If there’s one thing that drives me crazy as a musician, it’s when you bust your ass to record a really cool song, only to have it fall far short of your goals. One of my greatest disappointments of recent memory was “This Old Dawg”, which I first recorded in 2008. I’d only just started using Cubase and recording on a computer, and hadn’t worked out a lot of my recording techniques. The song suffered from it.
I’ve never stopped thinking about “This Old Dawg”, though, and hoped that I would have a reason to re-visit the song at some point. Much to my surprise, that opportunity (and reason) came to me via MySpace Music. Or, more specifically, through a contest they’re sponsoring with Toyota called Rock The Space 2. I’d hope to submit a song for Windhaven, and maybe something from the Crewe album for myself, but for some reason I wound up working on “This Old Dawg”, with Doug Schwartz proving a much needed groove infusion.
It’s taken two days of rendering, engineering and mixing, but I finally got the damned thing done. I’m rather pleased with the results. Except for the new drums tracks and new vocals, it’s the same song. I used all the old guitar, bass and background tracks. What’s new is the production, and that represents a significant improvement over the old version. I’m very proud of what I was able to pull off, and I hope it’s something that Doug can be proud to have been a part of.
Anyway, the only real reason I’m writing this is to have a post I can link to on Facebook and MySpace. “This Old Dawg” has just been accepted by MySpace, so I’m going to post that geeky cassette widget all over my web sites and social pages. They keep telling me that shameless self-promotion is the only way to get ahead. So I’m going to give it a shot. Hell, if I can’t make an impression with this new version of “This Old Dawg”, there isn’t much hope for any of the other songs.
