SKYWATCHING 01 - Small Time Blues

It was twenty years ago this week!

My fourth album, Skywatching, was released twenty years ago this week.

The album contains two versions of “Small Time Blues.” The record opens with this full band arrangement courtesy of The Sinners. “Small Time Blues (Acoustic)” closes the record. The latter could have just as easily been called “Demo.” Recorded on my Tascam TSR-8 half-inch analog eight-track machine, it was the recording I sent to Cameron Crowe when he asked me to submit a song for possible inclusion in his upcoming film. His project was tentatively titled Untitled. Or maybe it was Untitled Cameron Crowe? In any event, it eventually became the Academy Award-winning classic, Almost Famous. That’s another story for another time. Spoiler alert: he asked Elaine Summers and me to perform the song in the movie. And we did!

“Small Time Blues (Acoustic)” gets most of the attention since it more closely resembles our stripped-down performance in Almost Famous. While I like the acoustic approach, The Sinners really shine on the full-band version. The rhythm section of Rob Brill (drums) and Dave Hull (bass) struck upon a super cool groove. And Loud and Proud Peter Stroud’s guitar work is top-notch, as always. I have a recording of our basic tracking session somewhere. I would love to find that and share our early attempts at finding the right arrangement. For now, please enjoy the full band album version at the top of this post.

With Dave Hull and Rob Brill in the control room of Puzzle Tree Studio.

In this photo, we are working on “Small Time Blues.” Drummer Rob Brill and I are jointly performing a keyboard part. Look closely, and you’ll see that as I play the notes on my Casio, Rob’s right hand is working a wah-wah pedal. Listen carefully to the song's intro and you can hear the wah-wah keyboard dovetailing with gated electric guitars.

Skywatching was the first album of my own recorded and produced in my home studio, The Puzzle Tree. At first, I was going to handle all the engineering on my own. Once The Sinners and rental gear arrived, and we started to record, I realized I was trying to wear too many hats. And so I made an emergency call to Russ Fowler in Atlanta. At the drop of a hat, he was on a plane, and without much delay, he was occupying the engineer’s seat and dialing in great sounds. It was a great relief for me to focus my energy on performing and producing. Russ stayed around for basic tracks and then handed the engineering reigns back to me for overdubs. Later, he would return to help mix the record.

It took a while for Skywatching to be released. Eventually, I struck a deal with United Musicians. Aimee Mann and Michael Penn founded UM with their manager—and my manager at the time—Michael Hausman. The idea was to have a collective of artist-owned record labels. Through UM, the artist would have access to the infrastructure of a real label. As a fan of Aimee and Micheal, I was honored to be on the roster.

The album did pretty well. Rolling Stone called it “Charming and finely crafted singer-songwriter indie-pop that deserves a bigger audience.” So I got that going for me, which is nice.

Peace & Love Songs,

Pete