yearlongday

what a fabulous year 2011 has been so far! let’s reminisce together…

january- the original shot-story four years come, four years go is published. it is a narrative companion to my first album, humans, and foreshadows the imminent release of the “expanded edition“. doesn’t make a blip on the radar.

february- the announcement is made that humans: expanded edition is complete. its 29-songs (including 14 bonus tracks of rare, previously unreleased material & new, decade-anniversary mixes) represent the fulfillment of my archive-restoration project, an endeavor begun in 2010 with “restored” versions of utopia and modern moments. yet again, 3 albums in less than 12 months does nothing to invoke even a golf-clap from friends and fans.

march- fearful that the obvious lack of interest in yearlongday.com is leading us into an online abyss (less than 1% of comments, or 4/540 per year, are legitimate), i thought to de-fund the website. after consideration, i opted instead to pair another 12 months of yearlongday.com with the simultaneous launch of our facebook page AND reverbnation profile. the idea was that yearlongday could either sink or swim in the world-wide web, and ‘swimming’ meant promoting with everything available to me. but not a ripple, let alone a splash.

april- spring in swing, i record “anything“, the result of my collaboration with john shaughnessy. the song was intended to create “hype” about yearlongday by using the ‘see-and-say’ nature of social networking to gather random lyrics (literally, anything) from a shared audience. in turn, we hoped this mutually vested interest would bring new traffic to our respective websites. But if the goal was to stimulate momentum, the strategy failed, at least for yearlongday.

may- to remind people that yearlongday… well, exists, we covered rod stewart’s “maggie may“, AND released “get me back to nola”, “edgar cayce”, “today will never end (single)”, and “just because” but five new songs weren’t enough to keep us from the margins of the local music scene. no buzz, no hype, no momentum… i started to wonder why no one seemed to care that yearlongday continued to make creative and intriguing original music.

june- another announcement and more music… “like lennon” comes to the forefront, the first recording with leah l’orange since our debut album, while yearlongdecade is announced as the title of the forthcoming ‘best of’ album. also, smothered by the silence is announced as the forthcoming autobiography of jonathan t marlowe & yearlongday. after these invitations to be part of yearlongday’s evolution and legacy draw little response, i began to not just wonder why, but speculate in a public campaign suggesting that blacklisting and collusion are as valid explanations as any.

now it’s july… “starsick” was a fan-favorite from our live set, and it will be released soon as the herald of our new album. but i can’t pretend that i am excited; and i can’t say that this will be the song that jump-starts our ‘comeback’. we never left. we’ve been doing what we’ve always done… making the best “neo-retro lo-fi avant-fab hipster dream-pop crap” you’ll find anywhere, online or onstage. but you gotta look… even little children peek through their fingers at what they’re afraid to see on the screen.

love on ya!

… jonathan t marlowe