JUST WHAT HAS OCCURRED

1.5.23

Welcome to the jungle we'll all remember as 2023. Today, I kicked the New Year off with the release of a new music video from last Summer's new album, Need a Momenent: "Wickiup 3."

I knew this would be challenging video to make because of the subject matter: living in a hut. What kind of movie or tv show could I find with a hut at the center of it? As luck would have it, I found an old Betty Boop cartoon that featured a wickiup prominently. I don't often use cartoons because it's hard to jam myself into animation and have it look okay. In the QB film library there are but three examples before this one. The first was the animation I did myself for "Everyone Goes Away." That was quite a chore, for however easy it looks. Then there was last winter's video for "God's Cat Now," where I cartoon-filtered my TV head, to poor result. Lastly, there was a brief animation last year of the QB logo head, put in a cartoon TV I drew. This was for a small animated wine commercial in the video, "On the Lookout." Re-using the cartoon TV head, plus a quick cartoon body I drew up, I was able to share the screen with Betty Boop her own self.

Anyway, that kicks off 2023. What's coming up? I've got 3 (!) albums planned. The first is being finished up even now, from last summer's demo album that never got made. I had a notion: what if I made it a "band" kind of QB album, and added the QB 3-string banjo, never before heard on record? Hopefully that will drop with some singles thereof in the first half of the year. Then there's the Rudyard Kipling concept album, with six long songs putting music to six long Kipling poems. It's mostly in the can, while I decide whether to fake adding a flute to it. I'm also considering a live-in-studio album of new songs, videoing as I record. The open mikes should continue as well, all year.

2.13.23

First item up is the eleventh big music video released from last year’s monster piece of an album, Need a Momenent: “Everybody’s into My Sound.” It’s an ironic bit of braggadocio that I someday expect to be not so ironic, with a special assist from the 1969 Grammy Awards. In order of appearance, my head takes over the bodies of Jose Feliciano, Glen Campbell, The Temptations, Mason Williams, Bobby Goldsboro, Lou Rawls, Don Rickles and Paul McCartney.

Not a lot going on, otherwise. I’m still hanging in there with 3 or four open mikes per month, here and there. Also, the new album, “Rude Yard,” is progressing nicely. It will have a very unique sound. The unique sound of Jethro Tull, actually, as I’ve been recording with flautist extraordinaire, Steve Cosio. “Rude Yard” will be a concept album in which I’ve taken six of Rudyard Kipling’s finest poems and put them to music, if music is what the Question Beggar sound can be considered. Combine the Kipling lyrics with the rock flute and you got something strange there. Just listening to the rough mixes so far is…disorienting. I hear my sound… I hear Tull’s flute… I can’t process it. It’s as crazy a sound as if Pavarotti sang on a U2 song…oh. Wait.

Anyhow, at the rate the recording is progressing it could be finished by early April. If so, I’ll likely dribble out singles again and release the whole thing this summer.  Six songs, but it’s about 33 minutes, so look for some long tracks.

Meanwhile, finally getting around to learning DAW recording—but not enslaving myself to the grid—I hope to start this month putting out regular live-in-the-studio vids. If they go well, I may put them together as a “live” album for release.

What else? A half hour video set at my old favorite bar, Six Springs Tavern in Richardson, Texas, coming up in late March. That is, it’s a half hour set that will be videotaped. I hope to post the link here if it goes well.

3-12-23

So yeah I've been a busy little Beggar: playing, recording, producing vids...everything but promoting avidly, for which I shall now endeavor to make up for there to so.  First up and first of its kind, is a showcase in the Fort Worth's famous Stockyards. This is the equivalent of playing a gig on New Orlean's Bourbon Street. It's tourist central. The first here isn't my playing the Stockyards—I did that a few weeks back with an open mike at the Rhinestone Saloon—but in the type of showcase I'll be playing. MTV Storytellers™ style, with the other two singersongwriters right there on stage with me. They'll have their subtle guitars and voices and I'll have my...massively blazing rig, which they'll surely appreciate when it's my turn to play. Actually, they will. I know the two gentlemen from many events and open mikes and I can't think of anyone I'd rather share a stage with. Both funny dudes with great stories and I'll do my best to keep up appearances. I don't know that there will be any jamming. My unique set up kind of discourages that, but I'm keeping my expectations open. Taking place the day before Saint Patrick's Day makes it one of the deadest nights of the venue year, so I'll be counting on all of you, my devoted fans, to swarm the joint. Do so, and I'll buy you a drink. Gun soda. On ice. (cont'd)

Then skip a week and I've got another showcase—to be taped live for Wellspring TV, whatever that is—at my old favorite venue, Six Springs Tavern. There will be four of us—not together at once, this time—and of them, I know only Dan Weber, with whom I've shared a showcase before at Six Springs. He's good. I'm sure the other players are, too. It's a half hour set and it'll be all originals for me. Some new, some old, playing the Grumbleduke, slightly limited because on of the pickups is out.

8-10-23

Big news. The new album is out. Partially out, anyway. It's out on Bandcamp.com. It drops on Spotify and iTunes and all the rest on August 22. Rude Yard is the album title, and there's so much to say about it. So many firsts: first Question Beggar album featuring someone besides myself. First question beggar album where I didn't pen the lyrics. First QB album you'll have to actually pay for.

I'll explain.

The title Rude Yard refers, obliquely, to Rudyard Kipling, whose poems I used for each of the six songs that make up the album. Normally, six songs would be an EP, but a couple of these songs approach 8 minutes long for a total runtime of over a half hour, so that's an album in my book. A prog rock album.

Having been horribly hung up on prog rock band Jethro Tull ever since "Bungle in the Jungle," the new album is also a tribute their sound, and so I've added the savage flute playing of one Steve Cosio to my one heavy skiffle style. Together, we make a primitive flute combo styling I think of as "Neander-Tull."

I've written quite comprehensively on the origins and significances of the album in the liner notes available on Bandcamp. Check them out, if you're inclined. I'll be putting out the first video from the album in a week or two to coincide with the August 22nd drop.

Did I mention you have to pay now? Yeah. Historically, on Bandcamp anyway, I've had the albums all set to "pay what you want," figuring I'd rather spread the music than make money. Apparently, however, nobody is taking advantage of the generosity, so I might as well upgrade my self worth by saying, "Hey. The free ride is over."

I don't know that anyone buys music for download much anymore, but, just in case: you play, you pay, from now on. If you want my music for free (or just about), there's always Spotify. Really, nothing is worth anything until someone hangs a price tag on it, so why not me? So much of independent musicians making music is about assuming the form of The Big Names™: releasing albums, playing shows, dropping social posts. Their stuff all has price tags, so I'll follow suit as well, never letting on that the kicks I've had just making these albums is all the pay anyone could ever need.

ITEM: Did I mention I'm playing a show September 1st in Pantego, Texas, at Dr. Jekyll's Beer Lab? True story. Opening up again for my friends, The Dirty Reeds and my soon-to-be-friends, Lovers and Lunatics. It's a full set, and I'll be playing brand new songs, never before heard. It's the Friday night that starts the 3-day Labor Day weekend, so who knows how attendance will be? Is everyone leaving town, or looking to par-tay? You decide. I'm inviting you now to please, please show up. Don't leave me to play to the friends and relatives of the other bands! It's...It's...It's just so rock n roll baby!

ITEM: A few weeks back, I dropped the final music video from last year's album, Need a Momenent, "Dig Dig a Ding." It's done quite well, placing in the early triple digits, in terms of views. That means the images are still quite pristine and clear. The video hasn't been worn down by millions of views. I suggest you check it out, while it's still fresh and unwatched.

ITEM: Here's something else you might not notice. I'll be purging this website of unnecessary text. I've kind of realized how superfluous copy is nowadays. No one reads anything anymore. My needless expositions about what I think I'm doing have no relevance. At this point, I'd rather just let people wonder what the hell this site is about then try and blow my own horn ironically. Even this, that I'm writing right now, is really just a kind of diary. My rock autobiography. Written just for me, my number one fan. I guess what you're witnessing is my surrender. I'm giving up on the pretense that I can, through means of website copy, make a fan out of anyone. Really, this site is a minor waste of money. It's not 1998. Nobody is seeking info from a www. Nobody is seeking info on anything. It's not an info-seeking world anymore. If anything, it's a tie-a-techno-balloon-animal-for-me world now. And then tie me another.

That's fine. Everything has its season. If the demand for original music is at an ebb, I'll wait it out. It's not like I can stop making tunes, as long as I'm physically able. I still dig it.

9.11.23

My famous aversion to promotion has only grown stronger of late, I fear. Is it amiss of me to speak of changing planetary energy? And not of, perhaps, growing personal laziness? No. The sugar coating is all but completely sucked off now of social media for a growing number of folks–not just me–and possibly even off the entertainment octopus itself, with all its squirming arms. Movies? What for? TV shows? Why? Music...? Of what shall we sing?

Seriously, what?

You think that people would have had enough of silly love songs...Oops. Maybe they have. Are young folk falling in love anymore? Doesn't seem like it. Is there hope in our countries and our futures, commonly? (There is, but it's considered a pack of conspiracy theories and psyops.) I never actually realized til now that the drought of truth would eventually reach the arts, and—not destroy, but—deplete them. At some point, a sickened juggler gets so sick he can't juggle anymore and he goes to lie down.

Not that I'm laying down. I'm still making videos. Still playing shows. Still writing songs. Still recording and making plans. But it feels habitual. Like, cigarettes habitual. I've heard smokers say the most important thing about smoking is it gives you something to do with your hands. Music, too, perhaps.

Someday, maybe, I'll look back to this writing and say, "Ah, we could feel what was looming over us, the massive tidal wave of change to wash away a time so meaningless we'd grown oblivious to meaning." (I talk really flowery in my head. I do.) Entertainers express, but we need some kind of reality to push off from. This, it's a time where everything is in doubt. It's a cultural flash flood and we're all increasingly floundering for some kind of truth to grab onto that isn't caught up in the relativeness of it all. Words. History. Money. Medicine. Journalism. Law. Sex, man or woman or what. All just washing around us. And here we minstrels are, trying to gargle a song worth hearing over the waves.

Thank God for God. I've written a lot of God songs these days and they're the only things that feel worthwhile. Probably too personal to share. Like political songs, God songs need a ton of camouflage or they tend to grate. U2 has done it wonderfully for decades now. But, hey, everything is in flux and if I feel like the time is right, I'll be crying in the chapel with Elvis, and put out my own gospel record. Who knows.

I really shouldn't write these promo pieces when my mood is off kilter, but I do have news to report.

Firstly, there's a show coming up Sunday, October 1st at Big Rob's in Euless, Texas, that I'll be featured in. An hour of Question Beggar (God bless the single set shows!) and, in a historical first, you'll have to pay to get in. $10 in advance, $15 at the door. I'd say, "That's it. I've hit the big time." Except for remembering that someone has to buy those tickets. It's part of the deal, apparently. I don't know any of the other artists I'll be on the bill with, but I do know of one notable name that night: M.G. Bailey.

M.G., he's a one-man-band, like me. Here I've been trying for years to put a one-man-band-centric evening together and—pow!–this falls in my lap. (Thanks to my pal, Jim Moody of the Airstream Outlaws for suggesting I apply!) M.G. has been in the middle of what looks to me like a cross-country death march of nightly shows hundreds of miles apart with very few days off. If he has the energy and inclination to answer my queries, I'd love to know how he does it. His artifice involves constructed rigs and loops and things he plays behind and he's real showman. I'd also be interested to see what he thinks of my simple rig.

So far, that night, I'm planning on playing my Gold Tone Resonator and not the Grumbleduke. I may or may not chicken out on that, beforehand. The Resonator has a chunky tone that's not always the kind of crowd-pleaser that the Grumbleduke is. We'll see. Also, I've finally captured the drum sounds from my Korg MiniWave drum and put them into the Roland drum module in my rig. You might recall those sounds from the albums 07Q and Record of the Year 2020. Ideally, I'll test the sounds out at some open mike beforehand.

The Big Rob's show coming up may or may not be my last date for 2023. I've got nothing else scheduled at this point. I take 'em as they come, though, so who knows? In the absence of shows to play, I can work on new recording projects. I'm still stuck at halfway mixed (3 out of six songs) with the EP, tentatively titled Sudden EP, that I recorded at Jam Show with The Dirty Reeds' drummer, Deacon Durrell. I'm hoping to put that out for Christmas. Beyond that, a new, full album is in the works, called Cap'n Keepitreal. Might be out by Spring, if the world holds together.

What else?

Two weeks back, the first video from the new album, Rude Yard, dropped. "Glories" has 81 views so far, so that's better than average for me. It's very psychadelic, which I haven't done in a while. This album will be challenging to make videos for. The songs are Kipling poems and tell stories in a straight forward way. That kind of fights the movie images I generally pick for my vids. "Glories" is then only song that's not tightly bound to a story or subject matter, so that's the one I started with. Usually, I make the videos in album order, which would have made "Glories" the last in line.

It's neither here nor there, but I should probably note that I turned sixty this year. Sixty. When I was rockin'—so to speak—at 15, I couldn't have imagined I'd be having my most productive years and still not be at my peak at sixty years of age. Nor could I have imagined how little I would have changed. So silver, sure. Some paunch, perhaps. But, otherwise I'm in excellent health and stamina and feel like I could keep up this music nonsense for decades yet to come. But if I can't, or won't, then I can't. And no regrets. I've had a blast all these decades of writing, singing, recording, performing and generally being a perpetual teenager chasing his delusion of rock stardom. I've wasted glorious fistfuls of money on all this and saved virtually nothing to see me through old age. I'm proudly and probably doomed someday. But not this day.

Best of all, I've done the near impossible and created for myself an original sound and instrument. Everything after that is just gravy. I hope someday lots of people can enjoy my art, but if not, no loss. Because I've enjoyed the hell out of it.

Besides the shows, you may have noticed a new, live-in-the-studio vid dropped last week, "Window Walking (Live)." This is the first of my promised live songs, eventually to be released as an album. I'll do my best to hit at least one original per month and one cover song. Waiting in the wings is a live cover song, "Get Wasted in Tulsa and Rio," a mashup medley of Don William's "Tulsa Time," the Beatles' "Get Back," Freddy Fender's "Wasted Days and Wasted Nights," and Michael Nesmith's "Rio." It's amazing how well they all fit together, these songs about being elsewhere and wanting to go back.

Meanwhile, I've still got standard three music videos left to do from Need a Momenent: "Dig Dig a Ding," "Lightweight," and—I think—"A Man in Love." Or did I do that one already. Somebody check my YouTube videos list here. Nothing in the works for April yet, but I've just written a great song that I'd like to release as a single for Mother's Day. I'm not much for these Hallmark® holidays, but I'm all for mothers. Also, the recording for the new album, Rude Yard, will certainly wrap up in April.

4-5-23

Life comes at you fat. Here I was last month, overfed on not one showcase to play, but two, and right between them pops up an opportunity on St. Patrick's Day to open for the Dirty Reeds at Six Springs Tavern in Richardson, Texas. I met the Reeds a year or so previously at an Arlington Nights Chat & Do—music affiliation, don't ye know—and all of the sudden I'm preceding them onstage. It all happened so fast. Like, morning after the Horus Hall showcase. And so, I had no time to get the word out here to you. But I still want internet credit for the gig, so I'm putting it in print now.

One really cool thing was that Six Springs now has a live feed whenever someone plays and you who rarely attend shows—and I'd say that goes for thousands of you out there—can now watch from the safety of their own phones. So, for the first time ever, here's an entire Question Beggar live set. You're welcome.

And the hits keep coming. I'll be opening for The Dirty Reeds once again, April 15, at Guitars N Growlers in McKinney, Texas. They'll do a set, I'll do a set, they'll do a closing set, and we'll all sit around and drink porters, in triumph.

On other fronts, the new album, Rude Yard, is slowly reaching finish line. Of the six songs, instrumentals on five are done. Steve Cosio will come by the shed on the 19th, lord willing and the creeks don't rise, to do flute work on a song/poem called "Glories." It's a very Tull affair so far, but that savage, early Tull you'll recall from the first few album. A kind of NeanderTull, if you will. My hope is that it will be Jethro enough for thrill Tull fans, but Beggar enough to hear it as highly original. We'll see. I've still got vocals, mixing and mastering chores to do yet. To have the first single out by July might be feasible.

Also, I swore, mildly, I wouldn't do this, but I'm finally ready to have a new custom 3-string bass made, this time by my favorite luthier, Joshua Snyder. Fans of this column will recall that he's been the one that made right the slow hash that Jerry Guest left me when the Grumbleduke was originally "finished." In the process of working on the 'Duke and all my other basses, Joshua has the insight no one else does to meaningfully tackle the job of crafting properly the bass that could become my bass of basses. Stay tuned.

Oh. And I would be remiss not to say a word or two about the latest video to drop from last year's album, Need a Momenent, "Lightweight." It dropped. It's doing okay. One good thing on the video front is, I think my base numbers for watching my videos has doubled in the last year. (From about 37 to 74 on average. Easy there.) The black and white footage for "Lightweight" comes from an old UCAB public service film on marriage called, "This Charming Couple." "For every four couples that get married, ONE will end in divorce..." Sound the alarm bells back then. In vain. It's like triple that now, with less couples getting married.

6-26-23

Long time, no write. How has everybody been? Me, I’m still standing. I’m just not working too hard these days at my Question Beggaring. What can I tell you? “There’s a tide and a season/an ebb and a flow,” to quote Roger Daltrey. I’ve been doing stuff, I have, I just haven’t been leaving the requisite digital footprints and fingerprints online to prove it. Not to any great degree.

I’ll move backward in time to catch us up to April when last I published here:

ITEM! I bought an acoustic guitar last week, a super cheap but worthwhile box, to chase the  purchase from the month before: a Pickaso Guitar Bow. See, I thought I could use the bow on my current collection of basses but none of them have the one thing the bow requires: a sound hole for the bow to dip into. So this week I’ve been busy learning how to fiddle about. (Sorry, Uncle Ernie.) I’ve had a notion lately to make a bluegrass album with my 3 string resonator bass, my 3 string banjo, and this 3-string guitar fiddle. It’s a wild sound. Very Middle Eastern/Celtic/Skiffle/and only a tiny bit bluegrass, so far. The fiddling does not come easy. I’m having to invent a method of jamming along with it out of whole cloth. But so far I seem committed to finding a way.

ITEM! Meanwhile on the 14th of June, I played a podcast/live set at Binion’s in Arlington, Texas that went quite well. At least it did until I left the stage and tipped my microphone boom out of the camera shot, which then, behind my back, fell over, pulling the entire soundboard down with a crash. Apart from my pride, however, nothing was damaged and I set it back up and the host continued with his set, just fine. To my great delight, I actually had people turn up to see me, completely unbidden. If this trend continues, my permanent status as an outsider artist could be wonderfully endangered. Anyhow, besides the honor of the gig, the podcast bestowed on me top notch video of my set, so look for that to be released soon on YouTube and Instagram. Here’s the poster I did for the show. Forgive me, if I leave it on the homepage, too, for a while. It bestows that presumption of popular activity and playing out, which I crave but never actively chase. True story, at one point, decades ago, when I was back in the DC area, I considered a marketing plan whereby I would put up posters all over the area of me playing gigs at popular venues with dates in the past. That way, I could reap the benefits of implied popularity with actually playing gigs I could never dream of landing. Another lazy period must have set in and saved me from myself back then.

ITEM! Just a few days before Binions, I went into the Jam Show studio in Hurst, Texas, with Dirty Reeds drummer Deacon Durrell to record, out of nowhere, an album. Yeah. Question Beggar, together with a standard drum kit and top notch drummer. Has the world gone mad? Curtis Campbell, the gracious host, engineered an entire day for us and, having never previously played together, we finished six songs to complete what I’m tentatively calling “The Sudden EP.”  You can see how much fun we had, by the pics. At close of day, I collected the stem files and took them home to mix at my convenience. At last, I have my chance to be forced to get better at DAW recording. Can’t decide whether I’ll release this before or after “Rude Yard.” On one hand, “Rude Yard” was recorded first. But on the other hand, the songs on “Sudden” are older. I must ponder.

ITEM! Speaking of “Rude Yard,” I have been mixing and re-mixing and re-re-mixing this one and I must say it’s been a chore. I think I’ve got 3 solid mixed-and-mastered songs done out of the 6 total, so that’s good. Summer is sitting hard on Texas lately, however, and that’s bad, for we who do our work in a backyard shed with one mighty but solitary window unit AC. It’s 83 degrees now as I type this and a good 20 degrees hotter outside. Hot does not inspire me to action, cold does, so I’m plodding along by sheer force of will these days. But hey, to quote Super Chicken, “I knew this job was dangerous when I took it.”

And that pretty much takes me back to May, which I spent weeks rehearsing for the Sudden EP and the Binions show, although

ITEM! I did manage to squeeze out another music video from last year’s Need a Momenent, “A Man In Love.” It’s done a palt—er—an EXCLUSIVE 44 views and remains one of my rarest seen videos to date. Like I say, we at Therisno Records like to keep our view count low, to preserve the play quality. Can’t have our videos get all worn to shit by millions of views, now, can we? Of course not.

This very week, I hope to get back on the video horse and put out the last Momenent track, “Dig Dig a Ding.” I just need to hydrate in advance. Don’t hold me to it, though. In this season, it’s a favorite pastime of mine to get out a lawn chair, a bathing suit, a beer and my 70s tunes and sit in the backyard under the rain like spray of the garden hose, to cool down. Heat waves like this positively drive me to it in the heat of the afternoons. It’s hillbilly tendencies like that that convince me I should start playing bluegrass, my way.

Oh, one last ITEM! I’ll be doing a set at Dr. Jekyll’s in Pantego, Texas, September 1, with The Dirty Reeds, so save the date.

11.10.23

And 2023, being mostly gone, has surprised me with yet another gig. I felt for sure I could kick back for a while, but no. Richard Keller of Itchey Richie and the Burning Sensations has kindly asked me to open for his Christmas show December 15th at Growl Records in Arlington, Texas,—with other acts whose names I lack currently–and it should be a helluva show.

And, really, if I'm playing a Christmas show, I should have a new Christmas song to release for the occasion. Luckily, I've got quite a good one in reserve: "Mid Cities Merry Christmas." I record it in the next week or so and have an early December release date for you soon, good Lord willing.

Meanwhile, I'm almost done mixing the Sudden EP I recorded in June with drummer Deacon Durrell. My plan was to release it next month, but with a new Christmas single coming out, I'll likely push it off to January. To refresh your memory, this EP is my first shot at mixing an album on DAW. (I use Studio One.) So it may or may not sound awful. It's complex stuff, DAW recording and I am flying solo, blind, and by the seat of my pants with it so far. Stay tuned.

Social media mavens out there may have noticed that I've been busy with daily video releases on TikTok. It occurred to me that, since I've got so many music videos in my back pocket, that I could cut them up into hook-y chunks and post them without a huge amount of time drain. Who knows? They might prove popular. One has, kind of, scoring a good 700 views, but otherwise they all rate about 263 views a piece so far. What the limiting factor there is, I have no idea yet. Time and research may provide me an answer eventually. Possibly, there's only so many views you can get if you're not juggling chainsaws, making huskies talk, or rocking a sweet pair of tits. Not sour grapes on my part, but rather that I'll only work so hard at socials. I'm an artist, not a rodeo clown or a mountebank. Anyhow, I'll keep it up for a while more and see where it leads, if anywhere. If my TikTok posts taper off, you'll know why.

And there are some new vids out on YouTube. "Cages (Live)" was posted a couple of days ago, from my June 14th show at Binions. You might have seen the whole show on their podcast already, but I'll be chopping it up and adding subtitles anyhow. Gotta keep the content coming. Then, the latest, just posted today in honor of Veterans Day, "Tommy," from the Rude Yard album.

I think I've mentioned before that it's a challenge to make videos for these Kipling songs. He paints such vivid pictures and stories, that anything I add video-wise is just extra noise. Still, it's my only means of promoting the album, so I'll roll on with these symbolic splashfests and hope aficionados of the original poems will look the other way.

"Tommy," regarding the mistreatment of veterans after a war is fought, is probably more attuned to the post Vietnam era, where soldiers were sometimes ill-treated and ostracized by the loony left at the time. In the 80s, mass media took the homeless veteran side for awhile, possibly to shame Reagan's America, which they deemed as jingoistic. I think if Kipling were to write a poem about today's Tommy, he wouldn't be ill-treated, but completely ignored. "Thank you for your service" is fairly common as a form of recognition, but my sense is that people don't want to know. In a country as divided as the US is now, helping vets for wars that were ill-conceived, much less honoring them, just doesn't seem to be anybody's priority. Not to the extent it should be. There's no draft, though, so that's a factor. In Kipling's time, working men had no choice but to join up, mostly. You take away a man's options, it's only right to take responsibility for him after the conflict.

Back to art. I'm still doing open mikes. Maybe like one a week. But I've been writing swell new tunes for the next album. Can't wait to see the resulting project take shape. Growing that back catalog. Grow grow grow.