August ‘23: New Song
“I’m Coming Along”
Prompt: unpacking my baggage
Submission of Member: Brandi A
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If you happen to be following my workdiaries over on Tumblr, you may already know that I'm now starting Day 6 of having no internet. I had to take an extra "shift" last week on Friday (last-minute gig), so I hadn't been able to make any progress on the new Holly Frost tracks since Wednesday. Upon returning home that Friday, hoping to power through some deep work over the weekend, my hopes were immediately dashed when we realized our internet had gone out, for no explicable reason. It's been several days of back-and-forth and playing the waiting game with our service provider, but unfortunately there's been no resolution yet.
SO that means I won't be able to run the Vault stream tonight. I was really hoping I would be able to, but apparently it's not in the cards for today! To make it up to you (and to try to keep pace with my plans as best I can while being without internet), there will be some more content coming your way, likely/hopefully in quick succession.
One sad casualty of the no-internet is that I basically can't run my Pro Tools sessions (where I had been working on the new Holly Frost singles), because so many of my tools are cloud-based. I was despondent for a few days and not sure what to do.
Of course the tracks I've been working on (for "Let's Start Again" and "One Small Thing") grew in scope the more I worked on them (big surprise), and what was supposed to be a quick-and-dirty-release plan became gargantuan. So, while trying to work out what I *could* do while waiting for the internet situation to resolve was go back to the drawing board. I decided on a few more songs I could tackle (using Ableton while I wait for the internet to come back) but do them with less expansive productions. I'm still trying to avoid only-two-track (guitar and vocal) recordings, because I really need to step out of "Alone" territory moving forward. But more tracks make things more involved.
While working on the *new* quick-and-dirty tracks, I went ahead and did an only-two-track version of this month's new song, "I'm Coming Along."
I added a little vinyl effect to it - let me know what you think? Can't decide if I like it or not.
This song is a response to a failed attempt at writing a song the day before, where I went down a dark mental rabbit hole while diving into a One Big Dark Room composition. After being catapulted into a severe rumination session, I managed to pull myself out of it and convince myself to just put the pen and paper away for the day and come back later.
With renewed enthusiasm to just get ANYTHING done, I decided to take a different approach and start from a more upbeat place the following day. Thus, this song came to be. Heavily inspired by songs from the 1910s-1930s like Look for the Silver Lining, Blue Skies, Breezin' Along With the Breeze, Sunny Side of the Street, Smile, and others too numerous to name, I wanted to write something reminiscent of that "Get Happy" message but with a little more specificity to my situation. I like what I came up with! (Judy'd it up for the performance here. A little silly but I can live with it.)
While I'm wary to give you times/dates on whatever is forthcoming because I don't know how the next few days are going to go, I will be delivering (as best I can) the new singles as I finish them up. Normally I'd like to give you these releases way in advance of public release, but since I'm trying to just get some stuff up as Holly Frost catalog items as quickly as possible, that likely won't happen in this case.
All this delay also means I'm not on track for my target name-change-announcement-date of September 1st anymore. I'm so frustrated and tired that I don't even want to set another date... it's more like ASAP at this point. But because I'm a masochist and need a deadline, I'm now shooting for September 8. I'd like to get all of this settled and the two other singles out before the end of September, because it's looking like Seven Songs in Seven Days will be taking place around September 22 (I haven't decided on the specific dates yet because I just haven't had the bandwidth to project-plan that big of a project that far out).
I hope you enjoy the new song and I can't wait to show you the other stuff I've been working on.
THANK YOU for your support here. Thank you for being part of my work. Thank you for listening and reading. Thank you for helping push me forward during weeks like this where continuing on feels daunting, overwhelming, or even futile.
As we finish out another year here at The Vault, I just want to take a moment to express some extra gratitude. Since last September, you've helped me write 14 new songs and release 2 public singles (which will hopefully become 5 to 7 before the month is over!) and there are more partially done that just need a little more time and attention. All of that was able to materialize because of your support and encouragement and belief in me.
THANK YOU.
Cheers to another wondrous year of making art and moving forward,
❤️LL
sent from a computer tethered to my phone’s weak LTE network 😢
With 7 Songs in 7 Days 2023 around the corner, I’ll for sure need some more prompts in the prompt-pile! please submit some here.
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