All Photos by Siouxise Romack EVC Photographer.
I headed back to Congress House studio after a good decade and after some hard times this year in music, I Thought I'd Journal this new album the best I could.
follow me @ezravan

The Devils Highway, also known as 35 leading out of Austin.

It came to the end of a long night on day two at congress house studio in Austin. I was exhausted. Though I wanted to stay at the studio again over night and play with the toys; I wanted worse to wake up at my house in dallas and see my wife for morning coffee. So about 11pm I started heading out for a trip back to Dallas. It's now 4am and I just walked in the door here at the Dallas house a few minutes ago. If you've done the Austin to Dallas route often, you'll know every once in awhile (well actually, more often) you might be in a complete stop on the highway with no idea of wether to just go to sleep in your car, or start a highway party, or if it will clear in an hour or so.

I've been in a few Austin bottle necks that were a good three-four hours of just sitting on top of my car talking with other drivers.. on the fucking highway! It's crazy. Tonight was a good hour and a half of crawling about 1 mile. So it was a five hour trip for a 3 hour trip and the last 40 minutes took 3 hours 'in my head' cause I was about to start nodding off. I stopped and had a sugar binge with a big bag of off-brand Boston baked beans that had the slightest hint of poo-poo, like they were maybe 10 years old, but I resisted my gag reflex and finished the whole bag along with a large coffee and a energy drink–I'm so awake right now, the buddha got nothin' on me. But my hearts kinda beating funny.

I had a minor heart attack about 3 years ago. Though I had some previous heart damage from something I won't get into, they said it was helped along by my copious amounts of caffeine that day, so maybe the energy drinks were not a great idea.

The Session

I sent this to the band the night before the first session:

Dear band:

When in the studio. We go to do a spiritual work only. What greatness will come won't come from trying and working hard, but from letting go of worries of time or money or worrying about Ezra (me) worrying. I want some spiritual beings playing. We've done all the planning and prep so no need to work or think about it any more. Let's just be there and here on out just let it be what it needs to be and become what it needs to become. Let go of all schedules and outcomes. An album is a journey together and it's fun as fuck, something u never forget.

It may seem silly to some. A bunch of adults playing music.. I mean come on! It's just music. Your suppose to stop when you grow up. But what I've spent an entire life working at is as serious as a heart attack.. well apparently more so. Music in this culture is seen as some kind of luxury, a low paid pastime or even frivolous once you pass a certain age. Instead of what it really is, which is the language of our planet. English, Japanese, Spanish that's all just babble. Music is our language.

We've worked hard towards this album. I wanted a new experience to come from it. I wanted to avoid all my old control trappings, and ego slapping that goes on while trapped in a studio for days. but I found to some extent it was unavoidable.

Bumping Ego Horns

I have a strange and beautiful relationship with our piano player. First of all I met him as my long time mentor and sort of spiritual advisor. At some point though I found out he was a true genius on the piano; soon our roles were switched and he was working for me in the band. The hierarchy got all fucked up. We had to officially clarify the new roles between us. He's older than me, more mature than me, bigger than me, much more adept at his instrument than me and could easily kick my ass. So to go up against him, as I feel I have to do as the band leader sometimes, is always very uncomfortable for both of us.

I was really trying not to do it on these sessions, but it can turn fast, and it did. We buck up against each other before anything big.. every single time. It's like a peacock ritual between us now. And it's tense every time.

I have a job to do when recording or producing a show or video, and it involves the 'WHOLE,' which sometimes can get in one individuals personal ego space.

He's so good that I do feel a little silly saying anything to him, but I did, several times, I felt I had to, and we had a good 30-40 minutes of very tense but quiet energy.

The funny thing is, IS, that it's not really taken as a bad thing by him or me for this to happen It's more like having to get your leg set for him. He knows it's gonna hurt but it's got to happen. It hurts to have your artistic toes steppe don in front of a bunch of people, believe me it hurts. And there is really no avoiding it. Good musicians just learn that it's just a thang that happens.. deal with it, and don't carry it with you to your instrument.

He truly is a great, I've actually never played with anyone as good as he is in all my 25 years of professional music. Where musicians like him get a bad rap, is that people might think they are pompous, or egotistical when they don't just bow to suggestions by someone of less caliber in their field. But what I've come to understand over the years is what kind of sacrifices someone like that has made to be that good. It's decades and decades of lonely hard work. So I respect the hell out of him he knows it. These little peacock wars are just a ceremony we go through sometimes. After his wounds were licked, he kicked some serious ass.

Bassman-Girl

I don't talk about Lori as much as I should. She's my long time Bass Player and Vocalist. I don't say much because she's just solid, she's like a rock and doesn't stir up drama like us two boys. She's a sweet heart I can't glow enough about her as a person and how much she holds things together and mends me up when this music life gets to me. Though , I do got some shit on her I'll spill in time through this journal. ha!

The blind leading the blind

I get really tired of always being the one that has to make things uncomfortable. I want to just be one of the band. But I'm not. There is always that separation in that I have to push us sometimes, and push certain members past where they think they can go; where it's uncomfortable and unknown. That can come off as a pompous ass also, and usually does, and I can say in the past, I was a most certainly pompous control freak.. That was back when I though I controlled things though. I know now that I have so little control over anything, that rarely will I ever tell someone what to play, but I will push them to tears trying to find the end of what they will find in themselves. And I really don't enjoy it. But time has shown with the many many musicians that I've done works with, 60% come back saying thank you for pushing them. They understood when it was all wrapped up what I was doing... Some of them never again achieved anything of the same calibur, because there was no one willing to be hated in their midst. The other 10% still think I'm a pompous bull headed ass.. and their right too. 30% of them worked on things that actually didn't turn out to great.. so i don't know what they think haha. They just left.

I work for the song, and I also need people to push me to my limits. It's hard to find those people though. So I do the best I can to kick my own ass too.

God's Mistakes

This album was finally decided to be kind of a survey of me and my wife's marriage from start to divorce to getting back together and finally falling head over heals for each other. Really why I decided to come back to Dallas tonight... why I'm sitting here writing this at the house now, is I fuck'n miss her. My wife. I want to see her and i'll probably stay up to see her when she wakes.

I've turned down things in my music career that would deem me a legally insane songwriter. I could have a career now that most musicians only dream about. But I dream about her, and our little simple life. I try to keep them both going, but then she wins out and I end up driving back 5 hours from a session to have coffee with her, when I probably should have stayed in Austin.

I don't just 'understand,' life is short and fleeing, I feel it. I feel it more than I ever have. She is very spiritual and texted me at one point during recording to go outside, take my shoes off, and connect with the earth to pray.
I did it.

I went back inside and sang this song called 'God's Mistakes.' It's one of the last songs I wrote before she left me. It's a plea, not for her to stay, but to just see me. To see us. To see what we have. She didn't like it back then when I wrote it and our whole world was crashing in.

But before I went to Austin, she begged I put it on the album.
What came out of not just me, but the whole band , who recorded it live with all of us in separate sections of the studio, put us, and the producer in awe. I've never had a song during a session put me in awe and where we just sat there quiet when it was done. It was strange silence. It's something real. And I always thought it was an okay song.. but now.. it's something else. It's beautiful, it's my heart. It's my love for this chick that I hope gets up early today, cause I'm tired as hell now. The red bull and Boston baked poo-poo is now faded.

ah.. well here she comes, I here her railing around inside. I'll keep up the posts best I can. night, er... morning to ya.
@ezravan