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By B John Burns
December 24, 2009
Several of you have mentioned to me that they haven’t seen much activity on my blog in the last few months. This is true. My attention has been on other things.
First, of course, I am working feverishly to finish the revisions for 4A Iowa Practice: Criminal Procedure. They’re due next Friday, and I’ve just a few touches to put on them before they’re ready. Based on past experience, the 2010 edition should be out in April (tax refund time).
Secondly, there’s “High Adventure on the Road”. Every year since the early 80s, I’ve ended the year making a recording of 15 to 20 of what I consider to be the best songs I’ve written during the year. This way, I’ll have them to go back to, to learn the ones I want to use in my show and to be able to shop the ones I think I might be able to sell to other artists.
In the past, I’ve given out a couple dozen of them to my closest friends, to get their input. Which ones should I be playing? Which ones should I bury forever? The quality of the CDs was less than that of a studio recording. If some audience member would come up to me at a gig wanting to buy a CD, I’d just give them one.
This year is different. This year, I took part of the royalties from 4A Iowa Practice: Criminal Procedure and invested in a 24-track state-of-the-art Tascam digital portable recording studio, to replace the 16-track Roland I’ve been using for the past 10 years.
Then I went out and bought books on recording and mixing techniques. I bought the two-hour video tutorial for the Tascam unit. I studied and studied, with the idea that, this year, I’d try to do something approaching a studio-quality CD.
As always, I took a week off in October to do the bulk of the recording, although it usually takes the good part of a month to get it done.
On Monday of that week, I’d put in about six hours of recording when the Tascam simply blew up.
It blew up. Completely stopped working. All that money and all that time, and a week’s vacation time, all lost.
But then it occurred to me. What if I took all that knowledge I’d accumulated preparing for the new equipment, and applied it using the old Roland? So that’s what I did.
Now, it’s for YOU to decide. “High Adventure on the Road” is a collection of 16 songs I wrote between November, 2008 and October, 2009. It contains such megahits as the magnificent title song, “Smoke at Home”, and “If You’re a Fan” (a little ballad about an evening I spent in early 1978 with the late great Bev Mahon, owner of the Varsity Theater). It’s got a sweet cover, and I didn’t waste the money on shrink wrapping, so you don’t have to struggle with THAT.
So what would Christmas be if I didn’t use it to try to get some of your money? By the time you order your copies, Christmas will be over. But we all know the best gifts are the ones that come when we don’t expect them – three or four weeks late. So buy one for everyone in your family (especially if you have family members who are record company executives). Here’s what you do.
Send a check or money order for $12.50 ($9.43 plus .57 Iowa sales tax plus 2.50 for postage and packaging) to:
B. John Burns
P.O. Box 30035
Johnston, IA 50131
And don’t forget the other great holiday gift idea – autographed copies of 4A Iowa Practice: Criminal Procedure. Details of that one appear in the upper right-hand corner of this screen.
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