Welp. This is the second time publishing Duck House Season 6. A second round of white-screen-of-death befell sgp.com a month or two ago. I think we only lost a few posts, but the energy level and enthusiasm to rewrite this one is low!
Here’s the album!
Check the discography page, find it on Bandcamp, or go right to the Google Drive!
And here’s the teaser that originally went up in October 2024.
Now that Blonski’s excised the demons from our wordpress account, we can post things again! I’ll let him explain why there’s been no small glowing pig for a year, but, for once, it’s not because we haven’t been doing anything!
First up is the release of the second Muffin album, Life Up Here. I put this one together over the course of a couple of months last winter and spring. Each song was written and mostly recorded in one night with drums or overdubs or other stuff being added in later. I had fun trying to keep some of the sound of the first album while also evolving it a bit. It’s still a Presidents / Queens of the Stone Age fusion, but I think I’ve made it a little more my own on this one.
Check it out on Bandcamp or hit up the discography page.
We’re currently wrapping up mixing on Season 6 of Duck House, and it should be good to go soon.
Since publishing Doozywop’s Wilford Brimley tribute EP in early 2022, Small Glowing Pig has been busy learning new jobs and raising babies. We’ve also moved equipment around, bought new stuff, and gotten ourselves back in the saddle.
On my end, we had our spare room in the basement redone and it’s been coming together over the past few months as a music room. Got a sweet ultrawide monitor, a TV to throw lyrics onto, some sound dampening foam (thanks, Blonski!), and a new Focusrite Scarlet 18i8. Also picked up an Ibanez hollow-body and inherited a banjolin, which I didn’t know was a thing.
Blonski and I are cooking up another album that will possibly be Season 6 of Duck House. As that was coming together, I worked on an EP of high energy rock songs.
Rather than starting with fooling around on guitar or programming synths, I wrote each song by coming up with a melody and lyric idea and then built chord progressions around them. I tried to keep each song short and avoided bridges or solo sections. I also kept the sound consistent between songs, making use of the same instruments, amps, plugins, etc. in each track. Check out the new tunes on Bandcamp or on the discography page!
The band Doozywop got their start in the mid 70s. After working the doo wop circuit and finally getting signed, they set out to record their first album. Disaster struck only a few tracks into the process when their sound engineer moved. Unable to recover, the band lost focus and ultimately parted ways.
The former members of Doozywop spread across the United States, settling in DC, Chicago, Philly, New Orleans, and Dayton, Ohio. They took up new hobbies like yoga, rock climbing, and gourd collecting. It seemed as if the Doozywop story would end there, but the tragedy of 2020 brought them back together.
After getting word of Wilford Brimley’s passing, the band reunited with the goal of honoring Wilford at his funeral. At the service, all hopes of celebrating the great Quaker Oatmeal spokesman’s life were quickly dashed as the crowd was unappreciative of the band’s music. It would have been easy for Doozywop to pack it in and return to their lives. They would not choose the easy road.
Fueled by the sting of the funeral show, the band wrote a double album that would honor their late friend. Eschewing the the doo wop revivalist scene from their past, the resulting compositions reflected the changes within each member’s lives and the music that influenced them since their fateful recording session so many years ago.
The title of the album was to be From Wilford to Brimley, A Collection. Unfortunately, after recording three songs, the sound engineer moved to Australia. The recording studio lay dormant, and any chance of completing their homage to the silver screen legend was lost.
What is left is the energetic yet soulful EP that smallglowingpig is able to present to you today: Doozywop’s Remembering Wilford. Check it out on Bandcamp here or on the discography page.
According to Southernliving.com, the foremost authority on philosophy and chronology, Marty Rubin once said, “Time does not pass, it continues.” If you don’t know Marty Rubin, he is, of course, the Canadian author of The Boiled Frog Syndrome. This is a book I must admit I’ve never heard of. It is also a fascinating title.
Anyway, time is crazy, because as I post Duck House‘s Season 5, it has now been four years since the last release. I’m not sure, but it might be even worse that we began what became the Duck House project nearly 10 years ago – in 2012. This means we’ve been making Duck House albums nearly half as long as Small Glowing Pig has existed. What.
And with that, we present to you Season 5. This project began when Steve and I listened to Season 2 and thought to ourselves, “This is weird. We should do something weird again.” Also it started by wanting to make a dance song (it would become “The Butcher Shop”).
Enjoy the muzak over on the Bandcamp page or check it out on the discography.
-Mike
Admittedly, it has been 2021 for almost a month. Is it everything we thought it would be? Probably!
Kate shares her voice and lyrics with the SGP family on her very own debut EP, “The 2021 EP”. This was a project that started back in late November, when Kate came up to Vienna House 2b and was inspired to throw down some melody on a guitar progression I (Steve) was messing with. From there we found ourselves writing about 2.5 songs in basically one session; the two complete tunes ended up on this EP.
For these first two, Mike was kind enough to take some rough mixes and record understated drum parts, which really fill out and liven up the tracks. I had initially tried some programmed and live-recorded drums myself, but my rhythm wasn’t jiving with, er, the other instruments I recorded? Well, I was glad to play more of a producer role and get to hear and choose some tasty fills for the songs!
The third track was actually written and recorded right around (and after) New Years. I think we came up with the chorus during another Kate visit to the Viennas, and kind of sang it to each other for a week or so. I finished up most of the instrument recordings by mid-Jan, and recently Kate laid down her vocals.
Look for more projects with Kate in the future!
-Blonski
An indeterminate amount of time ago (a year… two years?) I enlisted the help of couple buddies to haul a Wurlitzer organ from across town (in the rain) and into my basement. Not being an organ player (or piano or keyboard player of any kind), it has mostly enjoyed a quiet existence observing family members passing on their way to retrieve clean laundry. This fall seemed like the right time to put it to work.
Each of the three songs on what would become Information Speaker‘s Go Ahead and Look Foolish started differently. I began writing “Frank Starts Out as a Truck Driver” with electric guitar, “Egypt Has Pyramids” with organ, and “Fiasco” with acoustic chords. While I tried to keep some consistency in tone for each instrument, the way each song was written led to somewhat different feels.
The lyrics were all taken directly from Amazon reviews. Read about the products that inspired the songs below!
The Irishman (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]
Le Creuset Stoneware Mini Round Cocotte, 8 oz., Marseille
Thanks to Jim Hernovich for the awesome guitar work on “Egypt Has Pyramids”. I was struggling to record a solo when he came over and laid one down in all of about 15 minutes, never having heard the song before.
Check out the muzak over on Bandcamp or in the discography.
-Mike
While the winding path that is 2020 has not led us to destinations envisioned at the start of the year, it has provided some opportunity for creativity. Steve and I originally hoped to be wrapping up work on Steve Blonski and Our Forefathers right about now, but instead we’ve got a different album to drop. After displaying a focus and dedication uncharacteristic of our usual endeavors, Blonski and I have put a bow on the second Ear Buds EP.
New to this album: overdubs! Unlike Volume I, Steve and I agreed to lay down some tasteful additions to a few of the songs. We stayed away from the “wall of sound” approach and instead looked to incorporate subtle harmony or even a balalaika or pan flute.
You can cop the new tunes over here on Bandcamp or here on our discography page.
It turns out, “not at work” does not necessarily mean “on vacation”, but even so, I have squeezed in some time in the last few weeks to finish writing, recording, and mixing the second Vacation album.
For this set of songs, I tried something different. It began in the fall when Steve lent me his Peavey amp and a giant cabinet. Once I set it all up in my basement, I had the loop pedal running guitar and bass through separate amps. I’d make up a simple guitar part, lay down a quick bass line, and then jump on the drums. It amazed me how much more fun it was playing along with a real bass amp than when running both instruments through the guitar amp.
Inspired, I began coming up with parts. I’d force myself to lay down A and B sections each time I played. After recording over 20 song ideas, I went through them and culled the less interesting ones. Below are three that didn’t make the cut to the final album.
After settling on eight that I liked, I began recording each as produced songs using Reaper. The idea recordings that became each track on the album are below.
The lyrics and melodies were, as usual, the hardest part. I decided to make the lyrics personal and heartfelt – something that I don’t often do. I didn’t scour Wikipedia for fun topics, but instead tried to find big important things and small moments that resonated with me. I ended up with songs about applying for new jobs, playing hide and seek, and simultaneously thinking about missing my dog when she passes away and my daughter when she grows up. For many of the songs, I ended up “stopping” working on them rather than truly finishing them. As often happens, I’m left hating some of the words and feeling indifferent about many of the melodies.
I started recording the album during my winter break at the end of 2019 and finished it during the COVID-19 lockdown of March and April 2020. I don’t know how the tone of the album fits across both of those “vacations” – but it is what it is…
Check out the album here.
-Mike
I was originally planning to put the demo tracks for Volume I of Ear Buds up about a month after the EP released, but here we are and it’s November already. That happened fast…
In any case, these are the original demo tracks. We passed these to each other a year or so ago and then took another few months to learn them, practice them, and record them.
01 – Edification Demo [download]
02 – Going Home Demo [download]
03 – Paint Demo [download]
04 – Moments Demo [download]
In other news, we’re in the thick of writing the next album. We’re finally getting around to an idea Steve had probably a decade ago for an R&B album about the founding fathers. Who else could be more qualified for this endeavor than the two of us? We’ve written parts of seven songs and are at the point where we can arrange them and fill out lyrics and melody. The goal is to have some demos laid down in the next few months so that we can practice and then record before/during the summer of 2019. Hopefully we’ll have more to talk about soon!
-Mike
