I had a wonderful time at GenCon this year. It was a bit odd and different for me though. I brought in L.T. Panzarella as a drummer for my shows. That was pretty cool. I like having others to play with. It adds a lot of body to the music.

I was hoping that it might result in bigger responses while busking, but not so much. On Sunday, however, I my voice was gone and so we played instrumentals for two hours. We were moderately successful at that. I don't think I've ever done so well with just instrumental music.

The shows were packed. Firefly Drinking Songs had about 170 people in the audience with room to spare. The Sci Fi Drinking Songs show was almost as big (163, I think). Both shows were a blast.

One of my favorite moments from the later show revolved around the movie Looper. Before the concert, I asked people in line what themes they would like to hear songs from. One guy asked for Looper. I did a refresher course in my mind to remember the film. I thought it was awesome, but how do you write a song for it? I was baffled.

Spoiler Alert: If you haven't seen the movie, here's the wikipedia description:

Looper is a 2012 American science fiction action-thriller film written and directed by Rian Johnson and starring Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Emily Blunt. In the film, time travel is invented by the year 2074 and, though immediately outlawed, is used by criminal organizations to send those they want killed into the past where they are killed by “loopers”, assassins paid with silver bars strapped to their targets. Joe, a looper, encounters himself when his older self is sent back in time to be killed.

One of the things I thought was cool was how the future gangsters would cut off appendages of people in the past, which changed the future… So a guy is running down the street and then he finds he has one less finger and a message on his arm to turn himself in.

From that I came up with a visual gag for the show. I started playing music and singing about the movie and then my leg *disappears* from under me. I collapsed to the ground. Even cooler was that my leg disappeared under my kilt, so it kinda looked like it was gone. It was HI-larious!

Then there was the metal-head who played a Chewbacca for me in “Jedi Drinking Song”. He sounded more like a rabid hamster than a Wookie. Again, awesome!

In my downtime, I was able to mix a few songs from Scottish Songs of Drinking & Rebellion. I still have a ways to go, but I'm making progress. That's good cuz I still have two other albums to finish: Wherever I May Roam, and the comedy album called either Celtic Who or Sci Fi Drinking Songs.

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Of course the downside to the first album title is that there is only one Doctor Who song. But then again, both title still seem to capture the theme of the CD…

Podcasts and Social Media

I'm wayyy behind on releasing another Irish & Celtic Music Podcast. So I am postponing my Pub Songs Podcast for one more week. I'm gonna get that Celtic podcast out this week, one way or another…

I updated my street team page on Facebook. It's now called Marc's Gunn Runners, just like it is on Google+. Oh! And of course I disconnected Facebook from this blog.

Middle Earth Remixed and Remastered

DragonCon is about a week away. It's another Brobdingnagian Bards reunion. We're gonna have a great time.

Oh! And I just placed an order for the newly remixed and remastered recording of Memories of Middle Earth. This is the ten-year anniversary of the album. It's hard to believe we recorded it ten years ago, but it's true. This was Andrew's first recording, mixing and mastering job ever. We did it in our home studio. The one problem I had with the original album was that at the time we reasoned, “We don't have any low end to our music, so lets cut that out of it altogether.”

Shortly after releasing it, I realized the mistake. The album lost a lot of body. Yes, it still sounded beautiful. Andrew did a good job, but it was… just missing something.

The new mix sounds fantastic. Andrew has matured tremendously since then. The album sounds more naturally beautiful than ever with a full sound and not overly compressed like a later album. It just sounds wonderful. Plus, there's a bonus secret track for anyone who buys the physical CD. I can't say any more than that at present…

The CD will be available for sale on CD Baby at the end of September.

That's about all the news for now. I'm gonna get started on the Celtic podcast and see if I can bring you some more great entertainment.

Slainte!