NEW RELEASE: It All Started With A Heartache

FINE WINE: Better With Age. An album of songs I've written between 2009-2019, rerecorded and slated for 2023

When I was a young man, the first time I saw someone record audio to tape: it fascinated me. Then, when I saw someone using Protools and tracking digital audio, while layering it, I knew there was something there I wanted to pursue. Every time I was in a studio, or sitting near anyone who knew anything about recording audio, I was all-ears.

The first time I tried to record audio my father had a 1/4” plug on his soundboard on his computer. I thought it was the coolest thing, but I figured I could record a drum set with this “rented” peavy sound board I “borrowed” from my highschool. Don’t worry I returned it hah. What I couldn’t return though was the sound card I blew up when I ran a powered signal into that audio jack… Sorry dad. I love you. That computer damn near exploded from what I remember.

The first time I was in a studio with funding backing the band I was in at the time, I noticed a few things that really stuck out to me: how management works, where the money actually goes, why are people paying this much money to manufacture products like this, and most-importantly: I could do this better. I did not belong in that world and could not accept a life as a cog in the wheel of that machine. Because of this…

I’ve been recording and learning about recording for the better part of my adult life. I needed to be able to record on my own, work at my own pace, and have the ability to work with others as I saw fit independent of my own ability to fund a project or the schedules of others.

I’ve found that my earliest stuff was very fun to listen to because I had no idea what I was doing. The recordings I created in the “middle ages”, when I was trying to learn about quality, ultimately sacrificing “edge” in the tone of the final product, resulted in a very lackluster delivery in my opinion. The songwriting however… this was really starting to shine. Now that I completely left any association with the world I once knew behind, namely the people in the industry, I set out to really make my own recordings of a professional quality comparable to other major studios, and deliver a master audio that people could play on repeat-one without getting sick of the song. An aside here: Mastering needs to be done a certain way and I never saw a single guy do it right in all my years of experience until I started working outside the bubble that was “those people” in “that world I once knew…” There’s more to mastering, but that’s a discussion for a different time. For today I wanted to say, basically this, but in that long-winded manner I often choose to use…

My recordings sound great now, my ability to play instruments is much better than it was when I was younger, and even though I think my voice might be on the cusp of burning-out as compared to what it once was when I was a foolish young man, I like the tone. It’s me. I’m more myself these days than I have been in a long time. With all of these factors considered and combined…

I am recording my older material, that which you may not have heard before, and re-releasing it on an album called FINE WINE for everyone to enjoy. I have slated this release for sometime in the early part of 2023.

The first song I am sharing with you on this release is: It All Started With A Heartache. This was the title track from an album I released in 2018. The song in-itself it supposed to be uplifting, even though the lyrics are dark and pull on sadness. My friend The Voice Of Reason said it best on the youtube video I released yesterday, which I am going to share below. His comment: “If you are a guy, you have been there. Right on GA.” Right on The Voice Of Reason. Right on.

Even though the bad times and goings-on of the current climate might have you down and in the dumps, you need to smile through the pain. It never goes away, and it will keep coming, you just need to learn that all things pass and push through those darker times.

I hope you all enjoy this song. More will be coming about this song and release in very soon.

Listen to this song on YouTube:

ps. As I wrote this article I realized that the discography at the bottom of my website gregarcade.com is mislabelled… I don’t even have that album, It All Started With A Heartache, which was a big one for, listed. I will fix this as soon as I can find that artwork for the above-mentioned album.