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I love this darn song.

When it comes to my past few songs, the typical Arcati Crisis selection process is like so:

I write a ton of songs. Sometimes dozens. We sift through them, and eventually choose one because Gina or I finally get stubborn about it. If I don’t change my mind in a month or two, then we learn that song.

“Better” was different. I wrote it knowing it was going to be an AC song before I ever played it for Gina. I wrote it with counter-point, callbacks, and open harmony all built in.

I just knew. And because I knew, it’s so very satisfying to play, to hear, and to watch. It’s not much of a stretch to say it’s my favorite one of my songs to play as a duo right now, and I’m in love with our performance here:

That’s the only way you can hear “Better” at the moment – we took a shot at recording it live, but I suspect it’s going to be one of our first fully tracked songs.

Around the big ball drop I’ll chime in with our final song, somehow appropriate for the end of the year. Then, on to solo music to ramp up to my appearance at the Tin Angel next Friday, opening for Dante Bucci!

Today was pretty crazy.

In short, I unexpectedly stayed home from work, and just as I was finally dragging my carcass out of bed a digital series of events began to unfold on my laptop (which had been in bed with me) that resulted in my being booked for a solo appearance at the Tin Angel – opening for my friend and esteemed musical colleague Dante Bucci.

Not how I expected to spend the day, and a lot of information to process (and songs to prepare!) in the next nine days. What will I play? Will I slip in a surprise cover?

Gina and I never used to be good at learning things in a hurry, but in 2009 we got suddenly alright at it. We surmised in an interview earlier this year that it’s because we finally figured out what we’re supposed to sound like. Now that we understand our sound, it’s much easier to build it from scratch.

On that topic, this is perhaps our seventh or eighth full run through “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” which we learned in two brief sessions.

There’s still some tweaking to do, but I’m happy we captured this hilarious blast through it on video.

There are just two more songs left in our web concert; after that I’ll be presenting some solo content to take us through my appearance at the Tin Angel on January 8th!