CURRENT EVENTS

Health

 

Not having a good start to the new year at the moment and for the last 5 weeks I have been suffering from Sciatica it's something that I have never had before and over the past week it's been very painful  and got much worse, preventing me from getting about and even loosing plenty of sleep as I cannot sit or lie down on anything soft, and sitting on a wooden dining chair seems to be the only way of easing the pain.

 

So glad I am not on my own and have my wife who has been tremendous throughout the whole ordeal, by doing the shopping and getting to my bank to pay the bills. I cannot even get to my local pub for a pint and have been stuck in this chair for most of the week, though I have at least managed to get into my bed over the last two days to get some sleep  I would love to go for a drink tonight but it's struggle to even get to the toilet upstairs, never mind try and walk up the road to it.

 

The doctor subscribed me Codeine for the pain, and I have used  Ibuprofen Gel and Volterol  over the afflicted areas all down my right hand side, but they do not seem to do a thing. I just hope it gets better soon, so I can start getting back to work again.
 

 

Music Platforms

 

 

Soundcloud:

 

Is the place for all my studio work and collaborations and is my only place to be. Has for putting my music elsewhere its far too much of a task to keep up with. Making music for me is an hobby and I am not that interesting in getting about everywhere or promoting it. My main hobby is listening to music and being on one site I can get to listen to all of peoples tracks not just snippets and leaving a comment. No way on this earth could anybody honesty genuinely listen to that much music being here there and everywhere. There is simply not enough hours in the day to do so.

 

Youtube:

 

Is the place I put my amateur videos of live recordings or videos I make for some of my studio work along with promotional videos for the music I feel is good enough to sell and a lot of work as been put into those tracks. It's also another place to see another side to the music I do myself in relation to what I put on Soundcloud.

 

Facebook:

 

Is just a social media site to keep in touch with my friends, and get my music about that I post on Soundcloud and Youtube so peeps can get to it if they want to. I have also created a new page entailed Lee's Music Gems. This is a page dedicated to the god music I have come across along my journeys on Soundcloud and other media places. It's not about my music, it's very much about other peoples who can do a damn site better than myself.

 

Latest Work

 

 

Well pleased with the feedback left upon all 3 December releases on the cloud the first two "Maybe It's Not Much Of A Christmas" and "The Parting Glass" were well fitting to the festive season, and I thought "War Pigs" was a great rocking way to end off the year with. 

 

So glad to have done something with my good friend Mark J. Bennett again, and he provided the perfect platform of a vocal acapellia of the traditional song for me to work around. I must admit it's perhaps not the way I wanted to work around  it, and would of preferred to do more of a Celtic version and perhaps dragged my brother Martin in to help me out on this one. But my choice to go down the road with the use of a pipe organ and synth pad gave it that feeling that it was done in a church perhaps, and gave it much more of a heavenly Christmas feel I felt too. 

 

I did originally suggest to Mark that he should put his acappelia out on his own cloud as an open collaboration because I felt it was a very strong piece of work of his, and I would love to see others do something else with it, and who knows maybe I will even get my wish of seeing somebody give it a more Celtic approach with some well fitting instrumentation backing him up, and I am glad to see that he as done so now in the new year.

 

During working and releasing my collaboration done with Mark, my good friend Hiroshi approached me with a most stunning instrumental version of Black Sabbath's  "War Pigs" asking me if I would like to sing it Well having just heard it, there was no way I could refuse. He also told me that he had asked another person to sing it first and for me to take my time as his version would most likely be published first.

 

Well at the time I told him I would get it done soon, even though I had a stinking cold, but two days later I sang it and sent it to Hiroshi. Bemuse of my cold I was not hanging around and only done one quick take, but I do it without listening to the original record, to which I have not done in some time now, and Hiroshi sort of liked it, but wanted me to sustain my voice at the end of every sentence as on the record.

 

So a couple of days later I sung it again, this time having a listen to the original and done two takes just in case. My cold was still very much hanging over me, and it was one of those you just cannot shake off, but I felt it did not affect me enough to stop me from singing it. Having done this I sent to it Hiroshi and it was at this point that he told me he had a word with the other chap who was singing it, and told me he did not mind if my version went out first.

 

Hiroshi I think was hoping I would put this out before Christmas, but as I had not long released my collab with Mark and also feeling that the song would not really be appropriate for Christmas I very much told him that it would perhaps be better if it was released on Boxing Day (LOL) I also told him that Christmas is very busy and the cloud would be extremely quiet, and it would not be a good idea to put this out whilst it is at all. So I waited till the 30th to put it out, so not to interfere with New Years Eve, which would be another busy time for everyone.

 

I have to say that "War Pigs" is the most outstanding production work I have ever heard Hiroshi do.  he even mixed my vocal stem to which at first I disliked, cause he had used various bits of EQ on my voice here and there, and made it sound perhaps odd to me, as I know what my voice should come across like with my own productions  But after a few spins I soon got used to what he had done with it  and got to like it more.

 

 

The Lee (Jack Jones) Lucas Project Continues In The New Year

 

With everything that's been going on with my health and being bogged down with Sciatica at the moment, I am so glad I have held back on releasing what will be my 4th release in the Lee (Jack Jones) Lucas Project series "Driven By Dirt" to which I completed at the end of November last year.

 

December was a month I wanted to dedicate to Christmas and was my main reason for holding it back, as I wanted to put out more appropriate songs for its season. It  was even a struggle to sing "War Pigs" to be honest, and had to do so sitting down in my computer chair as I cannot stand up for too long without having to sit back down again, due to the pain running down the right hand side of my leg.

 

Right now I am unable to do anything more with the project, as I hate playing guitar sitting down, and have to stand up to do so. So I am pretty much reduced to singing projects only at the moment till this thing clears up. But I do have a couple of those in progress too at the moment, so that will keep me busy.

 

"Driven By Dirt" is not a new song, and I first wrote it on the acoustic guitar and put out a live acoustic version on the Tuesday Night Open Mic Night Campfire group on Facebook back in march last year. However I am really exited how this studio version as turned out and I feel it works way better for it. It even allows me to express it far more better with my voice, and in reality these types of songs my voice as always been much better suited for in reality I feel too.

 

The song will be hitting the cloud this week and I will not be holding it back any longer, and it should be by next weekend at least . For me personally even though I did not really think that much of the acoustic version, I feel this is the best song in the series so far. But we are all different no doubt.