Saturday, February 09, 2008

Be a Record Producer

I've been taking guitar lessons for about 8 months now. I suck at it still, but I enjoy it. Nick is a great instructor and does a lot by ear and encourages you to bring in music you're interested in to motivate your effort. So I've been going back through my music collection looking for songs that have relatively simple, easily heard guitar parts that I can learn. It is fun to play along with a song.

My latest effort is the Jill Sobule song called "Somewhere In New Mexico." It's a song about an agnostic girl that wants to change her life around. It's kind of funny and dark at the same time. I have a ways to go before getting it down. Dianne has heard the song about a 1000 times in the last month.

While looking around for guitar tabs and videos of the song, I ran across Jill's effort associated with her latest CD project. You can read about her next project on the aptly named site Jill's Next Record. Instead of working through a record label, she is making a grass roots effort to raise money through her fans. There are various donation levels and each one has something associated with it. For $25 you get an advanced copy of the CD. For $5000 she'll come and do a house concert for you. Can we get a group of 100 fans to each kick $50 in and have her come to Cincinnati for a private show? :^) You can hear her talk a little about it, and hear a little ditty about Super Tuesday voting, on the NPR site here. Click on Listen Now near the top of the screen or watch the video to hear and see her play the song.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Somewhere in New Mexico" may be the most beautiful song in the English language. Perhaps only the Beach boys' "Warmth of the Sun" or the Beatles' "For No One" come close. And yes, the way in which it keeps switch from very funny to heartbreaking is amazing.

I mentioned this to Jill and she was kind enough to post an mp3 of the song and a drawing to go along with the it on her blog. Link below.


http://new.music.yahoo.com/blogs/jill_sobule/267/somewhere-in-new-mexicosong-of-longing-faith-and-lack-of-it

Earl said...

Vincent -- thanks for the comment and for the link. I didn't realize Jill had a blog.

flojobros said...

did you find the guitar tabs? I been looking for it, if you have them could you share it please.

Earl said...

Haven't found anything.