Holidays. . .

I'd like to claim, after the fact, that the comic, and myself have been on holidays. We're still on holidays. And soon, we'll be GOING on holidays. . .

I wanted to write a quick post to say "hi" to the 3 people who read the blog (hello Tara!) (hello Adam!) (Hello Mom!).

Done and done.

Oh, in music news, I jammed the other night with the boys from Cedar Speeder, which was quite fun, and they remain the nicest band in show business (a title held by the long-defunct Average Lime, whose bass player ended up in the newly defunct Fat Robot). I was mostly rockin' the drums, which I need to practice more (as I'm always telling my drumming students. . .).

The new record continues to progress. . . This years Christmas give-away features a young vocalist by the name of Peja Middaugh. You can pick it up wherever you find me.

NOTES FROM AROUND THE WEB:

The Radical Dudez re-launched their webite, and you'll enjoy visiting it. In the music section they have nearly every song they ever thought about playing, which is pretty neat, and they've even posted the tunes I used to sing with them. So if you want to hear some proto-J&lesBflyz materian, click on over there.

My friend Adam Hewgill has been turning into quite a good blogger. I like to think of him as a better Wil Wheaton, minus the star-trek.

END OF NOTES FROM AROUND THE WEB

See you in the new year,

Jay.

Wow, almost a week since the last comic. . . And this one isn't inked either. . .

I've been mocking up all the comics from the top 30 to be inked, and it's hard to stay focused on practice inking. I really should keep it up, because I'm really shitty and new at it, but it's less interesting to me than trying to put together a marketable package. Also, there's this little 2 year old girl that keeps wanted me to join her in building a block-castle for the little penguin.

Alright, so it isn't inked. . . Peja's been sick. . . *cough* slacker *cough*

I've picked the 30 comics, and I'm starting to go back and re-assemble them for proper inking 'n stuff. I still need a name for the comic. I'm thinking of maybe stealing an album title and calling it "How it feels to be a rock 'n roll dad". Any thoughts, kind internet viewers?

Some sloppy ink-brush on the 2nd Peja. . . Need to find the white-out (is the brand name wite-out? or Wyte-out? or Wiite-out? I'm not sure).

Alright, so it's late. We had a big party. I got lazy about printing. I'm sorry. The next one will be up tomorrow. I think I'm getting closer to a definative method for the artwork. I'm using a brush for the shirts, necks, and face outlines, then a .35 mm pen for the face and hair. Which is probably more information than you need. I'm still torn about trying to add backgrounds, like, actually drawing stuff. I like the uncluttered look of it. I have to draw some 1/2 page style ones, so maybe I'll try some backgrounds for those.

Alright, new pens, new font, and some frame 3 and 4 messin' around with using an ink brush instead of a pen (I like the way the necks/shirts look, the rest ain't so good, and my consistancy is pretty awful). See what you think.

P.S. Again, just click on ye ol' comic to fill your screen with the funny.

Okay, I'm a big fat liar. I'll keep posting while I'm working on the ink. It's more fun to ink new comics than old ones anyway, so I might as well post them. And posting is fun.

NOTE FOR PEOPLE LIKE TARA -- CLICKITY CLICK CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO ENLARGE, SORRY ABOUT THE EXTRA STEP, BUT I DON'T WANT TO HAVE TO SPLIT THE NEW COMICS IN 2.

Where's the comic?

So, I finished writing the 60 comics, which was my goal, and I'm going to take a break from posting while I try and learn how to draw. I went out and bought a drawing book and some inking stuff (page one is above). I've really enjoyed posting the comic, and I'm really thankful to everyone who has taken the time to read them. If you really dug the comic, I have to pick 30 of the 60 I've written to ink up properly and maybe sent off into the cold cruel world, so if you want to help, drop me an Email and I'll shoot you the 60 text ideas and you can pick your favourites.

Where's the music?

So I thought maybe I should take a second to explain what's going on around here in Barn Flyz land. There is still music being made. I spent most of yesterday morning in my studio working on a remake of an old song called "Millionare" from A Few More Songs from the Erin Farm.

As for the comics, they've been a really great creative outlet while studio time is hard to find. I can write them while hangin' out with Peja, which is really the best of both worlds. I'm trying to write 60 or so, and then go back and properly draw and ink them and then sent them out into the world to compete in the 50 metre dash. I love comics, I think they're just the coolest medium that allows so much compression of thought.

So, if it's cool with you all, I'm going to keep posting my comic here. I need a name for it, so if anyone has an idea, please feel free to add it to the comment section of this or any post.

My inlaws are moving to town, which should hopefully free up a whole bunch of studio time in the new year. Fear not. The Flyz will Fly again.

Cool School

The Local Economy

I can't think of a post title.

Rock and Roll

Working Gal Blues. . .

Sloan

I like my pants

Comic Comics Comii

Obviously

Tara and Denton, sorry kids, the backgrounds are out. They take a really long time to do (believe it or not), and they're a little sketchy as far as copyright goes. Maybe someday I'll get inspired and draw some real backgrounds. But, to make up for it, here's the 2nd in 2 days. And just for those who care, the comic takes place in the future. . . You can do some math with this one and figure out how far. . . I mean, if it wasn't fiction. Which it is. Obviously.

The future ain't what it used to be. . .

Do they need backgrounds? I don't know. Any thoughts?

A timely commentary. . .

I've been working on a comic strip for a few months, on and off (mostly off), and I finally took a bit of time and inked together some horrible drawings (the pencil is not my friend). There's a lot about it that I want to change -- the backgrounds will probably end up hand-drawn, and the same with the text, but I wanted to print some to have a look. The comics are a work of fiction, and any relation to actual persons, alive, dead, or married to me, are strictly coincidental. . .

Wilco and other commercial failures. . .

So I was hanging out with Peja the other night, cooking dinner, or doing the dishes (or, more likely, checking my Email), and I had tunes on the radio, and this lyric, that I always liked, just struck me right between the ol' eyes and maybe it was the 3 tablespoons of raw sugar I had just eaten, but I thought, "man, that's a great fucking lyric". It's from a Wilco record, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and the lyric is --

All my lies are always wishes
I know I would die if I could come back new

The record is featured in a documentary called I am trying to break your heart, and it shows the band recording an amazing record, and then getting kicked off their record label for it.

What is it about records that get people kicked off labels? Sloan's Twice Removed, Thrush Hermit's Sweet Homewrecker (the band's gone, but check out Joel Plaskett), and that Wilco record. 3 of my favorite records, all got people out of record contracts.

Just goes to show.

Huh?

Pianoforte!

There's a 100 year old piano sitting in my dining room. It's missing some hammers. It's beautiful. I've been searching classified ads for years looking for a good deal on a suffering piano, and just when I stopped looking, one was offered to me. Thanks to the Rice family (John, Janie, Milan, Mason) for trusting us to give it a good home -- and for delivering it! I'm 7 keys above middle c in tuning it -- poor Peja has been very tolerant of the same bad notes over and over and over.

The Dream. . .

Do you have one of these?

Somewhere in the back of my aged mind, I still believe that with the right circumstances, I could end up in the NBA.

(These circumstances now include a plague on everyone over 6', everyone with jets, and everyone with what the kids now call "ups" - formerly "hops", "springs", and "air".)

This music thing is really just my back-up dream.

The basketball dream makes it seem almost possible.

Mixing

I was sitting at the mixing board today, going over some of the tunes we've been working on. Right now I'm using a Tascam 2488 24-track (that's the 24 in 2488, I guess) hard-disc recorder (uh, what's the 88 about?). So, you make a sound (drums, voice, whatever), and then a microphone picks it up, converts it into electrical energy, that moves down the wire into the mic pre-amp on the back of the 2488, where it's amplified, and the amplified signal is converted to digital information by an analog/digital converter. Blah, blah, blah.

But what I want to talk about is mixing. Because the more I record, the less I want to dick around with frequencies and levels. I used to crave perfect control, 4 band parametric eq's, the ability to pinpoint each sounds essentialities and cut down on the noise. And with digital, you can really do whatever you want. Once the information is digital, there isn't the problem of having the greatest mixing board, because eq becomes a simple math problem, and the 2488 is pretty much a math machine. And I've used the eq to fit 10 guitars into stereo sound, to squeeze a voice between them, but I'm just not fantastically interested in doing that this time around. I'm getting the feeling that an honest record should have so little eq, that the arrangement of instruments should have no extra noise to filter out, that it should just sound like it would if you were in the room when we recorded it. It's not like in person someone would say, "you know, the high end snare sound is really getting in the way of the vocals".

I started making multi-track recordings on a karaoke machine -- it had a double cassette deck, so you could record yourself singing over your karaoke tapes, I guess. But, I could record a guitar track, and then switch the tapes and record a voice over that, and then switch the tapes again and add drums. Voila! Multi-track recording. But I couldn't mix, of course, I couldn't eq or adjust levels. That's actually how John Lennon recorded Revolution 9, one of the most hated songs in popular music history -- using simple tape over-dubs.

What the hell is this post about?

I don't know.

It's late.

I'm trying to keep up writing.

I'm using a minimalist mixing approach.

Would that my blogging be the same.

Anyway, I'm not begrudging my newly found ability to manipulate and mesh sounds -- the 2488 has really helped me out. I'm just finding that with this record, I'd almost rather record on a karaoke machine -- remove the temptation.

Jay.

P.S. The above 2488 was yet another final piece in the studio puzzle.

When is enough enough?

Every conversation I have with Sienna about music gear has the same moment -- she looks at me with her eyebrows raised, and I know she's thinking "how much is this going to cost us?" Not that she isn't amazingly supportive, even encouraging as far as buying gear goes, but sometimes I get the feeling that she's starting to suspect that the great gear acquisition has no finish line. Which, of course, is the truth. Now, I mean, a lot of the time I'll be talking about gear that I just think is cool, like a $2200 Custom Telecastor, which I would never buy. . . Probably never. . . I mean, unless I got a deal or something. . . Which is the story behind the $300 ride cymbal upstairs right now, which, once again, completes my studio.

Love is a Four Letter Word

Had some daytime jamming today with the Guelph boys. They came down late last night and just left to make it home in time for Sunday dinner -- something that, for honest folk, isn't optional - or so they tell me.

We dug through some old songs, Magellen and the Worms, Red Flag, Safe and Warm -- listening to half done demos that showed promised but got shelved for other material. But it seems so wrong to punch into the old tapes and add new vocals or change the organ part. Music, at least for us, is such a changing thing, that it seems like doing a cover song. Now. . .

Hold on. . .

While writing this I had "Peja or Paul" -- a record I wrote for Peja (or Paul, if she, uh, you know, was someone different), on the stereo and a song called "love is a four letter word" came on, and damned if I wasn't drawn to the idea of recording it again.

See, there's the problem. Old stuff is easier. Writing new material is scary, and I don't have the time to spend with it that I've already spent with old songs.

Oh, hey, this is all part of the "post lots of crap on the blog" program leading up to the new records release.

Teachin' the Rock. . .

I teach music lessons 1 night a week out at the Dorian School of Music (www.dorianschoolofmusic.com, I think), and there's a sad reality to the job. Most of my students will give up. They will sell their instruments, or let them gather dust in their parents' basements.

But, the flip side is that they could stick to it, practice, have a great time, and live the dream.

The funny part is, I don't think I really have much say in what happens. I can show them a few techniques, and challenge them a bit with ideas, but there's not a lot of grey-area between self-motivated and slacker, between gifted and hopeless.

Where I end up, is just trying to let them have a good time. Music education can be as much about confidence building as it can about becoming a rock star. But don't tell my students -- I have high hopes.

519 Callin' . . .

I haven't talked much about this, mostly because I didn't want to jinx it. . . But things have been going well enough that I think I can share it with the 4 people who read this blog (hi sis!).

As some of you know, I started this frontman nonsense back in Guelph, with a group called (you guessed it) The Barn Flyz. I was playin' my indi-whathaveyou and they were playing their alt-rock-country-indi-whatever, and they needed a singer, and I got my first chance fronting a band.

I moved to Kingston after meeting/marrying (I think it was in the same day) my beautiful wife Sienna, and I tried to get the Barn Flyz to move down. Now, like the good farm boys that they are, they had to stay in Guelph and tend the fields. The kept sending me demos for songs, and I kept adding lyrics, and we did a few records "long distance".

My live bands came and went (mostly went), and just when I was thinking about throwing in the towel and becoming a banker or something, the phone rang.

The guys from the Barn Flyz wanted to make music again. And for the last 2 weeks, they've been driving back and forth from Guelph to write songs with me. The new record will be the first record with the LIVE Flyz on it since Free Soup for the Revolution.

Viva la Farm.

How the Go's Going. . .

Hello!

It's is damned cold in the studio today -- which is great, because you have to keep moving to stop from dying, and so shit gets done.

I think I finished recording the 3rd song today. It's called "Sucker Punch", and like the rest of the record, it's about heartache, revenge, and other stuff that sounds good accompanied by harmonicas and handclaps.

The record is tentatively called "songs for my seaweed girl".

Hey, look, a happy post! Hazahh!

Jay.

Sad Songs. . .

Quick post.

Acoustic songs going.

2 down, 8 to go.

Old songs being revisited, but likely cut, as energy always better on new stuff.

Hope you had a nice thanksgiving.

What The H-E-Double Hockey Sticks?

The kids over at Cedar Speeder are doin' their thing on the 18th at the Common Ground on Campus. Sadly, I won't be with them. I've been wicked busy trying to do about fifty different things, and the summer was a bit of a grind, so I'm taking a break from the Speeder. Alex and Josh are awesome guys, but my schedule was bringing people down, and maybe this old man just can't keep up with the hip cats anymore. I don't know.

News as it happens.

Jay.

Cedar What?

Josh put together this little graphic, which proudly displays our new band name CEDAR SPEEDER, which you will remember because it rhymes. For the forseeable future, I will continue to post band info here, because it's really easy.

Jonny?!?!?!

Alright, so down there on an old post, a Mr. Jon Hayes commented.

Now.

Now.

He has been missing for a couple of years. He introduced Sienna and I, then wondered off into the wilderness to bag out some bare-roots in a clearing of ferns. At the end of the day, we all searched and searched, but finally gave up. Very little has been heard since.

But, apparently, he reads this blog - or at least read it once. . . So, we can only hope that perhaps he sees this post and drops us a line at jayandthebarnflyz@hotmail.com and tells us what's up with him.

Jonny -- where are you?

A Word from the Flyz. . .

Some jams, some members, some showing up. I missed a practice this monday, and this was the recap I got from the guys:

Josh: "Jam was good on monday, i learned alot about myself as a musician and a person. There was a point where angels took over my body and did the playing for me while i stood back in another sort of dimension and watched myself rock out. But crazy enough i look over and alex is experiencing this out of body rocking. It was beautiful times but the out of body experience might have been the acid alex slipped in my drink."

Alex: "It was deep. I wept."

So, suffice it to say, the music is in good hands. A name change is being contemplated, as this project is much more a combination of efforts rather than a single "Jay" leading his "Barn Flyz". Now, I'm the one who brought it up, but unless someone knocks me out of the park with an idea (or, you know, someone is even mildly interested in one of my ideas), perhaps we will simply remain "the barn flyz" -- an anti-red-rider name evolution.

Saw my old friends The Radical Dudez at the park tonight, rockin' it out with a far too short set. They sound pretty polished, and new drummer Steve has some pipes and some sweet lead guitar chops -- so operation "hate the guy who replaced me" continues to be a dismal failure. I also like the new Nick, or is it the old Andy? Is there a difference?

Happy Birthday Brent. Good luck with the pills.

So, that's probably about 15 inside references that no one will ever read, so I think I'll call it a night.

All the best,

Jay.

Teasing Black Dog. . .

I spent the better part of 7 hours yesterday driving the 401 and the 400 highways while scanning around the FM dial looking for the rock.

Note To Station Managers: If you play the "hey hey mama with the way you move, gonna make you sweat gonna make you groove" part, you have to play the whole song. I don't care if it's an ad for the station. I don't care if you have to start it again after the ad. But if you play the vocal hook, you sure as hell better play the rest.

YOU SIMPLY CANNOT TEASE BLACK DOG.

To do so is to violate every rule of listener expectation. 'Cause when you're all set to groove to Zepplin, Midnight Oil just ain't gonna cut it.

Goddamn it.

Bassssss. . .

We had a good jam with a friendly Nova-Scotia lad by the name of Josh Peck. He's a singer/songwriter by trade, but he borrowed Alex's bass and did a good job with very little prep-time. You can hear his original stuff at www.myspace.com/joshpeckmusic, or somewhere very similar.

So, uh, anyone play the drums? I mean, that'll show up?

Alex and the Barn Flyz

New guitarist Alex is writing new hooks and riffs and changes and whatever else. It is going well. The new songs are crisp, tidy, fun, and go to the relative major key with little fuss.

The great drummer search has a few leads, and the great bass-player search. . . Well, shit, we'll just take turns playing bass. Something'll work out.

I got a job teaching at the dorian school of music, which looks quite promising. . . Maybe we won't default on our mortgage after all. . . . (just kidding around scotiabank. . .)

So, the plan, the PLAN, is to write a bunch of new stuff, settle on a drummer, find a bass player, record a new album, and play some shows. . .

Take care.

Sayin' Goodbye. . .

So this is our last week here on Wolfe Island. Which is very, very sad. We've made such amazing friends and had such awesome good times. But, at the same time, in a week, we'll be back living in downtown Kingston - where we left some great people last fall.

As a bonus, I'll be teaching guitar at Marysville Public School - on the island - in June and next Fall; so hopefully that will help us keep in touch with this amazing community. We'll also be here for the potlucks, oh the potlucks.

Met with island musician Rob Douglas - potentially recording/playing on a cd of rag-time stuff. Great change of pace and a pretty nice guy. He's got a donkey.

Alex is hard at work writing/learning lead guitar. Sean is promising to show up soon. Ian is touring with someone from Toronto - good luck to him; Ian is a great musician and will always have a place in the Barn Flyz.

It's late. I'm rambling. Goodnight.

Auditionin'

So we're meeting and greeting.

Song explainin'

Song rememberin'

Missin' Brent's insane guitar part recall; new guitarist Alex is great, but songwriter Jay doesn't remember anything. . . Much time spent listening to lead guitar on the 24 track.

Got an offer from the punk/hardcore neverland records to play some shows. . . Two issues - we're not ready, and, their bands scare me. Still, I wonder if they heard "Autumn. . .", or just "Wave". . . But if they're still interested, you might someday see Jay and the Barn Flyz at a hardcore metal show. . . Which happened once with the Dudez, which seems even stranger. . .

To quote an employee of our old landlord, "Moving's a pain in the ass".

This New House

So, uh, that last post looks like it was written fairly late at night. . . Anyway. . .

Spent Easter weekend sharing the stomach flu with my family and the rest of Marysville. Still feeling kind of weak. Apparently, if you don't eat solid food for 3 days, bad stuff happens - like, the flu you just kicked out of your body can come back. And I think the kid has an ear-infection. Oh, Sienna, what have you joined.

But the house deal is done, thanks to Patrick Hulley and lawyer John Black @ Black&Black (everytime I walk past his office I hear the AC/DC song "back in black", but with the lyrics "Black&Black", which almost seem better, really) and my folks are coming down this weekend to help fix a few things (the studio needs grounded plugs - no grounds = electricuted singers). But, as far as this site goes, the conclusion is that the Flyz will be back in Kingston very soon.

New members are being scouted (thanks to Adam from the Dudez for some leads). Old members are being woken up.

So stick around, we'll be right back.

K-town

There are subtle whispers at the back of the room.

There are loud rumblings from the studio.

Soon.

Soon.

I hope.

See you in K-town.

Goodnight, and Thanks for the Bread.

Thanks to the kind members of RWI for letting me shake off some rust and bash away behind the drum-kit. Darrin (bass), Jen (vocals/guitar), Vincent (lead guitar), and Robert (keys) all played a great show and the Island Grill crowd was very cool. Except that one little punk that kept yelling "James, I want to hear a solo! Are you going to RIP IT James?!!! I want you to RIP IT!!!". I mean, it was fun being called James, but he was still a punk. Anyway, I had a lot of fun (and not just because I got paid), and if RWI ever needs someone to fill in, I will not hesitate.

Rally Wall Incident?

There is some debate, because maybe it means "Robert with Idiots" or "Retarded White Islanders" or something else, but for the record, long before they became one of the most popular cover bands in the thousand islands, RWI stood for "Rockin' Wolfe Island". Anyway, why it's being mentionined here is that they've asked me to play some drums next Friday (which is rumoured to be Saint Patrick's day) at the Island Grill in the heart of the village of Marysville on Wolfe Island. So, come on out, probably around 9:30 or something, and hear the result of my attempt to learn 3 hours of material in a single rehersal. If there are free beers to be had, you can have mine. Do I even know how to play the drums?

What Lakes?

There's a new record in town. . . It sort of underscores my last post, in that it's mostly multi-guitar rock stuff. You can order it for $5 - email us for more info at jayandthebarnflyz@hotmail.com

GREAT LAKES E.P. 2005 -- Happy Baby Records

1. Crime Spree (live)

2. She Still Loves

3. Icicle Toes

4. Cheater

5. Rusty Voices

6. Wave

Free Samples - you can hear/download Wave and Cheater at our purevolume site.

Musical Houses. . .

My father has a new website called www.visionsbypaul.ca - he's an awesome photographer, framer, graphic design guy. 90% of the Jay and the B-Flyz artwork has been printed by him. Aside from the link, I mention visions because many different ones are emerging. Right now there really isn't anything resembling a band going on, despite the new record and a whole wack of demos coming out of the studio. Basically the situation is that I love rock music, but I also love being able to create and perform without any of the politics of being in a band. Obviously, Jay and the Barn Flyz are mostly a studio band, and this is probably because it's the only area where I can work without worry about other people schedules. Drum-machines and bass samples on stage? I don't know. I really like folk music and playing and singing with an acoustic guitar - but it's just not the same thing as rocking out with a few thousand watts of raw energy at your disposal. The free soup record was supposed to be an acoustic album that I could perform solo, but then I started playing the songs with the Dudez and we rocked them up to 11 and it was hard to still hear them as quiet numbers. There are always soft, understated songs on our records, but a whole quiet album? Maybe the "real record" that's been in the works since long before I met the Flyz will be a greatest hits acoustic record. Any thoughts?

P.S. the above picture is the new home of the Flyz, H.B. records, the Wolfe Island School of Music, and Peja, Sienna, and Jay.

Crazy Hair Day

Hello.

No, there's not much going on.

I caught a wicked cold after christmas (kids are fun, but insanely infectious) and it wiped out my voice for a good month.

Since then, I've been caught up in the fast-paced Kingston Real Estate market, trying to find a home for the record label, the music school, the recording studio, and. . . oh, yeah, my family.

Thanks to Patrick Hulley for helping us find a really cool home downtown. So, we'll be leaving the island in the spring, which is sad, because everyone here is so awesome nice. But we'll be back in the thick of things, and maybe that'll help the Flyz find and play gigs (the 2 am mad-rush to the ferry isn't the nicest way to leave a show).

New songs are on the way, the studio now has a mastering suite (email wolfeislandrecording@hotmail.com for information), and Peja can say about 100 words, the most fun being "Moose" and "Mouse" which only the keenest ear can tell apart.