Cookin' an EP with the Folk 'n' Thieves

Cookin' up the latest EP release from the Folk 'n' Thieves has had its fair share of 'seat of your pants' moments!  Happy Folkin' New Year (as an idea) was on the books since October.  Inspired by a trip to the North Shore for a wedding (aided by whitefish, dandelion wine, cigars, and fresh pressed cider), we dared ourselves to get an EP together before the New Year struck!  No sweat right?

We needed songs (check), a bit of practice (check), a sound engineer, graphics, a venue to release it (check-- 331 Club...yes!!), and a finished product.  Oh...and a band of willing participants.

Start the whole thing out with a band discussion--questions about moving forward.  Could we make the EP happen?  What was the point?  How much $$$?  What bands would share the spoils of Happy Folkin' New Year?  Who would record us?  What's the square root of 8,000,651?  etc.

 --- And the result? ---

Well, one thing's for sure, Folk 'n' Thieves has been a ragtag combination of musicians and songwriters perty much from the beginning.  The structure is loose in terms of who/when performances happen (at least that is the trend).

So naturally, heading into the project, yet sticking to our formula, we lost a member of the band (banjo) and picked up a substitute/potential new member (organ/accordion) later in the project!

At some point, the decision on the EP came down to what many earth shattering decisions in life come down to:            

--------'Why the hell not?!?  (pardon my french) Let's do this!!'--------

     Our graphic man from the get-go, Jeffrey Nelson, had been feeding us great graphics for a time.  We figured we had those in the proverbial grocery bag (read on).

Self-releasing an EP isn't too grand of an idea as long as you can figure out how to get graphics on a cd.  Memorex CD Labels work great. So do nicely folded grocery bags and some sort of graphic/photoshop program.  Me?  I use GIMP.

To be continued...