Writing "Cleopatra"

You have a rotten soul. When I first moved to Boston, I got a job at a Blockbuster in Central Square. It was a 20 min walk away from the room I was renting. The job was terrible but I got 5 free rentals a week. So the first show I binged was HBO’s ROME. 

I’ve always been a fan of history and really loved ROME, especially the first season. The second season ends with the death of Cleopatra… and there was something about the scene that stuck with me. I wasn’t able to find a video of the scene, but I have HBO’s description…

Cleopatra then met with Octavian regarding his proposal that she be allowed to keep her kingdom, but soon realized that Octavian's true intent was to keep her as a trophy and to parade her around in chains in Rome. Cleopatra decided that she would not be Octavian's pawn and ordered that preparations be made for her suicide. Her method of death was via the bite of an asp to her breast. Tipped off that she was in the process of killing herself, Octavian rushed to Cleopatra's chambers in an attempt to prevent her death. The dying Cleopatra rose to meet Octavian and spoke into his ear, "You have a rotten soul." Those would be her final words as immediately speaking them, she collapsed onto her throne and died.

Cut forward a couple years. I had just moved across the country with Maddie and our little daschund Meatloaf. We had managed to rent an apartment in San Diego in the West Palm Beach.   There, sitting in an empty living room, I first stumbled across the song ‘Cleopatra’. 

I don’t recall exactly how everything came together. I’m pretty sure the intro and the main refrain (“let the Devil have his way”) came first.  I was particularly excited by the rhythmic idea for when the track really kicks in. That scene from ‘Rome’ swam to the surface of my subconscious and I based the lyrics on the moment when Cleopatra committed suicide, as the forces of Rome bore down on her family.

I think what really connected with me was the idea of someone standing up against insurmountable forces. Cleopatra was powerless to stop what was coming, but - rather than be used - she stood for the honor of her legacy. 

“Cleopatra” was written around the same time as “Pharaoh”, in that empty apartment.  “The Warlock” came soon after. Those songs were the first inklings of an album that would become “Valkyrie”. They’re foundational ideas.  They encourage other similar ideas to flesh out the story of the record. 

A couple other tidbits about the song… the rhythm when it all kicks in (at 1:29) was inspired by Beyonce’s “Single Ladies”.  The acoustic breakdown (at 2:27)  starts with a Dmaj7+6+9 with a minor melody on top… it creates a creepy vibe that reminds me of Sondheim.

In other news, I’ve been singing my little heart out.  My good friend Yan Perchuk (Vibrant Productions) has been helping me out.  I’ve been working with Yan for about 7 years.  He engineered the vocals for ‘Valkyrie’, as well as a nearly every recording for my other band, Polaris Rose.

Finishing the album is just the beginning.  The amount of artwork that I have to make is pretty tremendous.  Plus I’ve been collaborating with other artists for some fun merch designs.  There is gonna be a lot coming next year, so I appreciate everyone who has reached out looking for the new songs to drop!  You guys keep me going during these quarantine times.

More soon.

Peter

Makin’ Covid Records

Life has really turned upside down since my last post…

First off:  Maddie and I are doing well and our families are both safe and healthy.  Covid has been a strange time for us.  The music industry here in LA has been severely clobbered, especially touring.  But (outside of our creative projects) we work primarily in marketing and label services, which have been thriving.  So we are doing well.

Back on February 28th, we played our album release show at The Resident in downtown LA.  The room was packed and a lot of special people were in attendance!  My sister even flew down from WA (garbed in her vintage Lucid-era JS hoodie) and I saw Skrillex hanging out in the back of the room.  The band played amazingly and it was so much fun.  Brad Dickert slayed the drums, Alan Sosa slayed the guitar, Maddie Elyse slapped the bass while she sang along, and my old pal Adal Wiley brought something special with his keys, samples, and dancing.  We played a fun combo of new songs off Valkyrie and older, classic Johnny songs like “Escape”, “Stain”, and “The Devil has the Best Tunes”.  It felt like a very special night… oh and I hit the high note at the end of ‘Cleopatra’, so I was happy about that.  Haha.  

I thought that our album release show was the start of something new… we planned on performing more around LA to promote.  We were putting together tour plans for the west coast and the PNW.  But then Covid hit…

At first, I think we were all caught unaware and unsure how long it would last.  I took it as an opportunity to relax and sorta catch my breath.  But before too long it became clear that the music world as we knew it had changed and wouldn’t be going back to normal for a long time.  Maybe never. 

I stopped posting on social media for a long time.  It just felt inappropriate - what with everything that has occurred since - to post some sort of ‘look at me and my weird prog rock project’.  Even writing this blog is a bit strange to me.  But I wanted to let those who have reached out know: we’re doing great and there’s a lot of new music being prepared for 2021.

Like a lot of my musician friends, I’ve been making Covid Records haha.  Johnny Stranger’s Album #6 is nearly done.  I’d say it’s at the 80% mark.  I have one more song to finish tracking all the guitars/keys and then I’ll be recording vocals for the entire thing.  I’m very happy with how it’s all coming together.  The majority of the songs on this next record were written back when I was living in Boston, long before my life in LA began.  These songs are very special to me and contain some of my personal favorite songwriting that I’ve done.  They’re also connected to a tumultuous time in my life.  I was recently explaining some of the song themes and what was happening in my life at the time and my best friend/partner David remarked, “Damn. That’s dark.”  I laughed.

Finishing the album is just the beginning though.  Being an indie musician means releasing a massive amount of content.  We’ve been planning out something that is - for us - a real step up from what we’ve been able to do before.  Having this covid time has allowed us to slow down and really put some thought into what we’re doing.  Personally, one of my greatest pleasures with JS is being hit up by fans about the music… Hopefully we’ll be seeing more and more opportunities for outreach.

I miss playing shows so much, but it looks like that’s off the table for a little while.  But that’ll just give us more time to really share the story behind the next album online.  So stay tuned.  There’s a whole lot coming.

Oh, and one last thing.  I get asked all the time about our old albums, especially ‘Lucid’.  I will definitely be re-releasing those original 4 albums, I just haven’t decided exactly how to do that.  One more outlandish idea was to do a 6-CD box set (the 4 albums, an album of B-Sides, and an album of live stuff), but I’m not sure it makes sense to get a CD box set made when so few people have CD players anymore.  I can always just release them digitally but I still want to do something a bit special.  If you have any ideas, let me know.

Stay safe,

Peter

'Marche' Animated Video

Very excited to finally share this!

This video took a long, long time to make.

As I was wrapping up production on the entire Nutcracker EP (think I finished around June 2019), the idea came up that we needed videos to help promote. At first, I tried some more typical Johnny things… using old footage and messing around with it. Some of those videos are posted on our IGTV. But they never felt like anything special. We talked about some sort of animated video, but I was always hesitant… mostly because I knew anything like that would take a super long time.

Now, I’ve done some animation in the past. My old roomate and I animated a music video for an old project of mine back in the early days of Johnny. And these type of things take MONTHS of 16-hour days, all super zeroed in.

Funny enough, the solution that finally got me to decide to do it was Maddie’s. She suggested just having a white backdrop, rather than designed a background for every scene. I knew that would cut down on my workload substantially and I also liked the idea of how it would look. So I started to dream up the sequence and figure out how to best go about production.

I took the album cover by my old friend Stephanie Macleod and cut out the primary figures of the Nutcracker and Claire. I then created digital ‘puppies’ that I could keyframe animate in Adobe Premiere. The sequences that were more complicated I created frame by frame in Photoshop. For example, the shot where the nutcracker breakdances was something like 96 frames. Some of the other puppets I had to create myself, but I used elements of Stephanie’s album art to give them a similar texture.

I essentially disappeared into my computer for a few months, taking it one shot at a time. I have two monitors set up on my desk and I had The Office running most all the time. Definitely ran through the entire 9-season run and then some.

But thank God it’s finally out and everyone can see it.

One final thought… working on this video was really eye-opening in the way that I saw that animation can continue to be a big focus for JS, albeit in different ways. So, you can expect more. I already have plans for the first single off the next album and an idea for the follow record as well. So yeah. Lots more deep dives en route.

Concerning 'The Nutcracker'

Releasing music is one of my favorite feelings. ‘The Nutcracker EP’ was a serious labor of love and has been a very intense experience... but this EP (as well as an accompanying animated video to be released in December) was worth every second of work. 

A bit about how this came about...  I started recording songs when I was 13 or 14 years old. My dad had some pieces of home recording equipment (ADAT and outboard FX processors) and I started to teach myself how to use it. At that age, I started recording albums of works... teaching myself the equipment and developing my songwriting. In those early days, I at some point had an idea to record a version of ‘Coffee (Arabian Dance)’ and ‘Sugar Plum Fairies’.  I tracked them on my dad’s ADAT and shared them with family and friends. Everyone around me was supportive of what little 14-y.o. me was doing, so I felt encouraged to record a couple more. ‘Marche’ and a guitar-only version of ‘Russian Dance’. 

If you were to hear those recordings, you’d likely wince and grit your teeth to get through it. But hey, I was 14. The recordings are poor, but the idea was there. 

The original artwork from when I was a kid

Flash forward to January 2019. I had just finished mixing our next album “Valkyrie” and team Johnny was feeling good about the responses we were getting. I mentioned that i was toying around with the idea of revisiting that ‘heavy metal nutcracker’ idea... and the exuberant response I got really surprised me. It was all I really need to decide to do it. They gave me the deadline of June to have it completed... and so I had to work fast to get it together. 

I had to make a decision at that point if I wanted to strictly follow Tchaikovsky’s arrangements or embellish them (like I did when I was a kid recording them from memory).  I settled on following the classic arrangements to the note. I ordered the score and started to pour into it. 

The score.

I also decided that I wanted to go past the 4 songs I had tracked before. Specifically, I thought I had a good idea for the arrangement of ‘Mirlitons’. I liked the bursts and dynamics. I decided to tackle ‘Waltz of the Flowers’ after hearing it again in an episode of “It’s Always Sunny” where Cricket falls in love with a Golden Retriever. If it’s good enough for the gang, it’s good enough for me. Haha. 

Recording started with MIDI drum mockups of what I wanted. I’ve been told I’m a very rhythmically-minded songwriter (probably cause one of my first instruments was drums haha) so I always have a lot of specific drum patterns I’m looking for. Once I have those, I’ll tackle the guitar arrangements. ‘The Nutcracker’ was particularly challenging because I’m taking a full orchestra and trying to play everything on just the guitar. It’s hard to find a blend that creates the same depth. French horns have a particular tone and texture that I had to find the ‘guitar equivalent’ of. It wasn’t hard, but it was fun and time-consuming. Trying to create dimension to the mix. To aid this effort, I used a lot of synths via Arturia. Elements like a classic Farfisa became essential to create a wider palate and add a bit of humor. 

Once I had the tracks mocked up, I visited my good friend Kiel Feher for drums. Kiel and I have been recording together since 2013 and he has an amazing little drum-recording studio in his house. He knocked out the drum parts in an afternoon and added a lot of great moments that brought the songs new life. 

The next month or so was tracking additional guitars and keys to bring the work up to par.  I have a little studio in my apartment, where I use a combination of Axe Fx, GuitarRig, and other plug-ins available right in Logic. Since I mix all the JS stuff, I was able to mix as I go.  I leave my stereo bus clean till it’s time to master, which I did at the very end (rather than mixing into a master bus of any sort). 

Ultimately, the experience of making something like ‘The Nutcracker’ is a bit like self-induced cabin fever. You’re sitting in a chair all day (oftentimes with dogs sitting behind you), drinking non-stop coffee, focused on learning each of those pesky Tchaikovsky runs. To keep myself up, I would do long dog walks. Or go out to shows with friends. It’s something I’d have to force myself to do because - although I’m bummed out from the work - I’m a workaholic and am always pushing forward.  It’s not a luxurious life.  Not that rock n roll lifestyle everyone talks about.  But it’s satisfying in the long run and I’m more interested in making works that stretch me than I am in partying. 

Screenshot of the ‘Waltz of the Flowers’ Session

After finishing the EP, Maddie started sharing it around and looking for opportunities. She has built an incredible team around this release and I owe her countless back massages for it haha. 

The ONLY misgiving I have is that she added another project for me. When it came time to collaborate on video/social media ideas, we stumbled across the idea of doing an animated video for one of the songs. So, lo and behold, I found myself back in that chair... spending months animating a video we’ll be releasing in early December. It’s done already and I think people will like it. 

So that’s a bit about making ‘The Nutcracker’.  There are a lot of other things going on in life too. Polaris Rose has just finished another album... 12 songs that are sort of our “greatest hits in sync”. It’s a departure for us - musically - but that’s sorta what makes it fun.  I’m proud of the production work I did on those. 

We are focused now on 2020, where we’ll be playing more shows and releasing even more music. So keep an eye out. 🤭

Interview with Stereo Stickman

Had the recent pleasure of chatting with Stereo Stickman. Click here to read the full interview.

A lil excerpt:

If you could only listen to one song for the rest of your life, which would you choose, and why?

Baby Shark. Because it’s about a baby shark. Haha. Seriously though, I wouldn’t be able to choose one song or even one album.

What are the main values you want to represent in the music world right now?

Real creativity. Not just impersonating the rock music that has come before, but trying to take it somewhere. I try to inject my love of sci-fi/fantasty, Jungian psychology, and storytelling into JS… to hopefully tell stories through our music. The future JS records (which I already have written) will illustrate this even more clearly than Valkyrie.

What’s the best piece of advice you ever received on your journey as a musician?

“There’s a market for everything.” Which I took as permission to be your most unabashed self.

In other news, our next show is October 15th! More details coming soon. Also, we have another single coming out September 23rd. So - as you can imagine - we’re super busy getting everything together.

Finally, I wanted to say a huge thanks to everyone for listening and sharing “Follow in my Footsteps”. My experience here in the driver’s seat is amazing, as I keep getting hit up by new listeners from around the world. All amazing. :) Can’t wait to share more music with you all.

Tonight, we’re having a band-date and seeing 'IT (Chapter 2)’. read the book back in 8th grade, and I loved it. The first movie was amazing and I’ve been hearing even more incredible praise for the second movie… so very excited for that.