Sunday, January 24, 2010

My new CD is getting mastered this week. I'd originally planned to call it All the Things I Done Wrong, but now I'm going with Chemicals in the Wheat. The cover artwork, an intricate paper cut by my friend Nikki McClure, is of a man in a field working under ominous skies. He has a pair of pliers in his right hand and appears to be disassembling a barbwire fence.

The songs, mostly guitar-driven electronic Americana, total over fifty minutes.
They are:
  1. Corpse
  2. Michael Jackson
  3. Strange Medicine
  4. All the Things I Done Wrong
  5. Day's Wages
  6. Buddha Chant
  7. Pegasus (You & I)
  8. Mister, I Can't Save Your Daughter
  9. O, Tsunami
  10. Your Mind is Mine
  11. Swine Flu
Back story to the title Chemicals in the Wheat: My Grandfather Nick Herak, Sr., who died twenty years ago, was a very Catholic and Croatian cattle rancher/wheat farmer. The palms of his hands would sometimes bleed like a stigmata. He'd joke that his affliction was a gift from the Holy Spirit. I asked Mom about this earlier this month, and she pragmatically blamed it on "chemicals in the wheat" that he encountered through daily work out in the field.

3 comments:

Flying Mermaid said...

Wow, intense about the chemical stigmata! Can't wait to hear the new CD.

Anonymous said...

are you taking pre-orders?
like a CSA-- community supported artists!

Andy said...

Glad to see that the Swine Flu song made the cut! Can't wait to hear it. Also glad to see you have us down for April 9th. See ya then!