This take is pretty rough, as it’s all first takes and done on my laptop, instead of on my Mac desktop, but it’s pretty cool to hear an acoustic version compared to the album version, which has bass, drums, and production values.

Download Iris Florentine. It’s free!

Single Cover Artwork by Estelle Johnson

- Jack Merlot

If you want, you can make up your own lyrics to go along with the song. Then you can pretend you’re in a rock ‘n roll band, just like Ping. Except the difference between you and Ping, is that he’s actually in a rock ‘n roll band, and you’re not.

But don’t feel bad. Life on the road isn’t always easy.

Taking a break from the harsh reality that is being in a band.

Ping and Mr. Pibb have an on-again, off-again relationship that typically ends with me having to separate the two of them for a while.

Here, Ping strikes a relaxed pose, having just finished a brutally challenging marathon recording session revolving around too much caffeine.

However, when the title of “World’s Most Famous Finger Cymbal Soloist” is up for grabs, who can say that his attentions are being inappropriately focused on the most trivial of pursuits?

Not I, that much is certain.

- Jack Merlot

We’ve been trying to figure out this whole Facebook thing lately. So, you should either

A. Search for Jack Merlot on Facebook and Be My Friend.

or,

B.

Go to my Page and become a fan.

Or, both!

Also, you really ought to be following me on Twitter.

We’ve got a lot to say about nanotechnology, “Jolene” by Dolly Parton, and what it feels like to sound like (as one recent music critic put it)

kind of like a Jonathan Richman with a mild nerve disorder. like it.

- Jack Merlot

This track, entitled Ghost Dobro is one of my favorites from the new album. It’s got a rich, chocolatey texture and plenty of leather-bones stretching to the stars, which is spooky enough that sometimes when I listen to it I get goosebumps.

Go ahead and download the single, “Ghost Dobro”, right heah.

And if you like it well enough, and can spare five bucks, head on over to the online music store and get the full album. It’s pretty great – five bucks for ten songs, cheaper than iTunes (and we think the music we make is more, uh, *charming* than most of what you see on iTunes these days… but, that’s just like, our opinion, man.)

Thanks for stopping by!

- Jack Merlot

This version was recorded in 2008 for the first Jack Merlot release.

Download Bohemian Bus right heah.

(greetings and salutations, fellow RPM Challengers/Redditors/Facebook frenemies)

I’ve got a special treat for you today – a free single from Orchids for Betty, our new album that we just completed for the RPM Challenge 2009.

Download Witness Protection right here. It’s a rollicking good tune, in my opinion. ;-)

- Jack
a.k.a. dragonfly_blue

Great news – the new album, Orchids for Betty is out! The store is online now, as well, so you can go check it out. Thanks in advance for supporting local & independent music – we really appreciate every single one of our fans.

Included in the album are ten brand-spanking new songs for your enjoyment, a complete set of lyrics & liner notes, some extra artwork, and more. Dare I say that it’s our best work yet?

Available now from the Jack Merlot Music Emporium & Curiosity Shoppe. And, for just five bucks, you really can’t get a better deal on some fresh new tunes.

(Unless you’re a pirate. Yaaaar!)

— — —

Special thanks to Jenni Undis, Nick Christensen, Estelle Johnson, Peter Mack, Colin Mullen, and the rest of ya’ll for your support. I’m sure there are other people I’m forgetting, but I’ll get to them later, I suppose.

- Jack Merlot

What does this mean?

Well, it means that we should have a fully mastered copy available by March 1st. (Diamond Fiction has notoriously short turnaround times. We don’t know how they do it. We’re just glad they do it.)

The first copy will of course be shipped to RPM Challenge headquarters for their review and archive. It’s been quite an exciting month, and it’s all thanks to their fine work (and motivational posters.)

As for availability to the general public, we’re hoping that the new Jack Merlot Music Emporium and Curiosity Shoppe is online by March 1st as well. It’s currently in the private beta testing stage, and things are proceeding swimmingly.

This means that anyone with a PayPal account (and five bucks) will be able to download the MP3 version of the album as early as next week! How exciting.

Why five dollars, you ask? Well, we’re just trying to cover the costs of bandwidth and server space and whatnot. It’s pretty cheap, for a full-length album, (cheaper than iTunes, even), and we’re proud of our work.

So, while you’ll still be able to download some music for free here at the main site, starting next week there will be certain items that will only be available through the online shoppe.

Check back next week, though – we’re probably going to release a free single (or two) off the album, so you’ll be able to check it out before you buy. Downloads will be available here, as usual.

Sayonara, Willow Trees!

- Jack Merlot

The challenge:

Record an album in 28 days, just because you can.

That’s 10 songs or 35 minutes of original material recorded during the month of February.

You can read the Jack Merlot blog over at the RPM Challenge site, but I’m reprinting it here since this is the “official” Jack Merlot website.

From the blog:

— — —

Well, I’ve gotten off to a good start on the Challenge, but as I’m listening to the CD-R’s I’ve burnt of the tracks I have so far, I’m picking out little bits and pieces that aren’t quite as perfect as I’d like. Which is ok, since I still have plenty of time, but still, I wish I’d either learn to let go of the little things or discipline myself during tracking so the tracks would turn out “better”.

I’ve got 8 songs finished, which means that I’ll probably end up re-recording four of them for the final album. It’s little details like polishing up the codas on a couple tracks or wanting to capture solos with better phrasing that I’m getting caught up in, but at least I feel that the songs are solid enough to be listenable even without virtuoso performances on each and every part.

I’ve been getting a lot of bang for my buck out of my Yamaha DD-55 Drum Druid on this project, which makes me happy. I’ve had it for years, but it’s only recently that I’ve sat down and read the manual and explored all the cool functionality it has to offer. It’s fully MIDI-capable and programmable, so you can create custom kits on it to match the feeling of the song, and it has around 200 individual drum samples on it, so it’s pretty easy to create kits that are tuned to the song.

I’m running the Drum Druid through my Digitech rackmount units; I’ve got a GFX1 Twin Tube pre-amplifier that has some pretty sweet tonalities, which I then run through a seriously old-school DSP256 multi-effects processor. 16-bit, yo.

I like being able to add a little tube crunch and saturation to the drums sometimes; it makes the kits sound more like real drums (well, real drums that aren’t being mic’ed properly, perhaps ;-) and makes them sound a little more “dangerous”, which is what I’m shooting for. I usually track snare and bass on one track, and cymbols on another, and toms on another, but it kind of varies depending on the song.

I also run my (well, it’s actually my girlfriend’s, and it’s a long story) electric bass (it’s a “Matao” bass made in Japan; I’ve never heard of them, have you?) through the GFX1 because it’s got a nice compressor section in it, and sometimes put a little chorus or tremelo effect on it with the DSP256.

I’ve got a Washburn 12-string guitar that I’m using for most of the guitar parts; sometimes I use an Epiphone acoustic my cousin’s ex-girlfriend left over here, but it’s pretty rare. The 12-string is strung up with only six strings, and it sounds pretty decent to me when I spend the time to mic it properly (and running it through the GFX1 pre-amp doesn’t hurt, either.)

I’ve got three microphones involved in the project, too, which I use for guitar (I only have acoustic guitars right now, dammit, but I mic them and run them through the Twin Tube for a little distortion now and again), and for vocals, which is working out pretty well. I’m using an Audio Technica ATM61HE for most of the vocals because it has a pretty wide dynamic range for a dynamic mic, and also because I can’t afford a condenser mic right now. I’ve got a Shure SM58 on loan from my cousin, Nick Christensen, which works pretty well for acoustic guitars, and another Shure mic that I think is super low-end, but hey, it works.

All my tracking is being done on another seriously old-school machine, a Mac G4 tower. I’ve upgraded the RAM and hard drive on it as far as it can go, and I’m able to get about 8-12 tracks recorded in Audacity with it before the software starts crashing on me. (I try to limit all my songs to 10 tracks for this reason; crazy, isn’t it?)

The Mac actually works pretty well, though, overall, and I’m able to record 4 tracks at once at 24-bit, 48Khz, which is impressive (well, impressive to me, at least) considering the age of the host machine. I attribute this success to the Tascam US-428 unit I’ve been using as my interface. It’s only USB 1.0, sure, and it’s only got 4 ins and 2 outs, but it works.

For monitors, well, I couldn’t afford monitors (or a proper reference amplifier, for that matter) so I’m using a very old Marantz “Stereophonic Receiver” (seriously, that’s what it says on the front!) model SR3100 (it’s not even a tube amp, dangit, but it sounds ok to me from here) to power a couple massive Fisher speakers (I’m too lazy to turn one around to find a model number right now.)

So. To summarize, I am extremely proud of the results I am getting from my extremely low-budget setup. It’s really gratifying to be able to burn CD-R’s of my works-in-progress and listen to them on other systems, where I can really take some time to analyze the tracks and learn what is working, and what is not. When all is said and done, I’ve found that my favorite recordings aren’t necessarily my favorites because I tracked them particularly well, but mostly are my favorites simply because I spent a long time crafting the song.

It takes me a while to write songs, because I spend a long time on the lyrics, the melodies, the harmony parts, the bass line, tuning the drums, making multiple takes of each song to find the tempo that works best, and really, trying to capture the feel of a live band with the limited resources I have. It’s definitely a challenge, in every sense of the word.

Thanks for the kick in the butt, RPM Challenge! I needed that.

I should have some tracks available for download sometime soon; in the meantime, if you go to http://www.jackmerlot.com you can find some seriously unpolished “early work” to download. ;-)

Happy tracking!

- Jack Merlot

The new CD inserts are letterpress-printed.

Here’s the track listing, for your enjoyment.

01 Sayonara Willow Tree
02 Higher River
03 Double Dragon Sands
04 Sanctuary
05 Ruby’s Atelier
06 Dragonfly in the Heather
07 Aviation’s Over
08 Seeds
09 Bohemian Bus
10 Driver Down.
11 Fireflies

by Jack Merlot

copyright 2008

Download Higher River

Let the River Take Us Higher

—– —– —–

GM

Let the river take us higher

CM

floating potions

GM

bottled fire

CM

river branches

GM

spelling patterns

DM

spilling fortunes

CM

forgotten language

GM

then the water
writing freezes

CM

written tongue

GM

crystallizes

CM

and the message
when we’re

GM

floating over

DM

pages

CM

of land

GM

all the signs are
forming patterns

DM

as we flow up toward

CM

the high water mark

GM

—- —- —-

Icarus Falls

by Jack Merlot

copyright 2008

Download Aviation’s Over

—– —– —–

capo 5th fret

transpose from these open chords

Em AM
she was subtle in Spokane
Bm GM
ever graceful in Japan
Em AM
sharp katana in the Badlands
Bm GM
how I loved to be her man

but something that I maybe said
didn’t cross the intersect
like, “did the phoenix love the sphynx
just like katie did?”

DM AM
I broke the canary’s fall
CM GM
outside the granary wall
now I simply can’t remember
’cause aviation’s over

I broke the canary’s fall
inside the prison walls
now we’re playing solitaire
aviation’s over; aviation’s over

instead of this remorse
let’s go on and paint that horse
sit across from you in church
hide the tears inside your purse

Instead of staring to the bliss
maybe we should just forgive
I’m not saying stats are in
but I’m sleepin’ on it now

I broke the canary’s fall
outside the gran’ry walls
now I simply can’t decide
cuz aviation’s over

I broke the canary’s fall
outside of Eden’s walls
she still whistles jingle bells
but aviation’s over; aviation’s over

by Jack Merlot

copyright 2008 – all rights reserved

—– —– —–

Consider Him Dead

Em AM
Call it impulsive culture shock
the way she kept staring at the clock
a molten veneer containing her fear
and burning her shadow off

A C
Whoa, oh oh oh, oh oh oh
Whoa, oh oh oh, oh oh oh

D F
Consider him dead, she smiled as she said
G F C
I’ll bring you his head if I have time tomorrow
D F
Wasn’t a man who could stop her, but then
G F C
he deserved every stab, every bite, every swallow

A C
Whoa, oh oh oh, oh oh oh
Whoa, oh oh oh, oh oh oh

prison of reflection, smoke and regret
anticipation, forging a sweat
A tourmaline shield that she wouldn’t yield
a black-shrouded shadow, devine

D F
Consider him dead, she smiled as she said
G F C
I’ll bring you his head if I have time tomorrow
D F
Wasn’t a man who could stop her, but then
G F C
he deserved every stab, every bite, every swallow