NEW RECORD!!!

Colin is driving down to Nashville from Columbus as I type this. We have rehearsal tonight and tomorrow (Sunday) and then at 10am central standard time on Monday, Dec. 12 we will begin working on a new House of Heroes full length record! Needless to say, we are all really REALLY excited! I’m going to try my best to keep this thing updated on a daily basis with pictures, videos and other posts throughout the process.

We’re doing things a little different this time around. After two awesome experiences with Mark Lee Townsend, and after much deliberation and conversation we have decided to go with Paul Moak as producer this time around. He’s worked with such killer artists as Seabird, Lovedrug, Mat Kearney and tons more. We really like his approach to making records and his studio is second to none! Check out http://www.paulmoakmusic.com if you want some photos and other info. We loved working with Mark and I’m positive that we’ll work with him again someday. The feeling was just that we wanted to push ourselves and try something different this time and we connected on a pretty high and instantaneous level with Paul from the first day that we met.

Another thing that is a bit different for us is that we’re going to cram all of the recording into a hectic 15 days. Throw in the fact that we’ll have to get Christmas shopping done as well and we’re looking at some serious pressure! We all LOVE the pressure though and we really feel this will give us the best results. It’s already pushed us to be prepared in a way that we never thought possible. We wrote a LOT of songs for this album. So many in fact that we started breaking them into 2 albums, and I can’t speak for the other guys, but I’ve already started mapping out a 3rd album with a lot of the songs that we’re not using this time around. At last count we have 21 completed songs, and another 15 or so that are skeleton ideas we haven’t quite worked out yet. At first this was overwhelming since we’re only going to record 12 songs. There was this bizarre pressure to make sure we were recording the best 12 songs that we had and it seemed like it would be impossible to choose. But, when we adopted the idea of sort of thinking out 2 records at the same time, it became a much more peaceful process. Sort of like, “OK, we’ll put this song here and we’ll save this song that we really love for the next album.” If you’re a fan of the band, that should be GREAT news! You’re not going to have to wait forever to hear even more new music after this album is all done!!!

Creating an album is one of the most rewarding things musicians do. It is a fun, exciting process, but it’s also a crazy emotional roller coaster. Opinions change daily, even hourly on parts and sounds. At one moment, you are creating a masterpiece that will forever stand the test of time as one of the greatest moments in recorded musical history. And at another moment, what you previously believed to be THAT great has become the epitome of all things horrible. You want to burn the tape (or hard drive) that captured such heinous sounds of pure suck. Such is the inner turmoil of the artist (I hate that term for musicians by the way. Artist. Give me a break. We make pop/rock music. It’s been done a million times before. Mini rant done). We spend so much time imagining greatness. Dreaming. Envisioning. Tearing down just to build back up bigger and better. We put pen to paper in moments of pure inspiration and belief and then write it off as completely uninspired crap in later moments of self loathing disbelief. Today, I believe in these songs and in this band and this project we’re going to begin in a way that I haven’t in a long time. Tomorrow, that might be a different story entirely and I’ll try to be open and honest with you guys and take you through that process.

There is a brilliant TEDtalks that my lovely girlfriend turned me on to several months ago about creativity and inspiration and I’ve drawn a lot of goodness from it. If you get a minute, here’s the link for the 20 minute talk:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html

Basically, Elizabeth Gilbert talks about the tortured artist and how a lot of times artists become so tortured that they go insane or hurt themselves or even kill themselves. She talks about how it’s healthy to share your success or failures with an outside force both in the creative process and in the aftermath of what you’ve created. I’m not sure what her thoughts are on Christianity, but as a person of faith I identified with this profoundly! To me, she is talking about the Holy Spirit. The living spirit of God that I’ve seen with my own eyes at work in my life and in the lives of others. The thought of shouldering the load with the Holy Spirit and asking for inspiration to create powerful, meaningful, “profound on a level that we don’t even know about” music has been a great part of this process. It has eased the torture of the creative process and it has filled us with creativity for days! I can’t wait to share with you all what we’ve come up with!

Hopefully this is a fun ride for all of us! Keep checking back here and feel free to keep us accountable to keep you guys updated :) Much love to you all. You are an inspiration to us to keep going on this adventure and we hope to inspire you right back with some killer jams!

-Tim