This week is the last planned of my stay in Hillsdale, Michigan. My time here was originally planned to be spent finishing the recording to several musical projects with Rob Ogden. While some of that was accomplished, the majority of it amounted to me trudging through an ever-swelling avalanche of the worst events I can recall experiencing. This led to the cliche failed escapism of driving long distances to visit environments that seemed more refreshing at the time: California, Arizona, Nevada, New York, Massachusetts and Vermont. I got to battle crows who devoured my food (and starter log) at a camp site, a variety of agitated weather, and my car, which seemed to want to permanently park itself on several occasions, refusing to move on to the next location. Altogether, 2008 is off to one hell of a start, and now Des Moines awaits me once again!

Farewell, Hillsdale!

As summer comes to an end, I’ve been looking back on the massive amount of work that’s been accomplished. This summer has certainly been a musical workfest for me, and I’m very excited about finishing the mixing up on the three projects I’ve been working on. First of all, in June Erik and Rob Ogden went into the recording studio to record about 50 minutes of music for the first full-length Grimfeather album. There’s still a lot to do on that project – recording my bass and keyboard parts, and recording Erik’s vocals – but to have that step forward was nice. Next, Rob and I composed 40 minutes worth of orchestral music for a new project called Make-Believe Machines. We’ve got ten minutes left to create before the album’s complete. We hope to share some of that material with you soon! Then, last week, Rob and I went back into the studio and he recorded drums for about 30 minutes worth of An Umbrella material – totally re-recorded versions of “Vegas Anesthetic Peddler,” “Three-Pronged Fork”, and “Glacier Park”. On top of that, a great artist named Mary Rose completed the first phase of her work on a new piece of interactive artwork for the An Umbrella Web site. In other summer news, I also did a lot of writing and animation work for the first six episodes of a new online comedy series. Yes, we’ve been busy, but our hope that we’ll be able to share this stuff with you all during the latter part of this year. Until then, have a wonderful fall season! I suspect you’ll be hearing from us again shortly!

The familiar image of Joe Richards’ headphone mixer.

I’ve been planning for several months now to return to Iowa to live in Des Moines again, and as Christmas approaches, I intend to put those plans into action(!) In Iowa, I hope to work much more closely with Josh Schryver and Robby Ogden on upcoming musical projects. Also, in January, I am planning on launching a new site for my various news updates. Right now, it’s about halfway complete, so when it’s completely ready, I will post a link here at CardboardCanary.com. I will also hopefully have the Matt Maiellaro interview posted this next week.

Over the past months, I have received several hundreds of thousands of e-mails from people just like you who desperately want to know, “Justin, what are you doing right this second?” Of course, this came not as a suprise, since it has been that way for as long as I’ve been aware that my body was in existence. Indeed, a mere three seconds after my conception, all sorts of charmingly eccentric bacterial creatures began conversing with me, almost instinctively knowing that I was who I was destined to be, which, we all know is who I am now.

Of course, being this person – the man I am now, I felt compelled, as usual, to give my ever-loyal fanbase what they want more than anything – the answer to their never-dying, ever-rephrasable question: “Justin, what the sex are you up to?” Well, my friends, I’ll tell you what the sex I’m up to, and I’m afraid you’re going to love it so much that you might just wind up deleting that MySpace account of yours and hitting your browser’s “Refresh” button on this page for hours on end, just waiting to see what’s next!

To complete the daunting task of appeasing you fellows, I have taken it upon myself to allow three fortunate unpaid interns to dedicate their lives to documenting mine, via any means possible – whether this is by text, music, video, music video, pelicans, or semi-enriched wheat roll shavings. (Please don’t e-mail me regarding this as the lucky winners have already been selected from the ranks of several hundred competitors.)

The first step to bringing you pure Normanized bliss was the creation of a new Web site. Yes, I did play in the multi-platinum sellling, Grammy-Award-nominated Cardboard Canary(.com) band for three years of my life, but let’s face it, my friends. That frail, fluttering fowl, beautiful as it was, breathed its last long ago, and softly landed amongst the nettles where its cardboardian body was slowly devoured by the unkempt jaws of sixty-eight divisions of maggot colonies. It’s gone, my children, and it’s in a better place. Who wouldn’t want to live within the beautifully complex structure of a maggot’s digestive system anyway? I certainly wouldn’t turn down such an opportunity, and neither would the Canary. So, sleep well on that note.

This Web site will now serve as a shimmering jar, into which my interns and I have somehow managed to cram the great galaxy of Normanization in its near-entirety. This is no blog, oh no! Blogs are for people who like to write about their cats. This is a journal, the difference being that I use paragraph format and have a more sophisticated font. (Imitators take note: Make “Georgia” your new default. Women flock to Georgia.)

Just think about it. A galaxy in a jar. That, my friends, is a what I like to call a bad-ass metaphor. Indeed, the ass of that metaphor is so bad, it might even deserve to be elevated to the status of horrible-ass. In fact, I’ve just decided upon it. And the answer is yes. This site is going to be the most horrible-ass creation you’ve ever laid eyes, fingers, and hopefully nothing else upon. So, welcome friends. Take hold of the nearest comet and feel free to scream a bit. It’s going to be an amazing ride.

For those of you who might have wondered why there was a sudden, giant black hole in the line of news posts, this is what’s going on: As I mentioned in an earlier post, a few months ago, I’ve been wanting to leave this Cardboard Canary site behind as a time capsule for the band’s active time together, and move my own project information into a new Web site. It seems appropriate, since Cardboard Canary is very much in my past, and the work I’m doing now is quite different. So, I’ve been working on a pretty simple interface for a new site, along with developing new Grimfeather and non-Grimfeather music. I’m also preparing for a location change within the next few months, which should place me in close proximity to (Grimfeather pianist and ex-Cardboard Canary guitarist) Josh Schryver. We are planning to do a great deal of writing and recording together, and have already put together a few small projects. It sounds like it’s going to be sweeter than a big of six plump wretches in a washing machine when it happens. Also, Wesley and I are working on a photos section for Tracing the Seams. Wesley seems to be a really great photographer (as you might be able to tell from some of the images that are already up on the site), so I think the photos section will be a fantastic thing. This is all mostly to say that a lot of things are in progress right now, and I felt it might be good to poke my head out of the workhouse and get some air. And air induces talking, or writing. And that’s what I’ve just done, sirs and ma’ams. That’s what I’ve just done.

My brother Wesley and I are hard at work this week, hoping to accomplish major progress on a few different projects, including a second video based on a Robyn Miller composition, although this time, drawing from the original Myst soundtrack, rather than Riven, as in Persistent Disparate Interchange. Aside from that, we are finishing up work on the Tracing the Seams Web site, which is a repository of Wesley’s writings and photography. Alongside those two projects, we are both heavily involved in the An Umbrella project, and have been doing a great deal of work in preparation for upcoming content, as an expansion of the current animation/composition, Average Life of a Modern Lemming. Meanwhile, Erik Brown is nearly finished with work on another new song, making for two new musical works since the tour, which the rest of the band will hopefully be writing to shortly. We expect that at least one of these projects will reach completion next week.

Screenshot from Average Life of a Modern Lemming.

The thought of being totally distraught about a pet dying usually seemed a bit comical to me, until, of course, it actually happened to me. The parakeet (known as The Wretch or Mac) who had been with me since around age eleven died early this morning in the palm of my hand. I believe that part of the reason for my horrible reaction to this might be that he was the only living creature that was consistently with me through all of the moving and project changes – Van Meter, Grimes, Ames, Las Vegas, Earlham and many trips between those locations. You can hear him in the very earliest Cardboard Canary recordings, and in some of the recent An Umbrella demos. It was extremely sad and heartbreaking to watch his tiny body stop breathing. The spritely, oddly kind-spirited little fellow lived for about eleven and a half years. Strange as it may seem, I will miss him dearly. Watch a video of his head-bobbing antics here.

The wretch perches atop one of his favorite objects: a black-clad microphone stand.

I don’t usually recommend a whole lot of stuff on this site, but I figured since the focus of this Web site has moved from purely music to music/video/Web design, this deserves to be mentioned. An excellent tool that I have used to find many of the programs that I use regularly in my design tasks is a Web site called MacUpdate (www.macupdate.com). If you’re a designer, or just a regular Mac user, I suggest going there and searching around for any sort of program you’ve been looking for. From basic maintence tools like Onyx, to Web design applications like xScope and Transmit, there’s some very useful stuff to be found.

My apologies for the month of no news. “Prometaphor” is finished, though without the drums I had mentioned last month. You can hear it first by going to the Shrieking Tree Web site and clicking on “Grimfeather” under the Portfolio section. Due to technical difficulties and time constraints, Matt was unable to complete the tracks. We are hoping to work with him in a couple of months, but for the time being, Erik and I are working on completing a few more songs and attempting to schedule tour dates. As all this is happening, I’m also working on animating various paintings and illustrations for the Snailhuntr Web site, which should be done next month (you can view a screenshot and hear some music at the Shrieking Tree Web site). In addition, the new version of “Vegas Anesthetic Peddler” is about a week away from being complete, and will probably be made available on the An Umbrella Web site when finished. That’s all for now, but since the holiday-related chaos is over, I will try to post more frequently.

The layout for the Snailhuntr site, using illustrations by Matthew Depper.

I just returned from my journey to Iowa yesterday, and it was really wonderful. I got to spend a lot of time with my dad and grandparents, which was quite neat. In addition, I was also able to record a demo of a new Elmo song, as well as the first new one from Battle Hymns guitarist/vocalist Jason Staniger in about two years, called “Fruit of Thy Womb.” I may also be joining Jason for a week in the spring of 2006 to record more songs in different states with a few other musicians. Meanwhile, Erik and I are contemplating a Grimfeather tour in the summer, after the album’s completion. Lots of neat things are happening, and a bunch of interesting new music is pouring out from some of my close companions.