Thursday, November 18, 2010

The Epic Origin Story!

Howdy, friends! Welcome to the first production blog for Even Death Gets Lonely Sometimes. I hope you'll find this blog informative or entertaining or at the very least not boring and horrible. (Maybe just boring, or just horrible, but hopefully not both.)

So what is Even Death Gets Lonely Sometimes? Read on, dear reader...

The first discussion about this particular project was during a set break at a Pinky Lee show at The Noggin Room in early September 2008. I discussed two ideas for concept albums with Holly. The first was a medical rock opera called Take The Bandages Off. The second seemed to pique her interest a little more, especially when I told her who I wanted to play the titular role. The story of the Grim Reaper, as a woman, gets a vacation every thousand years. However, on this particular vacation, she falls in love. Tentatively called Death Takes A Lover for a brief time, we began discussing what would eventually become Even Death Gets Lonely Sometimes that week, deciding to split up songwriting duties. In no time, she wrote Grim's Vacation.



It was then that I knew we were on to something. I hurriedly wrote Limbo (1,000 Miles) and the race was on. Our first collaboration was The Decision...



On October 12, in the midst of production of Samson & Delilah, our previous album/film, we recorded the full band version of Grim's Vacation with The Vermeers. Several months would pass before we would write more, due to Samson & Delilah taking up most of my creative time, but throughout 2009, we would write whenever we could. October/November of 2009 proved to be a productive time period, with recording sessions being resumed and most of the songs getting laid down on wax. (Or whatever the colloquial term might be.)

We continued to record and write, and eventually in June of this year, like Samson & Delilah before it, I decided to convert the project from a concept album into an animated feature. (Hence this production blog!) The summer was fairly busy with live performances and other things, so I worked on it whenever I could find some free time, which wasn't super often, but luckily, as it always goes in Northern Michigan, everything shuts down after Labor Day, so it was then that I was really able to start getting into it.

So that brings us about to where we are now. I'll get into who did what and who's all involved in this project and plenty of screen shots and other goodies as these blogs go on, but for now, here's the first sneak preview:



Well, that's it for now! I'll probably be back with an update about once a week, so stay tuned!