Shades of Pearl

When I lived in Austin I spent a lot of time playing music and writing songs. The creative juices are still flowing, but now they're channeled into books and blogs I guess.

Shades of Pearl was the name of the duo that I formed with a girl named Nicole Austin. No relation. :-) I put an ad in the Austin Chronicle in June of 1997 looking for a musical partner, and out of all the reponses, Nicole is the one that I felt an instant chemistry with. When I think back over all the time we spent tuning, playing, writing, recording, etc. I get all warm and fuzzy inside. It was tough sledding at times, but also one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. We got the attention of Lloyd Maines once (Natalie Maines' dad), but that didn't pan out. He's got an amazing ear for music, plus he's just a dang nice guy. But here I sit today, blogging about past musical experiences, and he's out touring with Terri Hendrix and doing all sorts of other things. His name still means something to me.

I spent some time yesterday listening to the CD we recorded in 1998, and I decided to add it to the store on my website. Why not; we've got a few leftover copies. The process of editing the songs into mp3 samples allowed me some time to think about the whole experience, and it's one I'll never forget. All the time we spent trying to get the harmonies right, messing with that blankety blank metronome to keep steady time, writing lyrics...again, some of the best times of my life. Nicole is an incredible talent. It used to drive me batty though when she would get a particular sound in her head and ask me to duplicate it on the guitar. That usually meant I had to semi-invent a chord and that my fingers would be going in crazy new directions on the neck of the guitar. And I had to be able to get to that chord quickly, in the middle of a song. Ah, the good ole days. I will always think of them fondly.

ANYWAY, if you'd like, you can listen to mp3 samples of the songs at http://jenaustin.com/shop. There are two mp3 files that wouldn't upload, so I'm going to try to re-edit those today and upload again.

My 6-string and 12-string Takamines are still upstairs in the closet. Maybe I'll get them out again someday...