I'm still trying to mix the thing so that it sounds good on my car stereo. I want the drums to punch, but I also want the bass to really punch. I'm slowly but surely getting there - and so far, it sounds better than my original mixes. I want every song to sound like it can play on the radio without it sounding like it was ripped from the radio onto a shitty cassette.

I have one more track to record - "Motion," about the Midnight Rider accident - and from there I'm finished with tracking the thing. Now all I need to do is remix, punch up the songs, recut some vocals, add some midrange to my guitars, pay the $89 to publish the songs, give them ISRCs and put them onto about every streaming service known to man. In a month's time, you too can listen to songs about whatever I want to write about on any given day and, gee, you may be pop stars, each and every one of you.

"But wait," you may but may not ask, "how are you going to promote an album if nobody's heard of you?" With that, I want to propose looking into getting music videos done for the album alongside pushing out a single - probably today, probably later this week (depending on how I feel about this hot new mix of the single I feel like pushing out). I also want to get album art done - not the cover, no. I whipped that up based on looking at some Howard Finster sacred art and depicted me and my partner-in-crime, the guy from |-| 3 (( |< (pronounced Heck), in that style. I'll probably do a back cover and then look into having people illustrate a lyrics sheet/gatefold.

And speaking of wildly ambitious things I probably won't do, I'm seeing into opening a Kickstarter for a very limited run of vinyls. Those little discs that play sound? Yeah, you can get private pressings - that's how the stockbroker dude with the warbly voice got his album out. Of course Light in the Attic made him into a celebrity - and he turned down their money because he's either too rich or he doesn't like money, I dunno, I'm getting mixed signals, Lewis/Randy - but still, a private pressing wouldn't be too bad. It'd all be 120 gram because I can't tell the fucking difference between 180g and 120g on my lower high-end turntable - hell, my copies of Rocks and Chicago VII outshine my 180g pressings of No Depression and Bleach (but are outshined by my copy of Nirvana's Nevermind) - and I'd have to do a lot of configuring so that my second disc - which, right now, clocks in at 24 minutes a side - actually gets pressed. Either way, this is a double album and I'm sticking to it. I could've stuck to a single disc like Mercy Machine, but fuck it, you know? Bloated double albums are where it's at. Shame I couldn't get Mike Judge to do Beavis and Butt-head skits in between randomly selected songs.

(real talk: I actually kinda liked Speedin' Bullet 2 Heaven despite those skits)

To clarify:

- Bekowsky needs a tad more mixing
- "Motion" needs to be recorded
- the sequencing needs to be finalized for better vinyl side flow
- the songs need to be published and put onto iTunes, Amazon mp3, Tidal, Spotify and my Bandcamp (where you can buy it for $12 in a hi-res version)
- I need to do a back cover and commission artists to do a gatefold
- look into making music videos
- probably press vinyl, I know there's an audience for this