Blogger's Band Babe the blue Ox Releases New Record Today

The Q didn't start this blog because he has a band. In fact, I rarely write about music. But music is, was, will be, such a huge part of my life, I can't help but share my excitement with y'all that after 15 years of fits and starts, my band Babe the blue OX has a new record to share. All of our albums, dating back to our Homestead and RCA days in the '90s, have been named for Barbra Streisand records. There was Je M'Appelle Babe, and Color Me Babe, and People and The Way We Were. (all available on the iTunes etc. by the way). I can assure you they sound nothing like Babs, but we're quite certain she would approve, even if her lawyers might not. But now, there's:

babetheblueox.bandcamp.com

Guilty.

Just go to the babetheblueox.bandcamp.com and you can listen for free or download if you so choose.  Remember that each song sounds quite different, so if the first one scares you (and it should) just move to track 2 and so on.

My best pals Hanna, Eddie and Rose are my dear connection to my past and companions in my present. We all had kids. We've got jobs. We don't tour and I don't wear my hair long or paint my fingernails or wear women's clothing (much). H&E live in the neighborhood. Rose lives in Clinton Hill. We've been in Brooklyn so long we remember when the word Williamsburg was more likely to conjure images of role-playing ye olde-tyme blacksmiths on a pre-industrial Virginia themepark. Of course, the irony there is that ye olde-tyme blackmiths have made a comeback in "dream of the 1890's" Brooklyn, to the point that you could call that 'hood in north Brooklyn "Colonial Williamsburg." I hear you can slaughter your own pigs and jam your own jellies there. To which my grandfather, who retired from farming at the age of 60 or so after years of backbreaking work would probably say, "why on earth would you want to do that when you can afford to have someone do it for you?" Well said grampa. Well said. (In honesty, even after he and my gramma moved to town they kept an extensive garden and canned stuff. In tiny Mt. Carroll Illinois. Their house was next to the only bowling alley in a 30 mile radius. My gramma's mom, my great-gramma, lived upstairs in an area that was set up like an apartment. We called her gramma Upstairs. They were really into sustainable farming, organic foods, and reflexology - a sort of acupressure. It seems to me that would have been right at home in today's Brooklyn!)

But we did it OURselves, with help from our dear pal Dan Littleton as producer. Chris Edwards mixed and engineered. Dan and wife Elizabeth Mitchell are the band IDA and also make unbelievably necessary albums as Elizabeth Mitchell with daughter Storey. (And they just got nominated for a Grammy!) We made the record up at their house in Saugerstock, NY, a non-existent town that resides between Woodstock and Saugerties. I suspect that this record will NOT be winning any Grammies (plural of Grammy?) but that doesn't prevent us from saying it's pretty darn good just the same.