Wednesday, January 1, 2014

A Look at 2013


According to my last blog post date, this was quite a busy year!

Jeremy Messersmith returned to the Library with Producer, Andy Thompson to record his newest album, "Heart Murmurs" set to be released on February 4th on Glassnote Records (Mumford and Sons, Phoenix, Chvrches). Jeremy also came in as a guest vocalist on the next two albums I will be mentioning as well...

John Mark Nelson wanted to take a new approach to recording his new record. Instead of tracking everything himself in his basement with a single microphone, he came to the Library and asked me to co-produce. The album is set to be released in the spring of 2014.

Greycoats released our full album "World of Tomorrow" in January of 2013 and have had several videos released and featured on various news websites and blogs.

Jourdan Myers is a talented young artist who came to the Library with hopes of finding her artistic self on her newest release. "Ruin Me With Love" is also slated to be released this spring.

The Minnesota Beatle Project, though sadly in it's last year, had two songs from the Library; Greycoats did our version of Nowhere Man and 2013 Grammy Award winning group The Okee Dokee Bros. came in and tracked "Mother Nature's Son" along with Jake Armerding on mandolin and fiddle and myself on upright bass.

Personally, I have a real love for improvised music. Whether it is jazz, ambient, avant-garde or some mixture of them all. My long-time band Put Down the Muffin decided, after an eight-year hiatus, to get back into the studio to finish an album we started years ago. To be released in the spring/early summer. A new project that happened seemingly out of nowhere is a group called Mass and is comprised of Steve Good (drummer for Sara Bareilles), Jasper Nephew (electric guitarist for Owl City) and myself on bass, Fender Rhodes, samples and turntable. In two days we captured a full album of mostly improvised music. It has been sitting in the wings just waiting to be mixed. Whenever it is released this year, we will all be very excited.

This year also marks two new faces to the Library. Brendan Jensen is my newest assistant and local producer/engineer Levi Stugelmeyer has moved out of his studio "Cat Mansion" and into the Library, a room more affectionately known as "The Reading Room." 

Here are some other folks who chose to record at the Library this year…

Ashleigh Still
Tides of Winter
Jonathan Rundman
Sarah Monson
Spirit Garage
Trish Bruxvoort Colligan
Jason Harms Quartet
The Poor Nobody's
Josh Cleveland
Cold Fusion Sax Quartet
Sara Groves
Derek Harlow
Melody Olson
Clementine
Tyler Tholl
Russ Young
Brian Bates