What an adventure this has been. I'm not done yet either. Now there is a whole bunch of different work to take care of, but at least there won't be any more 15 hour days in the studio for a while. So let me get you a little up to date on what is happening:

The new record is going to be called "Feel Euphoria" The song titles go like this:

Onomatopoeia - written by Alan Morse, Nick D'Virgilio & John Boegehold
The Bottom Line - written by Nick D'Virgilio & Stan Ausmus
Feel Euphoria - written by Ryo Okumoto & Nick D'Virgilio
Shining Star - written by Nick D'Virgilio
East of Eden, West of Memphis - written by Alan Morse & John Boegehold
Ghosts of Autumn - written by Dave Meros & John Boegehold
A Guy Named Sid - written by Nick D'Virgilio
Carry On - written by Alan Morse, Stan Ausmus & John Boegehold.

Now I know it only looks like 8 songs, but "A Guy Named Sid" is in 6 parts :) Yes, we have an epic on this record too. As you can see, everyone in the band has written for this record. There are also a couple of names there you might not recognize, so here is a brief introduction to a couple of good friends of Spock's Beard.

John Boegehold has been a friend of the band from the beginning. He met Al in the early 80's when a guitarist in his band quit a few days before a recording session. Al came in as a replacement and saved the day with his twisted riff magic. They did a few more projects together over the next several years. Around the same time and into the 90's, John and Dave were in a few bands together, including the sometimes prog "Map Of Shadows" and "Orphan Moon". When Spock's Beard got together, he shot a ton of photos for us, one ending up as the cover of "Official Live Bootleg". He also designed the cover of "Beware Of Darkness". We recorded some overdubs for our first few albums at his studio and mixed some of the tracks from "Official Live Bootleg" and "From The Vaults" there. After Neal left, John called Dave and said "Hey, how about us writing some tunes for the next Beard record?" Dave was pretty busy at the time, but Al and John got together and came up with "East Of Eden, West Of Memphis" and finished "Carry On", which Al had started with Stan. They also came up with the verses and choruses for "Onomatopoeia", which I later wrote the bridge for. John and Dave finally did write one together (the last one we recorded) called "Ghosts Of Autumn" entirely via e-mail!!! Besides making a living as a songwriter and composer, John designs websites and is the webmaster of spocksbeard.com. (Never worry about stale info on the site, John relentlessly kicks our asses to get updates!)

Stan Ausmus has been a friend of my since Jr. high school. Stan was the guitar player in my very first band called "Network" We played very funny versions of Genesis and Rush songs along with some original stuff. We were very serious at the time. Or so we thought. Over the years Stan and I have kept in touch and over the past few years we started hanging out more and jamming like we used to and out came some song ideas. Then Al started jamming with us and more ideas came out. That is pretty much where "Bottom Line" and "Carry On" came from. I went over to Stan's house and he had the opening guitar lick and a few other things for "Bottom Line" worked out on his computer and we started messing with it. I took the idea home and spit out a whole song. Stan is very a talented musician and also a very talented film editor. He heads up Juz Maintain Productions, a self-owned and operated audio/video post facility. That is his "day job" so to speak. Although he works all hours of the day and night sometimes. So say hi to Stan everybody. It is good to have him on the team.

Along with Stan and John, we still have Mr. Rich Mouser on the team. Rich Engineered and Mixed again for us. He also co-produced really. In the past Rich would record the basic tracks (drums, bass, some keys) with us at Lawnmower and then everyone would over-dub their parts at their respective homes and then drop a whole pile of tapes on Rich's lap with some very unreadable notes and say "here you go dude! Make us sound good." I'm over exaggerating a little bit but it was kind of like that. This time around not only did Rich record all the basics, he recorded all the guitars and vocals. It was great to have Rich's ears for this record. He has a great feel for this kind of music along with a feel for very modern stuff, too. All of the records he works on sound great and I think he did a great job again.

Alright everybody, a lot more info to come soon. We can't wait to see you all on the road.

All the best, NDV