A few stray images too...

Busy day shooting pictures and writing stuff...minimal song progress, but I've posted a few pictures here that might be of interest...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kitkelleymusic/

Some track art (all done by me, for better or for worse) and a few pictures of my elaborate studio setup (a macbook and some dilapidated thrift-store musical instruments in my living room. Oh, and a classy Radio Shack microphone. We do a lot with a little around here.)

I'll be working on songs all weekend...hopefully something good will come of it. :)

Kit Kelley @ BandCamp...

A slight lull in the songwriting/recording action at the moment. I'm a writer too, and have a deadline this week...but I've got a couple of new songs that should be done and posted soon.

Reaction has been great to "Dr. Walter". Takes courage to hang with a song that runs more than four minutes, and I appreciate it. The Facebook page just went up, and already has 38 fans, which is just stupendous and much appreciated. Perhaps you will be number 40, dear reader? I have a bin of terrible DVDs I've been considering giving away to select FB fans (fan number 40, 50, etc)...I mean unbelievably bad. You may have "Anaconda"--but can you survive "Anacondas"? Or the direct-to-video sequel to "Kangaroo Jack"? Go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kit-Kelley/359132810897 and pray I forget about this idea and just dump these on St. Vinnie's instead.

My Bandcamp site is up and running, at http://kitkelley.bandcamp.com . "Jenny Said", "Kiss and Tell", "I Want You Back" and "The Tragical History of Doctor Heinrich Wilhelm Walter" are all up there for free download in whatever format you like (including FLACs)... it'll cost you an email address (for a theoretical future mailing list for show announcements and maybe a monthly or bimonthly email) but you can unsubscribe at any time and honestly--god knows when I'll find the time to even make the mailing list.

That's it for tonight. If you like the songs, feel free to share 'em and spread the word. I know I'm kind of an odd duck and these songs are a little unusual, but I really hope somewhere out there is a little tribe of kooks and weirdos like me who might take them to heart. Maybe you're one of us? :)

Black-legs and harlots, cut-throats and Zen Archers...

So, I'm slowly working up the courage to let people actually hear a few of the songs. I've always been a little shy/terrified about that, which is completely not helpful. I sent a few out to some friends this week, and posted a few links to the songs I've finished. We'll see how it goes.

I finally finished (and uploaded) the big Faustian epic, which has the suitably pompous and weighty title "The Tragical History of Doctor Heinrich Wilhelm Walter (1348-??)" . I have a little bit of a theatre background, and I wanted to do something a little more complex, tell a little bigger of a story than my usual 3-4 minute pop spaz fests. A couple of lines from an old (and I do mean old) notebook were the genesis of the thing, and the rest just developed organically. And by "organically" I mean I spent a month writing lyrics for five or six hours a day. I think it was worth it...hopefully others will agree.  There's a mountain of antiquated phrases and references in the lyrics (from old medicine shows to John Gilbert and Greta Garbo to 19th century French arch-criminal Fantômas and his paramour/victim Lady Maud Beltham)...yeah, it's that kind of thing. But hey, if you prefer your pop songs short and sweet, I definitely have a ton of those.

Next up? I have like 20 songs in progress, so it could be anything, but I've been working on this cool old west saloon song, as well as this amazingly cheesy 80s bombastic love ballad that should really have been the theme to some Kelly McGillis movie or something. And there are three or four good old-school soul-pop numbers I have to work on. Could be anything really--insanity is unpredictable.

Anyway: the Kit Kelley Facebook page is here, chock full o' fresh songs:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kit-Kelley/359132810897

And the Kit Kelley music MySpace...

http://myspace.com/kitkelleymusic

More soon... xo

His nom de guerre, Macheath Messer, could never bear the stare of...

Working on that Faustian pop epic again tonight. I think I have it written, now I just have to assemble the tracks and sing 16 tracks of vocals. No problem. The story follows a physician (actually a doctor of psychiatry, though it's not overtly stated) as he uses his Machiavellian man-charms to start a few world wars, take down some historical figures, etc--and we go back and forth from his birth to his (alleged) demise and his ultimate fate. All in that upbeat, catchy pop/rock sound the kids love so. It's a little longer than the three-minute pop of some of my other songs, but I'm trying to keep it concise. Having said that, it took me five sheets of legal pad paper to write down the lyrics, so...yeah. It's coming together.

I went out to Zia records in Tempe today and dropped off my CD entry for their local comp. I hope they like the tunes and decide to include one (or both)... I used to work out there (actually at one of their other locations) so it was fun to be back. Actually they said they were hiring, so...you never know.

Tomorrow I hope to finish (or at least get closer to finishing) the big epic and I can go back to working on some of the other songs. I've got a 19th century saloon number I'm dying to get to, and a clearly derivative-of-Prince ballad, and then a few more of the powerpop/poprock gems I seem to enjoy writing. Hopefully I'll have a new song to post in a day or to. For now it's off to get some shut-eye.

Even The Score And Run For More

Hi. My name is Kit Kelley. I'm a singer and songwriter. I've written a bunch of new songs, which I hope people will enjoy. I've written songs before but this is the first time I'm really trying to get them out to the larger world. As of this exact moment, only three people in the world have ever heard the new songs, but that's changing. A local record store called Zia is putting together a local compilation so in the morning I'm going to submit a couple of my new songs. I'm a little terrified but I'm going to give it a shot.

So, the new songs. The ones going to Zia tomorrow are "Jenny Said" and "Kiss and Tell". "Jenny" is a sort of power-pop thing with some "Walk On The Wild Side" do-doo-doos thrown in. The results of a particularly unusual evening on the road. "Kiss and Tell" is an old-school soul song that's equally full of shady innuendo. I sang my ass off for that one so I hope it works.

There are two others I put up on MySpace. Zia's entry form wanted a MySpace address, so...yeah. "Neon Lights" is a retro soul/disco/WTF song--either insanely catchy or insanely annoying, but I like it. And "I Want You Back" is another powerpop/powerpunk song about wanting your ex back even when your ex was not so good for you. It sounds live, but full disclosure--it's fake live--I sang and played most of it live in the studio but the crowd noises were just me being silly. So just a disclaimer: I have not played Budokan. Yet.

Tonight I'm working on a much more complex song, a little mini-faustian-epic that tells the story of one particularly misguided gentleman and his misdeeds. It's got a lot of moving parts but I'm hoping a few more days and I'll have it done. Sparks (the weird and wonderful Ron and Russell Mael) has always been one of my favorite bands and I'm hearing their influence on some of this stuff.

In answer to your unasked question--it's just me; I write, sing and play everything myself (though I do use some drum loops and drum machines to supplement my mediocre drumming). At some point I'm hoping there will be an actual band, because I would love to play this stuff live, but I definitely can't do that on my own.

Lots more going on, lots of songs in progress. More soon. For now, I need to sleep. Thanks for stopping by. If you want to check out the songs they're at http://myspace.com/kitkelleymusic or http://kitkelleymusic.com.