A new Loquat and a new album in 2011!

Happy belated New Year, everyone. It’s an exciting time. Two of us (Anthony and I) have been growing a new Loquat for the last nine months, and he’s about to join the crew any day now. Or maybe any hour? It’s that close.

I wanted to reach out before all the craziness ensues. We’ve also been hard at work to finish our third full-length album. We don’t have a name for it yet, but we’re finishing up the pre-mixing stage with the songs. In the next week or two, we’ll be sending off some of them to be mixed (some going out of state), and the rest we’ll mix locally. We also have a cool performance video that’s finished (but waiting for the final music) for our song “Time Bending.”

In other news, I am honored to be participating in a Grammy nomination with our friends Bostich + Fussible for their latest Nortec Collective album, Bulevar 2000. I co-wrote, sang, and produced vocals for their single, “I Count the Ways.” We’ll see what happens on February 13 at this year’s Grammy Awards. (Check it out, number 58 on the list: http://www.grammy.com/nominees).

In the meantime, the upcoming Loquat album has consumed me for the last two or more years. It’s hard to believe that the album has taken so long, but after six years with the same core band members, we experienced a sea change. Three band members moved on, and three members joined. It’s been bittersweet, but we’ve really enjoyed writing, recording, and playing shows with Coop (Chris Cooper), Chip (Cosby), and our latest member, Jon (Langmead).

We’ve written a lot of songs in the last couple of years, and some good ones had to be set aside so that new members could take part in the writing process. In 2010, songs were recorded, rerecorded, broken down, remixed, and tweaked some more. For Loquat, the production process has never been an easy one. I know that some musicians crank out their albums in a week. Unfortunately, we just don’t know how to do that. Maybe we make our lives too difficult, but we want to be really happy with the outcome, and thankfully, so do our producers, the Rondo Brothers. They let us know when something isn’t working and we need to try another approach. It makes me a lot happier that we push ourselves rather than settling for something that’s “good enough.” So that’s where we’re at…. More news to come (both baby and Loquat related)!

Xoxo, Kylee + Loquat