New Single and Album Announcement

Hello earth. Today was a good day to put out a single. Some BirdsReturn. It’s a collaboration with author Courtney Jensen to accompany his next book in his fantasy series. His first book, The Crown and the Caged God is out now available on Amazon or Bonstanbooks.com. This song takes place in a medieval type world, sung in a tavern after mourning the loss of a desolated city. I promise it sounds much more cheerful than that description. We tried to emulate what happens with oral traditions overs generations, where words often get changed or misinterpreted. So we passed the song around a few times between each other without truly seeing the written original lyrics. Courtney is a great writer and I promises the book is not your average fantasy novel. So please check out all he is up to at CourtneyJensen.com and his youtube channel.

I also wanted to announce my next album, Extraterrestrial Wet Dream which should be out before the year’s end. It’s a funk/soul/disco/jazz album. I know... a total left turn from the previous album. But this it the point of these albums. To try new things. The inspiration started from late night jams with my punk band’s (Born Shit Stirrers) founding member Paul Blair on bass

Special guest will all be announced soon, but so far we have, Trevor Brown on drums of People of the Abyss. Our first album together with him on drums in16 years, since our time together in the hip hop band Lost History. Also long time collaborator Jan Bart Leeuw adding keys and samples and Melisa Delgado on viola.

I hope you enjoy these releases. We all put a lot of work into them.

Love, Lum

 

 

The Crown and the Caged God

 

An almost lifelong friend of mine has been writing a fantasy book for nearly a decade, and now part one of book one has been unleashed upon the world.  The Crown and the Caged God.  Years ago I was asked to help paint the world maps that correspond with these books.  That art will be in coming books.  However the writer, Courtney Jensen is a fantastic artist as well.  He spent a lot of time on not just all aspects of the art by hand, but the page layout and every small detail in the world he's tried to create.  While my copy of the book is still on it's way to me, I can promise the writing I have read from it is great. There will be future installments of the story, so you can get started with book one part one here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0991314514

 Seems art and humanity are values being questioned these days because of new technology.  This was 100% human made.  This is a subject the author talks about from time to time on his youtube channel. Which usually has various weekly short journal subjects.  Ranging from topics around writing, art, society and even old video games which can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/@courtneyjensen

End of broadcast for the day!

Enjoy

 

New Slicks Vinyl Ep I Recorded and Mixed

 

So I've recently been more comfortable calling myself a recording engineer and mixer.  I recently got some work via England to record a local band, the Slicks, all the way here in Fukuoka (although the members are spread out across Japan now).  Funny enough, when I told other musicians around town that I was recording the Slicks, everyone said, "I used to listen to them in high school!" So unbeknownst  to dumb me, I was in a cool opportunity to record an influential band.  The Vinyl Ep is out now on Private Scandal and put out by Connor Dobson here:https://privatescandal.bigcartel.com/product/slicks The band sounds great even if they hadn't played in many years together.  They didn't miss a beat.  Very 70's punk sounding.

Telecaster Mods to Make Them More Playable

The Telecaster. What some would call simple perfection or a blue collar working man’s guitar is a 74 year old design. While there have been many other iterations of it, the original standard modal has had very few changes to the design by the original company who launched it, Fender. As great as the guitar is, there are 3 major design flaws that really effect it’s playing ability and should have been modified on standards off the factory line many years ago. As much as I would like to blame “boomers” or the stubborn allergenic-to-change guitar community, truth is, most of us just want to emulate our heroes who owned the same old guitars with their flawed designs. So Fender keeps making them the same way. The good news is we can mod these changes fairly cheaply and easily. Here are three mods that should be standard on Teles to make them more playable. 

 

1. Replacing the Jack Plug Dish Thingy

Worst ever.

Seriously. What the hell is this thing? It doesn’t appear on any other guitar in the world for good reason. They should stop being made. You can’t fit right angled jacks into it securely. It comes loose quickly, and it’s a pain to tighten it back up. The whole thing is holding on to a janky piece of metal wedged into the body. Just toss this thing and buy a screw mounted cup type plug mount. You’ll never worry about it again.

 

 

 

2. Intonating the Three Saddle Bridge.

While some newer models have the 6 saddle, fully intonatable bridges, the old style bridges are made for 3 saddles. Each sharing two strings and usually at a flat angle. This makes the higher positions on the guitar neck become out of tune. I know some people say this is part of the charm of a Tele, but I’d rather play in tune. No one listens to a record and hears an out of tune guitar and says, “gee, what a great Tele.” You can buy compensated angled saddles out of a variety of materials. They’re usually spot on with a little adjusting.

 

 

3. Angling the Selector Switch like a Stratocaster

This won’t bug everyone, but if you switch pickups in the middle of a song then the Tele will have you fumbling around trying. There is a reason the Stratocaster has an angled pickup selector switch. You can use it on the fly much quicker and easily. There are replacement control plates which do this plus moving the volume knob back a bit to allow for quick switching.

24 years of corrosion under the old plate

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Runner ups.

The neck pickup. I tried for years to like them. Tried many types of traditional styles. I don’t like them. Personally I think replacing them with anything is an improvement.

Top load strings on the bridge. You can bend the strings better and it seems to be less bright then the through body string option.

In Series wiring for the middle position.  Despite playing a lot of funk, I hardy ever used the stock parallel wiring.

Until next time space cadets