West Virginia, Mountain Momma, take me home Country Roads...
Chapter 4, West Virginia Mountain Momma... take me home Country Roads... Circa 1997 - 1999
No, I did not have a flash of inspiration to write country music. Yet during the first months of 1997 my girlfriend and I made a move to Charleston, West Virginia. This put a few things on hold in my life including my music. However, once things changed for the better I was able to sit down again and put some ideas to wax.
Most of my time being Wild and Wonderful was spent recording instrumentals and pieces of songs. A good portion of those pieces ended up being material that would end up on CD releases such as IYUS AAS MEMSMIS and Nillum Noom. 'Ghost of a Chance' is a great example of taking as much time as I could to write and record a song.
Something else notable about my move to West Virginia is that I was able to upgrade my equipment from my typical two-track tape deck to a MIDI enabled computer system. This created possibilities for me that I didn't have before. I was able to run an early version of Cakewalk on my PC and utilize the MIDI functions on my Yamaha PSR-500. Where I was using the Song Editor function on board this keyboard before, now I could assign voices to separate MIDI channels and program each track separately. This made songwriting so much easier and opened creativity for me.
However this was not without difficulties. My time in West Virginia was met with a serious case of writers block. For the life of me, I was stuck in a rut with what type of music I wanted to record and how I was going to take SUB ONE to the next level. It even got to a point where I just wanted to rid all of my equipment and give up on music all together.
I'm glad I never finalized that decision.
A handful of instrumentals were recorded during this time including 'Attention Defecit Disorder', 'Chemical Imbalance', 'Monster Neurality', and a few that have yet to be titled. I will feature these songs here on the SUB ONE blog as I take you on my journey through the country roads of West Virginia.
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