Nicholas Lutsko

Week #13 Update!

Added 2024-01-29 05:00:04 +0000 UTC

Hello everyone,

Please don’t let this photo frighten or fool you; I had dinner with Eric last night and can assure you that he is in perfect health! But imagine my surprise seeing this minutes before arriving at his birthday dinner. I wish I had taken a photo to prove that he is in good spirits and that this sticker is arrant misinformation. Eric nearly fell out of his chair when I showed him!

Despite this egregious slander, Clair and I had a lovely dinner with the Parhams. I also had the best gelato I’ve ever tasted (pistachio), and this is coming from a guy who spent a week in Italy!

I finished a song this week that I started working on January 7. Here’s a voice memo of the bassline I wrote on Eric’s (who is alive) acoustic bass:

Acoustic Bass Voice Memo 1/7/24

I struggled with lyrics for a long time on this one, but I’m pretty happy with where they ended up. It’s not as optimistic as some of the other songs. It’s thematically similar to the others, but it ruminates on the challenge of finding joy and gratitude amidst the presence of impending tragedy. It’s sort of the inverse of Obituary in that regard. Musically, however, it might be the sunniest of the bunch. I feel like there are some similarities to songs on SWORDS (specifically Sideshow, Straitjacket and Shakedown), but it feels like the inverse of SWORDS in a lot of ways as well.

I immediately started work on another song that my wife pointed out sounds way too similar to another song. But I believe I’ve remedied that problem and I’m very excited to continue work on that this week.

Still haven’t been able to get together with the band due to snow and illness, but this week is the week! (knocks head loudly against wood)

Arrivederci!

Nick