt out.

    He got a look of being flattered that someone would recognize him and suddenly we’re chatting and geeking out about guitars and music. It was really cool to meet someone who’s musical talent I really respected and he was super cool.

    As it happened, his band was the headliner for the night. They had just finished soundcheck and were leaving.

    My band and I were getting shuffled on to the stage to do our soundcheck. We got setup, all set to play. The sound guy is dialing things in when all of a sudden thru the monitors we hear, hold up. Looking over to the sound guy he’s scratching his head and says “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but… Both of you guitar players can turn up!”

    So Chris and I turn up and we finish the sound check.

    As I’m getting off the stage Eric comes over to me and tells me how much he liked what he heard. I thanked him for sticking around cause in reality he didn’t have to do that. Usually the headliner takes off and goes to relax somewhere else before they come back for the show.

    Inside I was jumping up and down in excitement that a musical hero of mine listened, enjoyed and complimented me. That really made my day. The gig itself was icing on the cake.

    What an introduction to my solo career.

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