Welcome to Torch Bearer #3, Album #2

Torch Bearer #3 is the Second Album recorded on Stoney Lonesome Farm in Gainesville Virginia. Here's something odd- the first album- Babylon Outpost, has not yet been recorded!!! So why Torch Bearer #3 now? Good question!

The creative process, with my music, has been one without pressure. Family, friends, cats all see the classical guitars around the farm house, the drumset, a few mics, but mostly the music is a low-key effort-perhaps I'm squeezing in a few licks here and there, a rhythm just before harvest, or a batch of lyrics on a winter day. Over the years, I have felt that all of this has amounted to keeping the pilot light on for music in my life. Making music. Expressing myself, and reminding myself what a blessing and gift music is, to create something that lifts us up, just by resonance.

So a few weeks ago I finally sat down with pad and pen, just brainstorming on how the songs that I have composed over the past several years might channel themselves into albums, and I was surprised to find that they fit nicely into four albums, one through four. The first album has some of my most recent material, because I really want to record it! Also some of my favorite older songs, those composed in the couple years after college when I let the percussion sit on the backburner a bit in favor of the classical guitar. The voice, my shy voice, was coaxed out by friends and family, but that's another story...but all this is to say that there's a body of work to harvest here, the songs and music of a small farmer in Virginia, songs crafted in attics, basements, fields and beaches, and I feel that the time is now to forward on the recording, performing, and sharing process, a new era for this music, and my life.

I am glad to have been patient with the music. There is no rush, nothing I need to extract from the creative process. More an inner urge to move this music from my head and into the hands of my friends and good people all around. We need more music! Good music! Music that helps us endure the travails of life and carry on with our work and our contributions to our communities!

So I started the blog Babylon Outpost because I knew that my first album will be Babylon Outpost, which I feel identifies the Stoney Lonesome Farm music sound and the reality of a small farm surrounded by waste-land sprawl, and I hoped that the Babylon Outpost blog could be a platform for many things, but then realized that my blogging itself just won't find time to happen unless it is specifically concentrated on the music process- that talking about the music process is the purpose and foundation of these blogs. That blogs on the creation and recording of my music (for each album a blog!) will in turn express my wider thoughts on farm life and the challenges we face....but most important, the blog would enhance your enjoyment of my music, and so now here we are with Torch Bearer Number Three, a second album to follow the first which has not been recorded yet!

Here's the plan. I am going to record the four albums this Winter & Spring, 2008. I just want to lay out the songs, refine them a bit for my own head, and get something down to listen to with buckets of compost in the back of the truck (1994 Toyota sr5, left speaker not working but great engine, only 88,000 miles, very kind purchase from a moving neighbor). Just good solid recordings of the songs. Yamaha Mini Disc 8 Track recorder, some good mics, right in the piano room, a little percussion perhaps. Just get these songs onto some discs!

From there, many possible roads, but I envision each of these albums as sets, that can be re-recorded with different arrangements, different friends, different ensembles- different Versions. I believe these songs lend themselves to diversity, and multiple approaches.

It is my hope that this music brings joy and happiness to others, that strengthens the fire within others to do what they do best in this life.

Time to record and share my Music.

In strength,

Pablo