Skip to Content Skip to Navigation

Dean Madonia: Digression

Mastering Frankenstein - May 14, 2013

The Mastering is taking longer than I thought it would. Jamie Tate from the Rukkus Room is a busy man. He is doing the mastering for me on the cheap, so I told him to "do it in his down time - no rush." Fortunately for him (and unfortunately for me), he doesn't seem to have a lot of down time right now. He has been recording and mixing like crazy, (and I'm talking about #1 records here folks), so I wait patiently, sort of... I have heard the first CD, and it sounds great - Looking forward to hearing the rest of it and pressing some!

Frankenstein - mastered! - March 17, 2013

Frankenstein is mixed and is being mastered! Nashville engineer, jamie Tate has mastered 3 songs for my "Frankenstein," project. I am looking forward to hearing them on Monday. The release date is getting closer and closer - stay tuned!

Frankenstein - so close - February 5, 2013

My CD, "Shadow To Shadow, Dean Madonia's Frankenstein," is nearly complete. The song count has swelled to 26 now. My mixes are done, Mark Hornsby's mixes are done. I am waiting on Kelly Schoenfeld. I gave him the mixes in September. For people who keep asking,  I don't know when I will have them.

     Hopefully soon. Keep you posted!

Tennessee has left the building - February 5, 2013

As some of you know, Tim Dugger and I wrote a song called, "(I Called Her) Tennessee," and when Tim was signed to Curb Records, it was released as a single. After 16 weeks on the Music Row Chart, it had peaked at #40. Once stations started playing Christmas music, Music Row quit reporting, when the holidays were over, it had dropped 13 spots... It is now off the charts...sniff, sniff. 

        I was kind of hoping that Curb would have started pushing this spring-break song hard, right up until spring-break, but alas, it was not to be. Still, I am very happy that the song was on the radio. I have faith in Tim and wish him well on his career.

Piano Barbarians Podcast Link - October 8, 2012

Howdy all! After a long day of delayed flights and a 5 hour dueling piano shift (with about 6 Ketel Ones on the rocks), I went back to the hotel with my partner that weekend, Paul, and recorded a slurry but candid interview. Talking about Dueling pianos, "Pretty Little Horses," and "Frankenstein," among other things....

http://player.fm/series/piano-barbarians/e33-dean-madonia

Bluebird, October 2nd - September 26, 2012

OK - big news day today - I am hosting a round at the Bluebird on October 2nd at 6pm. Performing with me are:

Curb Recording artist Tim Dugger
http://timdugger.com/
Singer/songwriter, Trent Jeffcoat,
http://www.trentjeffcoat.com/

and actor/singer/songwriter, Neill Skylar
http://neillskylar.com/
I hope the local peeps can make it out!

Kelly Schoenfeld mixing some Frankenstein! - September 26, 2012

As you can imagine, "Shadow To Shadow, Dean Madonia's Frankenstein," has been quite a time-consuming project for me. 24 songs were written (actually more, but a few didn't make it), recorded, edited and then I started mixing. I decided I could use a hand, so I enlisted the help of friend and famed prog mixer, Mark Hornsby:

http://markhornsby.com/

Mark did an incredible job with "Running From the Moon,"

http://youtu.be/CJ_l-4WM_Ko

and "When He Plays His Guitar,"

http://youtu.be/lGaDH2chHnM

... but that left me with 22 songs.... I decided to ask for some more help. Kelly Schoenfeld, owner of Ragtop Recording

http://www.ragtoprecording.com/

is going to mix 11 of the songs for me. That leaves me with 11 to mix myself. I have already done a few and I will be making lyric videos for them as soon as I finish. So far, everything sounds great - updates coming!

"(I Called Her) Tennessee" by Tim Dugger - September 26, 2012

Four years ago I wrote a song called, "(I Called Her) Tennessee" with Tim Dugger. Tim has been signed to Curb Records, "Tennessee," has been released as a single, here is a link to the lyric video:
http://youtu.be/GfMikGINHEc and after 3 weeks on the Music Row chart, Tim Dugger and "Tennessee" are at #64! That means it is being played on 28 stations that report to Music Row (354 spins last week)...
Tim is talented guy, and I hope the best for him. I think this one might do the trick. Keep your fingers crossed for the both of us and call in (or email), and request "(I Called Her) Tennessee," by Tim Dugger on your local country station!

Regarding "Shadow To Shadow, Dean Madonia's Frankenstein." - August 27, 2012

Regarding "Shadow To Shadow, Dean Madonia's Frankenstein." August 24, 2012

(REPOSTED FROM MY FACEBOOK NOTES)

by Dean Madonia on Friday, August 24, 2012 at 4:16pm ·
Howdy all. Writing this on a plane to Reno (through the marvelous miracle of modern internet technology). a 4 hour flight is a good opportunity to think.

This morning, I recorded the very last parts on the last song my new CD, "Shadow To Shadow, Dean Madonia's Frankenstein," and at this point I just have a little editing and mixing to do, then mastering, CD art and finally pressing. I hope that you will find this 24 song, concept CD my most inspired and well-crafted work yet.

My original plan last year, was to record and release the CD along with a companion graphic novel, an audio book of the original story by the amazing Mary Wofstonecraft Shelley, and finally, a live, multi media performance of the whole CD at the Darkhorse theater in Nashville TN, that would be filmed and then released as a DVD next year.

I quickly realized that the audio book and graphic novel would have to wait, (though I do have a full book of sketches that I did in hotel rooms and band-houses during the last year), I knew that I just didn't have enough hours in the day to complete it all by my target date. I took solace in the fact that I have an awesome band and that the show in Oct/Nov was going to be really cool. My plan for this show was grand. I had dancers and a small choir lined up to supplement the performance of the band. I also planned to have jugglers and close-up magicians in the lobby and a giant inflatable Frankenstein outside the theater. Film-maker Michael Zakula was going to film the entire production as well as some rehearsal footage and show some short films at the beginning and end of the show as well as during intermission.

Looking over the projected costs involved with lights, sound and an company to come in and record the audio, another for the video, plus paying the performers was going to set me back a minimum of $8300.00 - That's just for the show - not the CD. The Darkhorse is small (122 seats), and the receipts (assuming there would be any), would not begin to cover the show. I was planning on selling my firebird, or taking out a second mortgage on my home to pay for some or all of this. I was OK with this, a little worried perhaps, and a little bummed that it might come down to my car, but OK. This project means a lot to me and I figured that somehow, it would come back to me. It's something that I believe needs to be done.

The first major hurdle came when friend and bass player, Travis Vance told me a couple months ago that his schedule as MD and bass player for country star, Thomas Rhett, was in conflict with the show and that he would have to bow out. I was really bummed when I found out, but Travis gave me the numbers of two really good players who would be able to fill in for him. I decided to go ahead with the show.
The next problem presented itself on Wednesday. Mike Walter, the drummer, also could cannot do the show. That left me with my friend and guitarist Val Lupescu and myself. Val was pretty confident we could find people to play these instruments, but the whole point of using my band and showcasing their awesome talent was out the window. If I were to continue with the performance, I would have a stageful of "hired guns," reading charts, not my trusted friends who recorded the CD with me. The show would surely suffer. I feel that those of you who expressed an interest in attending the show would have been at least somewhat disappointed in the end result, which would not have been true to my vision. I would also have been deep in debt.

Armed with this new information, I have come to the painful decision to cancel the performances of, "Shadow To Shadow, Dean Madonia's Frankenstein," at the Darkhorse. My sincere apologies to all of the people who have been let down by this situation, especially Shannon at the Darkhorse, and Film-maker Michael Zakula, who has already been working on his multimedia presentation of the show. I hope to use his considerable talents on other "Frankenstein" relate projects.

After talking about this my wife and some friends, I know that I have done the right thing. I have been so stressed about this that I am suffering ill health lately with my back for the last two weeks. As soon as I decided, a great weight lifted off my shoulders. When my wife Trina told my son Wolfgang, that I was canceling the show, he got misty-eyed and said he was glad that I was canceling. He said he had been getting stressed and sad because I was so stressed. All of my angst over this whole project has definitely cut into my time with my family as well as my relationships with co-workers and co-writers. I thank you all for your patience.

I have always wanted every aspect of this project to be the absolute best I can offer. The first step is to make sure the CD is finished the way that I want it. It's not something to rush, and neither is this show. I can only hope that the CD will be well-received and that in time, a live performance will be recorded and released as a DVD, and that it will be exactly the way I intended it.


peace,


Dean

Frankenstein Nears Completion! - May 5, 2012

Howdy! I have been working hard on my "Frankenstein" project, editing and re-doing the vocal parts. I am expecting to be done by the end of the month and I will start mixing. I am also going to have Mark Hornsby mix some of them and Kelly Schoenfeld will be mixing a few as well. I have lined up Nashville's "Dark Horse Theater" for a live performances the week of Hallowen. Mark your calendars!

Pretty Little Horses in stores and online! - March 7, 2012

Pretty Little Horses - "Evergreen," is available on CD Baby and on all of the usual online stores:

http://origin.cdbaby.com/Artist/PrettyLittleHorses
Check it out and leave a review!

Frankenstein Tracking Nears Completion! - January 26, 2012

I have been recording with my full band every mon, tue, wed since Jan 4 and we have most of the tracks knocked out for "Frankenstein." For the next few weeks, I will be recording on Tuesdays with Val, doing guitar overdubs and solos. After that, I will tweak the keyboard parts, add a few here and there and re-cut all of the vocals. Then I can finally start mixing....

I am feeling really good about this project. The guys played their butts off and really reached for it. Val and Travis have experimented with sounds and come up with some great stuff - especially Travis, with his distorted bass on a few tracks.
I have been sick for over a month, i hope my voice clears up soon so I can do the musical tracks justice!

Frankenstein, coming to life! - November 14, 2011

I have demoed 22 songs for my newest project, "Dean Madonia's Frankenstein!" I am very happy with the songs - I think some of the very best I have written. We start recording next month. There will be a companion graphic novel and I have already started sketching roughs for that as well.

I plan to perform this CD live at the Darkhorse theater next Halloween (2012) with my band and we will film a live video to be made into a DVD, I have begun a "kickstarter" project for it. Please take a look at this video:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/deanmadonia/bring-dean-madonias-frankenstein-to-life

Pretty Little Horses is mastered and about to be pressed! - November 14, 2011

Pretty Little Horses, "Evergreen," is mastered and about to be pressed! I am very happy with the way this turned out. I will let you know when they are available at CD baby and for download...

Dean Madonia's Frankenstein!!! - May 10, 2011

I have been hard at work on a new prog-rock influenced concept CD based on the Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein.
The CD (may be a double CD), will explore the emotional content of her work. I have demoes of 9 songs so far and have the ideas and music for most of the rest of the CD. This has been a lot of fun so far - interpreting the novel has given me a great platform to stretch out and say some things that I feel strongly about - hidden behind the guise of the monster and the creator.....

I am looking forward to tracking - hopefully beginning this summer (after the release of "Pretty Little Horses."


More info as it happens...

Pretty Little Horses CD finish and waiting to be mastered - May 10, 2011

Thanks everyone for being so patient. The collaboration with Childhood friend, Greg Curvey is in the can and waiting to be mastered. The CD is called "Evergreen" and the band will be called "Pretty Little Horses.

Should be released this summer. A video for the song, "Just Like Love," will be available for viewing within the next week or so.

Evergreen by Pretty Little Horses - December 7, 2010

The new CD is going to be called "Evergreen," and the band name is "Pretty Little Horses." Named after the lullaby...
Greg Curvey: Lead Vocals, Guitar,Drums
Dean Madonia: Vocals, Keyboards, Bass

This CD is mixed and nearly ready for mastering. Just want to live with the mixes for a little while and make sure I love them.

This CD was a work of love. No label, no fans, no budget, no time constraints.
We did this for ourselves and for the love of music and I think it shows. In a world where most musical acts are calculated for a quick sale, I think we have written something with some legs on it and I hope that "Pretty Little Horses" - "Evergreen," will find an audience.

Evergreen by Pretty Little Horses - December 7, 2010

The new CD is going to be called "Evergreen," and the band name is "Pretty Little Horses." Named after the lullaby...
Greg Curvey: Lead Vocals, Guitar,Drums
Dean Madonia: Vocals, Keyboards, Bass

This CD is mixed and nearly ready for mastering. Just want to live with the mixes for a little while and make sure I love them.

This CD was a work of love. No label, no fans, no budget, no time constraints.
We did this for ourselves and for the love of music and I think it shows. In a world where most musical acts are calculated for a quick sale, I think we have written something with some legs on it and I hope that "Pretty Little Horses" - "Evergreen," will find an audience.

Little Boy Blue "official" video. - April 21, 2010

Last weekend I made a video for the song "Little Boy Blue" and posted it to youtube. There is already a live video with an interview for this song, but I always wanted to make a "real" video for it so people could hear the album track. I was a little homesick this weekend, so I used home movie footage, some live concert footage as well as some time-lapse highway footage I appropriated from the internet. Please stop by and check it out when you get a chance and let me know what you think. I also have a lot of live videos from the Dean Madonia Band and Wyscan there. You can just got to youtube and search for "Dean Madonia" and you will find them.

Greg Curvey Project ready to Mix! - April 21, 2010

Just got back from Chicago where I stayed briefly with my friend Greg Curvey. We tracked a vocal and a couple gtr parts and now I am ready to start inspecting the tracks to prepare for mixing. It has been a long time coming and I am looking forward to mixing this one. The name of the project is (as of now) "Pretty Little Horses." Hopfully we can put this thing to bed within the next couple of months...

Sonic Waves Of Grain Well On the Way! - November 12, 2009

Finished tracking Greg's drums, guitars and vox on 9 songs. Greg heads home tomorrow. Everything sounds great - this is going to be a really cool CD. I can't wait to add bass, keys and vox. Stay posted for more updates.

Sonic Waves Of Grain starts tracking today! - November 9, 2009

5:04 am: Howdy 'yall. I am up early today about to head down into the studio to do a little pre-production work on a new CD that I start tracking today with my friend Greg Curvey. Greg is a childhood friend, an talented songwriter/vocalist/guitarist and drummer now living in Chicago. His band "The Luck Of Eden Hall," just released a new CD, 'When The Clock Starts to Wake Up We Go to Sleep'
http://www.smashingpumpkins.com/pages/articles/sharing-luck-eden-hall
Greg and I have been planning to do a project for awhile now and have been collaborating long-distance on the writing aspect. I think we will track some rhythm guitars today and get a good sound for the drums which we will track tomorrow. Wed we should be able to get the loose ends tied up. I will add keyboards and bass later with some background vocals. The CD is going to be called "Sonic Waves Of Grain." I will keep you posted on it's progress, but I imagine that it should be finished before the end of the year and available in the early part of 2010.

Ok, it's not music - it's Bill Moyers, check it out. - October 12, 2009

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10092009/watch2.html
Transcript:

BILL MOYERS: You know from the news that early next week the Senate Finance Committee is expected to vote on its version of health care reform. And therein lies another story of money and politics.

Polls show the overwhelming majority of Americans favor a non-profit alternative -- like Medicare -- that would give the private health insurance industry some competition. But if so many Americans and the President himself want that public option, how come we're not getting one?

Because, the medicine has been poisoned from day one, in part because of that same revolving door that Congresswoman Kaptur and Simon Johnson were just talking about. Movers and shakers rotate between government and the lucrative private sector at a speed so dizzying they forget who they're working for.

SEN. MAX BAUCUS: Our plan does not include a public option.

BILL MOYERS: Take a close look at that woman sitting behind Montana Senator Max Baucus. He's the Democrat who's the Chairman of the Finance Committee. Liz Fowler is her name. And now get this. She used to work for WellPoint, the largest health insurer in the country. She was Vice President of Public Policy. And now she's working for the very committee with the most power to give her old company and the entire industry exactly what they want: higher profits, and no competition from alternative non-profit coverage that could lower costs and premiums.

I'm not making this up. Here's another little eye-opener. The woman who was Baucus' top health advisor before he hired Liz Fowler? Her name is Michelle Easton. Why did she leave the Committee? To go to work -- where else? -- at a firm representing the same company Liz Fowler worked for WellPoint. As a lobbyist.

It's the old Washington shell game. Lobbyist out, lobbyist in. And it's why they always win.

They've been plowing this ground for years, but with the broad legislative agenda of the Obama White House, it's more fertile than ever. The health insurance industry alone has six lobbyists for every member of Congress, and more than 500 of them are former congressional staff members.

Just to be certain Congress sticks with the program, they've been showering megabucks all over Capitol Hill. From the beginning, they wanted to make sure that the bill that comes out of the Finance Committee next week puts for-profit health insurance companies first, by forcing the uninsured to buy medical policies from them. Money not only talks, it writes the prescriptions.

In just the last few months, the health care industry has spent 380 million dollars on lobbying, advertising and campaign contributions. And a million and a half of it went to -- don't hold your breath -- Finance Committee Chairman Baucus, who said he saw "a lot to like" in two proposed public options but voted "no."

SEN. MAX BAUCUS: My job is to put together a bill that gets 60 votes. Now I can count and no one has been able to show me how we can count up to 60 votes with a public option in the bill.

BILL MOYERS: Of course not. They can't get 60 votes. Not when the people who want a public alternative can't possibly scrape up the millions of dollars Baucus has received from the health sector during his political career.

Over the last two decades, the current members of the Senate Finance Committee - you're looking at them -- have collected nearly 50 million dollars from the health sector. A long-term investment that's now paying off like a busted slot machine.

Not that we should be surprised. A century ago, muckraking journalists reported that large corporations and other wealthy interests virtually owned the Senate, using bribery, fraud, and sometimes blackmail to get their way. Jokes were made about the Senator from Union Pacific or the Senator from Standard Oil.

This fellow in particular was out to break their grip. His name was David Graham Phillips, and one day in 1906, readers of COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE opened its March issue to discover the first of nine articles by Phillips titled "The Treason of the Senate."

He wrote: "Treason is a strong word, but not too strong, rather too weak, to characterize the situation in which the Senate is the eager, resourceful, indefatigable agent of interests as hostile to the American people as any invading army could be..."

The public outrage provoked by Phillips and other muckrakers contributed to the passage of the Constitutional amendment providing for the direct election of Senators, who until then were elected by easily bought-off state legislators.

Of course, like water seeking its own level, big money finds its way around every obstacle, and was soon up to its old tricks, filling the pockets of friendly politicians. Today none dare call it treason. So how about calling it what it is: a friendly takeover of government. A leveraged buyout of democracy.

Outrageous? You bet. But don't just get mad. Get busy.

Sharee Spoltore and NSAI - September 16, 2009

When I am on the road, a lot of people ask me about songwriting. Some of them are the other musicians I work with and some of them are fans who are music hobbyists. If you are interested in learning more about songwriting, I highly recommend Nashville Songwriters Association International, or NSAI. NSAI helps songwriters at all levels from the novice to the music pro, providing advice and educational tools as well as going to bat with the Govt over our rights as creators.
Sheree Spoltore, the National Membership Director, is just about the most positive, enthusiastic and giving person I have had the honor to meet, and she is really trying to help the writers, not just in Nashville, but nationwide, to become better and more successful.
I highly recommend NSAI and it's team of hard-working, big-smiling volunteers and staffers. Check them out at: www.nashvillesongwriters.com

Best Of Collection? - June 17, 2009

Howdy! I am planning to put together both a "best of" and a "live" CD and I am wondering if anyone has any favorite songs that they would like to see included.
Both CDs will feature music from Third Wish (Wyscan) - My solo Cds, "Deep Sky," " The Light Of Reason," "Madness and Desire, One Night In America," and Country and Midwestern.
Next Page >>

RSS feed