#sincerelyiris

[sincerelyirismusic]

Kelly Joe Phelps. This'll do for some Sunday Picking. Tasteful as always. One of my favorite songs of the past year.

[sincerelyirismusic]

A collection of footage from the past 5 years from Chicago, to Savannah, to Charlotte and everywhere in between. I hope you like it. Special thanks to all of the wonderful photographers, videographers and fans who have helped me out along the way.

[sincerelyirismusic]

Sincerely Iris tour dates

[sincerelyirismusic]

 New video for my new album. You can purchase it here: http://sincerelyiris.bandcamp.com/album/license-plate-sessions

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/license-plate-sessions-ep/id889936804

[sincerelyirismusic]

Eternal: The Stories Behind the Sessions

As you might remember, I was the guitarist for PostSecret: The Show a few months ago. I blogged all about it here.

The show required me to play solo guitar onstage the entire time. I had to create some sounds that I had never really messed with before, including looping and heavy delay mixed with insane reverb. The music was written by Mario Vaira and it really taught me a ton about texture and how instrumental music can weave a story.

I needed to buy a looper pedal stat. After searching the world of the interweb and Facebook surveying all of my friends I went with the Ditto Looper X2.

There are lots of cool functions on this beast. About halfway through the run of the show I was messing with the Ditto at home and decided to hook up the License Plate Guitar to it. I came up with the beginning of Eternal and sort of forgot about it til after PostSecret was over. Too much music for me to remember at that point.

All of the weird effects on this song (backwards guitar, halfspeed) were done with the Ditto. For me, it's one of the few examples of technology inspiring the entire direction of a song. It's my first instrumental on an album ever. I hope you like it! There's definitely some Jeff Beck and My Bloody Valentine influences creeping in on this one.

 License Plate Sessions is available everywhere now! For physical copies go here: Bandcamp

[sincerelyirismusic]

Samson: The Stories Behind the Sessions

The story of Samson and Delilah popped into my head one day from randomly seeing the title of an old blues song by Reverend Gary Davis in a guitar magazine. I didn't actually listen to his song until after I had recorded my song for this album.

I asked a few people who are a little more church-y than me about the details of Samson's story. It turns out that like many things in the Bible every religion varies on all of the details. I approached writing this song the same way a blues or folk artist would. I wouldn't say I stretched the story, but I put myself in Samson's shoes a little. I thought it would sort of be how Superman would feel if he lost his powers. He probably wouldn't go into work anymore. He'd be sitting at the bar bitter about how much it sucks to not be a superhero. Being regular is hard, especially if you were born able to pick up cars and shit. Maybe this happened on an episode of Lois and Clarke that I missed.

This is the only song on the album that features my 6-string Breedlove guitar. In the beginning of this process I gave myself strict rules about only using the license plate guitar! A sort of Jack White limitations rule I set for myself. For 4 songs on the album I followed that rule, but I originally wrote Samson on a regular guitar. The license plate by itself sounded pretty cool, but when I mixed the two guitar tracks together I fell in love. Dirty and clean go well together sometimes.

[sincerelyirismusic]

You may remember this song from my old album Headlight Sonata. That album and this video were both recorded when I was living in Chicago. This was shot at a spooky cemetery by our old apartment.

Cemetery Blues - Headlight Sonata Version

I thought it would be fun to give it a dubstep remix....not really, but it was cool to find a new way to interpret this song. I got to change the key, hit the guitar more, and deconstruct the song's sound from a gypsy vibe to well, whatever this new vibe is. I'll take your suggestions as to what it sounds like.

This song has stayed in my set list since 2008. I usually mix it with a snippet of Led Zeppelin's Babe I'm Gonna Leave You. That tune is probably not possible on a 4 string, but I'm excited to see where this Cemetery Blues goes now. 

[sincerelyirismusic]

Here's a cool video from The RAW Artists Charlotte show I did last month. It includes an interview, some license plate guitar, and the lovely host, Elizabeth Byland in the intro. It's pretty rare that we both get to share the stage on the same night. It was a blast!