I feel like 2022 has been a remarkable year. Stay tuned for 2023.

I feel like 2022 has been a remarkable year for me.

This year went by so fast the year end wrap up seems wild as it feels like everything just happened.

I was so lucky to produce records that came out this year by Sarah Borges and Emily Duff and mix records by Montana’s Sam Platts & The Plainsmen and Finland’s Devil Dog Road.

The work I’ve done in the studio the last 3 years has been very different than most of my producing career.

I’ve been lucky to have my recording studio, Cowboy Technical, with partner Tim Hatfield for 22 years in Brooklyn. We’ve been aided by Mario Viele with his inventive steady hand and when structural problems reared their head at our current location Hugh Pool invited us to share his Excello recording space in the same building.  Work never stopped.

I was also really lucky to have pretty much rebuilt my home recording studio over the 2019 holidays which put me in a very good position to work remotely from home.  Out of necessity I have put more of myself, my own playing and singing, into the records I have produced in the last 3 years than ever before.  It’s really something to be trusted by artists with their songs, it’s something else to have them urge you to ‘keep going’ on the recordings to take them from ideas to records.  I’m super thankful.

I was able to release a new record of my own music too from the “Shut In Singles Series” batch of songs I had been posting on Bandcamp.  I had tons of collaborative help with all of them but I have to mention art ace Chris Bryson for helping me put them in such a cool package and also brilliant editor Don Adams who helped me make videos for the version of “Honky Tonk Women” I recorded with Jimbo Mathus and the fan sourced video we did for my recording of Nick Lowe’s “12 Step Program (To Quit You Babe)”

Thanks in great part to Sarah Borges I was able to go out and play more live gigs than I had in years.  Our collaboration on her last 3 records has turned into a very cool thing for me where we play our gigs like a band that has 2 singers with Sarah graciously letting me sing some of my tunes as a part of our show.

We started the year on the Outlaw Country Cruise and then did a lot of touring in the van through a lot of American, all way to the Rockies and back with Keith Voegele and Kenny Soule.  Then with the aid of old friend Mick Brown we made it to the UK this November.  My first time in 6 years, Sarah’s first time in even longer.

Photo by Trudi Knight

My very good friend Kasey Anderson helped me out with a redesign of my website featuring a new setup for some new shirts and I have to mention Patrice Fehlen, who’s been helping me get the word out on my activites for quite some time.  I have some great friends in the press and I appreciate them but it takes some pro help to get the message to the wonderful writers and for that help I’m super thankful.

All of this has me looking towards 2023 and all the things that are coming.  I have collaborative records as both producer and bandleader coming out with Erik Vincent Huey and Portland, OR phenom Jerry Joseph.  Also a track that I did with my wife Mary Lee Kortes for the upcoming Pete Ham tribute. There’s a record that I mixed for Kasey Anderson. 

I’ve also been working on an album for Katie Curley (formerly Bourbon Express).  There’s some very cool Tim Heap recordings and I’m looking forward to starting a record with Jono Manson.  It’s been quite some time since I produced Jono’s “Little Big Man”.  It’ll be great to get in the studio together again.

All the playing in 2022 got me in touch w my gear and one new guitar in particular, my blue Collings I-30LC, has been giving me musical gifts every time I pick it up.  I’ve been saving them on my phone and I hope to finish them as songs for a new Eric Ambel record to be produced by Jimbo Mathus.

Collings I-30LC

There will be gigs starting with a swing of Northeast gigs with Sarah Borges and Miss Tess then we’ll head out to sea on Outlaw Country Cruise #7 in late February.

Thank you to all my collaborators and all the folks who support the music through purchases, and attending shows.  Thanks to the clubs that present us and thanks to the wonderful people who’ve had us play in their homes.

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