Hi.

This is me procrastinating.

Procrastination is a crafty adversary, often taking the form of a seemingly productive activity. It ever so slyly suggests that you clean the dishes, or respond to emails, or call your mother, and in so doing it deflects your attention from the task of greatest importance. Contemporary folk rocker Joe Pug invites his audience to tune in to his “Working Songwriter” podcast every month with some version of the following hook: “Ultimately, you listen to this podcast because it offers precisely what every working songwriter dreams of most: an ironclad excuse to put off actually writing.” Today, I’m mired in that sentiment, accomplishing the “ostensibly productive” at the expense of the “eventually necessary.”

What I AM doing: writing a blog post, complete with a pretty picture of a beach. What I SHOULD BE doing: working on our new album. This is a week I have set aside for editing our new recordings, which we tracked in New York in March, touched up in June, and will begin mixing in August, assuming the pieces are all squared away. With the help of Sam Whedon (our guitarist and engineer/producer for this project), I need to get all or nearly all of the tracks ready for a proper studio mix by August 9th.

I should be doing that now, instead of telling you that we’re enjoying this short week off in Charlottesville before heading down to Florida for the annual Curry family reunion, which will feature plenty of food, family, sunshine, and performances at some of our favorite local haunts. I should be doing it instead of mentioning that we’re in the planning stages of a crowdfunding campaign for the album through Kickstarter (!!!), or that we’re thinking of a late winter release, or that we’re trying to settle on a title. I should be doing it, instead of simply talking about doing it.

Chores have a way of expanding to fill the time available. The trouble with recording an album independently is that we have too much time and no clear deadline; no label breathing down our necks; no publishing contract to be breached in the event of tardiness. As such, the project is taking a circuitous path to completion, with progress coming in fits and starts when we can find the time between traveling and performing. But the upside of doing it ourselves is that we are really getting our hands dirty, digging our fingers deep into the songs and making them truly ours, from the inside out. This album will hopefully project the process of its making. We want it to sound like us, warts and all. I’m really happy with what we’ve got at the moment, and I’m very excited to share a finished product with you all.

But in order for that to happen, I’m afraid I have to get back to work. At the end of the day, putting it off won’t get me anywhere; in the words of our dear friend and fellow songwriter Mimi Hearn, “Killing time isn’t murder… it’s suicide.” Now is the time to stop talking about it, and actually do it.

This is me no longer procrastinating.

Happy summer, all!

-Tommy