Wed, 03 May 2023

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As many of you know, every year on this day I make a joke by saying that the Uke Skywalker album, "May the Four Strings Be With You," is available for free download. The joke being that it is free every day. It's an old joke, but it checks out.

But it's time for a change, I say. I can't be recycling the same material every year. You expect more of me. I expect more of me.

So I would like to announce that today you can freely download the Uke Skywalker album "Decayed Eclipse" even though it will always be available for free.

This was a roundabout way of saying I've just released a brand new album. I probably should have led with that.


It has been exactly ten years since the first album, which told the story of Uke Skywalker dealing with being separated from his love, Princess Lele, after she got sucked into a black hole. Uke came to see it as a metaphor for his own selfishness, and by the end decided to return to the black hole in the hope that he could find her again.

This new album begins inside the black hole, follows his attempt to save the Princess through time travel, and ultimately sees him coming to terms with loss as a natural part of life.

You can get it today for free on Bandcamp: https://planga-la.bandcamp.com/album/decayed-eclipse


And check out the incredible artwork by Poxodd:



On a behind the scenes note, I was pretty far into making this album before I realized that it's really about dealing with loss. I mean, I knew the story was "he tries to bring her back, fails, and learns to accept that," but I didn't realize most of this album would end up being about Hardy Fox. I had to really dive into and process (or reprocess) my feelings about his passing. "Being dead is okay," he wrote in his last message, and I echo that sentiment in "Eternity Turns."

This has been kind of a strange journey for me, because at the time of his death I was already where this album leads. So I wasn't exactly revisiting that period, but constructing a path to get my character there. I came to my current outlook over the course of many years, but this was an accelerated two-month process. So I had some... feels. You know.

This album ended up being way more deeply personal than I ever intended. I hope that's not a turnoff for anyone. I personally love albums that are incredibly self-indulgent. Not in a egotistical way; I mean when it's clear that the composer is working through feelings and all the songs are really written for them, and not for an audience. And maybe someone will connect with this album the way I've connected with those albums. Someone perhaps who fears the nothingness of the forever that awaits us all. And maybe that someone will come to find that forever is okay. I wrote this album for me, but if you're that person, then I also wrote it for you.

Sun, 23 Apr 2023

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LOOK AT THIS MERCH BOOTH!



That's MY merch booth! For THE RESIDENTS!

Now, I've done merch for the Rz before, but this one was crazy special weird because it was literally a last minute emergency situation. I got a call about 6pm, and the venue opened its doors at 7pm, so I put on my runnin' hooves and booked my way down there.

I ended up covering all three nights of their San Francisco stint, and apart from the first hour being pretty stressful, it was smooth sailing. Being the end of the tour, the name of the game is "sell it, sell it all." While I didn't get everything sold, the remaining merch fits into 1.5 bins out of the 5 they started with. Probably not enough left over to warrant a special online post-tour sale, which is good news for everybody (well, everybody who has to deal with the selling side of the equation).

Of course, the fear now is that they might ask me to actually go on tour with them in the future. What's a polite way of saying "I don't want to spend a month on a bus that gets progressively smellier?"