Connected with a new potential background singer living in Australia who’s got a wonderful high-register voice. I’m hoping he’ll become our Kelly Groucutt; he’s even expressed an interest in taking some lead sections of tracks, much in the way Kelly did with tracks like “Poker”, “Sweet Is the Night” and “Nightrider" for ELO. He’s working on the first track now; we’ll see how it goes.
Most of the basic instrumentation for the 10 primary album
tracks are now complete; still need to add foundational guitar and strings for
the last track. Beyond that, next steps
in the process will be: additional keyboards, backing vocals, finalizing string
arrangements, and then guitar overdubs.
Lot of work!
Had to deal with a significant administrative issue the past
week or so, essentially involving CD sales outside of the U.S. Selling physical product within the States is
relatively straightforward… cross-border, not so much. VAT rules are cumbersome and vary by
territory – and if you don’t get them right, packages can be rejected by customs
agents and returned.
Finally came to the conclusion that the best approach will
be to let the Bandcamp site (which is set up for determining correct VAT
amounts, charging it at checkout and then remitting it to the appropriate taxing
authorities) handle our international CD sales, so – the Interstate Island
website now has a link for such fulfillment of any such international
orders. Hopefully the process will be
easy to follow for our international listeners!