12/01/2023
Welp... it's Bandcamp Friday.. and here I am, limping in late with a Bandcamp release of my 2011 solo project. (See link in comments.)
Big Lake was a project I dreamed up in 2010. After furious writing sessions, I culled the songs to five and recorded this EP, mostly by myself in a cobbled-together home recording studio I built, literally spending every dime I had in doing so. It was a joyous experience, sandwiched by a grief that inspired it (more on that, below).
Since this project, I started Overlake with Tom Barrett (Overlake being a portmanteau of our two solo projects, not realizing there was a city near Seattle called Overlake). These days I’m involved with Aeon Station, Gramercy Arms, The Goddess Party, and my and Nick D’Amore’s project: Silence on the Other End, but the pull to flesh out and record more Big Lake remains ever-present.
A few years ago, I had the grand idea of re-recording this record, along with a bunch of new tunes I had written, for a ten-year anniversary release. Then COVID hit. And well, we all know what happened. I lost my mojo and my excitement along with it. As the last couple of years dragged on, and with a ten-year anniversary release fading deep into my memory, Nick had another idea to release this on Bandcamp so it lives at least *somewhere*! And so, he asked me to write up a little blurb for it. That was almost a year ago. I guess I kept putting this off because of that old jag about fear and letting things go, etc, etc.
Well, f*ck it. Here it is. I hope you enjoy it. Stream it, buy it, if you like CDs, you can get one of those too! They were all the rage in 2011, apparently. I even have glow-in-the-dark t-shirts. If you like that sort of thing.
I had a whole press release for this back when it came out in November of 2011, but I think this letter from 2014 to my friend Josh describes the intention of this well. If I do ever get around to re-recording everything and adding to this record in some way, I’ll give it the five-star treatment with press releases and all that stuff. For now, here’s the letter.
"Dear Josh,
I got your FB message... thank you so much. It's weird to hear someone talk about that record after so long. I still can't listen to it, but thank you so much for all your comments. To answer some questions.. You are right about the mood.. this record has been in me for a long time, but was truly instigated by my childhood friend's death. He taught me all about King Crimson and The Who and punk rock and played a BC Rich guitar. I was in my first rock band with him in high school. We went to the same college. We lost touch after that, but I knew he moved back up into the area, to PA, and was really depressed. This was only
a few years ago. I reached out to him on FB and asked if he wanted to visit JC... he said he'd love to.. he was going through a really hard situation.. but I never followed through.. and the next thing I heard, he was dead. I felt like I lost something huge. Not just him, but a part of my past.
The name Big Lake comes from the lake where I grew up, where WE grew up.. the songs are abstract pieces of my past, of growing up in a sleepy town.. and knowing that you can never get it back (and the pain that goes with it), the smallness, the innocence."
