#sincerely iris

Sincerely, Iris - Trouble

Ahhhhh, it must be a good evening for lovely acoustic tales... Enjoying this first full album from Charlotte, NC artist Sincerely, Iris (aka Todd Murray).

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This is amazing. It’s really awesome to find out that Django influenced so many people from Jeff Beck to Tony Iommi.

Boys Girls and Fools by Todd Murray

Here’s an older song of mine from 2006. Back when I used to still play under the name Todd Murray. I remember living in Colorado and having just gone through a rough break up.  I was 1,263 miles away from home and had no friends. The lady who lived above me would call the landlord if I made any noise at all. Literally, if I strummed an acoustic guitar at any time of the day, I’d get a call ten minutes later from Bruce the landlord.

So I had to sneak into the practice rooms at The University of Northern Colorado (where I wasn’t currently enrolled) during the summer if I wanted to play at all. I used to sneak up there and write songs for hours on end. Now that I think about it, the work that went into the songs on that album really taught me so much about how patient I need to be with the whole writing process.

Trail and error, sitting on ideas for a few days/weeks/months, editing, editing editing, single tear…tears…,edit, recording, edit, rewriting, chord structure, all are a magical part of the writing process.  In reality though it was sort of a blessing to be locked in a small room with just me and a tape recorder. I can’t even remember if I had a cell phone at that time, but if I did I couldn’t afford text messaging yet so I had zero distractions. A scary yet perfect place for creativity.

Even though this album is far from perfect, it’s one of my favorites because so much work, patience, and pain went into making it. When I moved back to Ohio I recorded this song in my dad’s house on the old, out of tune player piano in the living room.  For whatever reason when I look at the stats from song plays on Spotify, iTunes, and Rhapsody this song still gets more spins than anything else that I’ve ever released. People will listen to it 20 times in a row in the same day. I  hope that maybe someone out there is relating to the state of mind I was in when I wrote it and they get some relief from that.

I stole this photo from http://austinkleon.com/2015/01/09/better-than-i-deserved/

I’ve been a fan of Austin’s for a few years now. The two books that I love are “Steal Like an Artist” and “Show Your Work.”

The latter being the one that really got me started blogging again. Both books are full of really great ideas and if I’m not mistaken he and I are both from small towns in Ohio surrounded by cornfields.

“Steal Like an Artist” changed my mindset from always trying to be ORIGINAL and never ever allowing yourself to sound like anything else, to really letting my influences come through a little bit. Creatively it felt like a huge weight was taken off of my shoulders. For such a long time I thought that if one of my songs resembled anything else then it should be thrown away, but I’ve learned that your influences are nothing to hide.

Thanks for that Mr. Kleon.

Little late of a post due to my work schedule as of now but Modern Baseball will be on tour through the 7th! Check them out of they are at a place near you!