the iPhone project

Status Update: May 2012

Hey guys! Sorry it’s taken so long to get back to everybody about the iPhone Project, but there are still frequent developments, so I owe you an update. Here goes.

1) Recording is still very much underway. It’s taking so long, because I’m essentially recording (and vigorously re-recording) most of the tracks myself.  I gotta hand it to my engineer Timmy for being patient with me. It’s been really fun. Currently, we’re recording parts to “You Can’t Get There From Here”, which was previously recorded by Lee Roy Parnell. Lee Roy will be on his track as well, singing a little and playing some of that sweet slide guitar. I can’t wait for the final result! I keep looping the copy I’ve got in my car.

2) My one song “Living Lonely’s a Little Like That” will be featured on Kevin Moon’s new CD, “Sad Songs & Honky Tonks”, due in August on Flat Rascal Records!! Keep your eyes open for that, as his single “Roll Tide Roll” is currently gaining popularity, and can be found on iTunes and Spotify.

3)  Marty Raybon (formerly of Shenandoah, GRAMMY winner for his song ‘Somewhere In The Vicinity Of The Heart’ with Alison Krauss) will also be featured on this project in a duet. As of right now, we’re still talking regularly over the phone and it looks like the song is Glen Campbell’s “Southern Nights”. That could change; I’ll keep you posted.

4) In the middle of recording the first few songs, my old Pyramid Studio amp died on me! I’m so sad—I’ve had this amp for what seems like eons. No worries, though, I’ve ordered a Vox amp and it will be in shortly. A great sound and vintage look, I’m sure it will be a great amp that’ll last just as long. Guitar players, check out Vox Amps if you haven’t already.

5) Eyeing April or May of 2013 for release. That might sound like a long time, but I promise… I PROMISE it’ll be worth it when it’s ready. This CD will knock your socks off.

…aaaaand that’s all I think I have for now. Thanks for being patient, and hanging in there for me. It seems like it’s forever away, and I just want it over with as much as you do. I know you’ll love it, though.  

god bless,

J 

The Best of Me / The Rest of Me

You wanted a song
I wrote you a symphony
You asked for my heart
I gave you the best of me;
The rest of me…  

Each of the songs contained on this project have very special meanings to me, beyond being written almost entirely by myself. You Wanted a Song: the iPhone project is exactly what it says it is: everything you asked me for. From the people who asked me to write songs about them, to the people who didn’t have to. There are very emotional concepts here that I wouldn’t normally discuss outside of my medium. 

Am I saying that the CD is mostly sad songs? There are a few, but I wouldn’t put it so generally. I think it’s better to say that it will be an emotionally observational project. 

You Wanted a Song was written about an ex-girlfriend who sort of came back around very suddenly, and feelings I thought I had buried sort of worked their way back out mid-conversation. As we talked and reconciled, we both realized that we carried much larger dreams than we once had (“The words that we said had turned into dead dreams that we took back.”), and while it didn’t matter in that moment how much time had passed, it was still meant to have happened in the past, and there was no use beating a dead horse. 

Well, you wanted a song, and now we’re back where we started, and I’m still yours. 

It isn’t going to work out. We’re better off now. I gave you everything back then, and while we may have that connection still, we are truly where we are today for a distinct reason. Go forward.

Track 1 finished recording on February 6th, 2012 at Short Bus Recording Studios in Smithsburg, MD under the engineering supervision of Timmy Campbell. 

Guitars (acoustic, electric, chorus guitar), piano, bass, lead and harmony vocals by Jeff Swope. Drums by Timmy Campbell. Produced by Jeff Swope in association with Jeff Swope Productions / Vocal Ink Productions.

Hagerstown native Jeff Swope uses iPhone to record, send music to Nashville

July 15, 2011|By MARIE GILBERT | marieg@herald-mail.com

When singer-songwriter Jeff Swope decided to make an album, he could have followed the conventional path of spending hours in a studio.

Instead, he’s literally phoning it in.

Swope is taking advantage of the mobile software revolution to plug, play and record his songs with a tap of his finger.

He’s using his iPhone and apps called FourTrack and StudioMini — tools that allow the user to record unlimited tracks and export them to an editing/mastering program on a home computer.

“Nobody is barking about deadlines or fighting over creative control,” he said. “Essentially, this is an album that I chose to do my own way, in a unique and fully-controlled fashion. This is me putting an almost novelty application to great use and doing it whenever I want.”

Recording music on an iPhone is just another step in the Hagerstown man’s musical journey.

The early musical years

“I was about 2 or 3 years old when I started messing around with my grandfather’s old guitar,” Swope said. “But I didn’t start learning to play seriously until I was about 14.”

Swope said his grandfather must have known he was going places, because he eventually bought his grandson his own guitar, which he slept with and took everywhere.

“I practiced at least four hours a day,” he recalled.

Although today he enjoys everything from blues and jazz to soul and reggae, Swope said his roots are in country and bluegrass.

“Only in recent years has Hagerstown begun to find its feet in terms of arts and entertainment,” Swope said. “But we’ve always been a traditionally small country town. With that, it’s hard to escape the country and bluegrass influence, especially with a family like mine.”

He said his family associated with Patsy Cline when she was becoming a popular act in Winchester, Va.

“She’d make routine trips through Hagerstown playing gigs,” he said. “So, that’s naturally what genre I was raised around.”

While other kids had “Sesame Street,” “I had ‘Hee Haw’ and the Grand Ole Opry,” he joked.

As a teenager, Swope said he played guitar in church bands, which was “my first real experience in front of people, singing and performing. That’s when I fell in love with it. I developed my style and started to write music in and around church. Later, I started writing country and more contemporary songs.”

After graduating from Smithsburg High School in 2002, Swope began thinking about moving to Nashville, Tenn., “and becoming the next Brad Paisley.”

“I made my first serious attempt with a song called ‘Christine’ in 2002,” Swope said. “I was invited to sing it at an exposition in Nashville in September of 2003. That trip was my first face-to-face with the Opry — which I would later be invited to play on — and Nashville altogether.”

Nashville or bust

In 2005, Swope said singer Jeff Bates performed at the Boonsboro Carnival.

“I met his then-manager, Kenny Beard, almost by accident. We just struck up a friendship immediately. Talked for hours,” he said. “I told him I had written a bunch of songs and was picking his brain about writing and being out on tour. He said, ‘Jeff, I’ve never said this to anybody before, but I can tell by talking to you that you’re serious and that you’ve got the right attitude. If you can just dedicate yourself to moving to Nashville, you’ll be a hit songwriter.’”

Swope said Beard wanted to take him under his wing and he recognized that this was a rare opportunity.

“So I quit my job and packed up my dog and my then-wife and moved a few months later. The most amazing thing was that he’d never heard me sing or read a single lyric,” Swope said.

Swope said he was in Nashville for a very short time — about seven or eight months.

“But it allowed me to learn the business, see professional music being recorded and get my hands on things that people living in Hagerstown may otherwise never get to see,” he said.

Swope produced a demo and played guitar for a rising Alabama-based singer-songwriter named Kevin Moon in 2006 and wrote a few songs that ultimately got recorded months after he moved back to Maryland.

“I was talented and ambitious but, unfortunately, I also was young and terribly stupid,” he said. “Key components in my personal life had taken a turn for the worst, so I decided it was important to move back home before everything fell apart. It was one of the hardest decisions I ever had to make.”

But he looks back on his time in Nashville as a good learning experience.

“I made a few strong connections, was in and out of RCA records, Sony Music and that whole group. I worked briefly with a major recording artist. More importantly, I learned quickly how to judge the integrity of people in business,” he said.

Although he’s now back in Hagerstown, Swope said he has no plans of giving up music. But it’s not a career that’s easy to establish.

“It’s very difficult to make a full-time job out of music in this area without a great deal of sacrifice,” he said. “Even in Nashville, I was always encouraged to find a day job until I had a hit song recorded and never to tell people I was in the music business. Today, I work a normal job in Hagerstown and write and record at home in the evening.”

There’s an app for that

Since returning home, Swope said he’s written a lot of songs and played them for family and friends.

“I’m convinced that I’ve written some of my best songs in recent years,” he said. “But I don’t have the means to record them the way I’d like. I hardly own any recording equipment.”

“The entire project is actually only about 80 percent iPhone. The other 20 percent will be done externally by other musicians,” he said. “I have a good friend locally named Tallon Reazin, who is known for his work with the band May Weather, who is playing bass and drums on the project.”

Swope said Mickey Adams, a pedal steel guitar player from Dallas, is playing on the album.  He’s known as the house player at Billy Bob’s Texas, a honky-tonk in Fort Worth Stockyards, Texas.

Celebrated guitar player Lee Roy Parnell is contributing slide guitar and harmony vocals to a track called “You Can’t Get There From Here,” which was formerly on his “Every Night’s a Saturday Night” CD.

“I’ve also been talking seriously with Marty Raybon, formerly of Shenandoah, about doing a track with me eventually,” Swope said. “Nothing’s in cement there, but he sounded really interested. Here’s a guy who won a Grammy for ‘Butterfly Kisses.’ I’d be tickled if he actually found the time.”

Swope hopes to wrap up the project by mid-fall. It will be called “You Wanted a Song: The iPhone Project” and will have 14 tracks, ranging from jazz and pop to reggae and country. It will be available on iTunes and, initially, in limited print.

“It’s something I’ve dedicated a lot of my free time to, but I don’t always get a lot of that,” he said. “One thing’s for sure — when I’m finished, it’ll be one-of-a-kind.”

Swope said he enjoys getting to Nashville once or twice a year “to make sure they’re doing OK without me.”

He has contacts and friends in Tennessee and it’s always nice to see them, he said. His publishing company also is there.

Swope said he would love to get a band together “but one thing at a time.”

He hopes the iPhone project attracts a little attention, “just because, hey, here’s a guy recording a CD on his cell phone. But really, I also hope it’s a lesson in thinking outside of the box. It’s brave, it’s unique and it’s very creative.”

Swope said anyone interested in following his progress can visit his blog at jeffswope.tumblr.com.

Name Changin’

Short Bus Records is now Vocal Ink Productions! I dig it!

Riding the Short Bus

Many thanks to Timmy Campbell of Short Bus Records in Smithsburg, MD for showing me around the facility last night. I’m super excited to lay down the final tracks in January, and get this record out to everybody.

-Jeff 

Heeere’s the track list!

1. You Wanted a Song
       (Written by Jeff Swope © 2010, Jeff Swope Productions, BMI)
2. Then I Woke Up
       (Written by Jeff Swope © 2011, Jeff Swope Productions, BMI)
3. New, Old Memory
       (Written by Jeff Swope © 2006, Jeff Swope Productions, BMI)
4. Loralei
       (Written by Jeff Swope © 2009, Jeff Swope Productions, BMI)
5. Near
       (Written by Jeff Swope © 2009, Jeff Swope Productions, BMI)
6. The Weekend
       (Written by Jeff Swope © 2007; 2010, Jeff Swope Productions, BMI)
7. Not So Easy (Still Holdin’ On)
    (Written by J. Swope & J. Markum (BMI) © 2007, Jeff Swope Productions)
8. By Accident (Duet with Tori Anderson)
       (Written by Jeff Swope © 2010, Jeff Swope Productions, BMI)
9. Traveler’s Prayer (feat. Marty Raybon)
       (Written by Jeff Swope © 2009, Jeff Swope Productions, BMI)
10. I Couldn’t Do It Again If I Tried
       (Written by Jeff Swope © 2006, Jeff Swope Productions, BMI)
11. You Can’t Get There From Here (feat. Lee Roy Parnell)
       (Written by Tony Arata © Little Tybee Music, ASCAP)
12. I Feel You
       (Written by Jeff Swope © 2007, Jeff Swope Productions, BMI)
13. Four Wheel Drive
       (Written by Jeff Swope © 2010, Jeff Swope Productions, BMI)
14. Riley’s Song
       (Written by Jeff Swope © 2007, Jeff Swope Productions, BMI)