I joined up with Josh, Gilly and Matt in January, as the forth member of an alternative rock band with a handful of Josh created original songs. We decided on a band name, Octavate, while we are all home and social distancing (sometime in late March). The band name comes from a song of the same name that Josh wrote before we all got together, we like, and thought the name was interesting....each of us with our own reasons. 

Our web site is at www.octavate.band, someone else has the DOT COM site, so this will have to do. Josh is a song writing machine, with his love of sounds from the 90's, Alice In Chains, Foo Fighters, Pearl Jam, Tool, Red Hot Chili Peppers....you get the picture. I get to sing a lot of his creations, some are very challenging. 

We also are collaborating on a bunch of new things.  As of today, April 28 2020, we have 5 originals that we as a band have learned together. Josh continues to write, somewhere around another 10 plus ready for the band to sink our teeth into.  Josh and I have collaborated together on at least another 4 songs. By the time social distancing is over, I'd expect we will have at least 15 songs for Matt and Gilly decide if they want to consider them for Octavate, and then contribute their own pieces to officially make them Octavate creations. 

In the meantime, Josh and I are able to record and send music back and forth to each other.  We just finished up a demo of Wearing Thin, which has a lot to do about our personal takes on the pandemic (every musician will have a pandemic song or two by the time this is over). We also have a near completed demo of Flying Floating, part of a trilogy of songs relating to the end of Earth's existence (we wrote the trilogy before the pandemic started, and even though the concept of the trilogy is dark, it's not based on a global virus). We also have a song that Josh and I created about a year before Octavate got together, called Wasted Time. A demo already exists of that (one of the few recordings of it are linked in this post).  So we are well on our way to an album, and it will be a blast to start playing these songs live.

We have discussed playing some of my songs that I release as Special Victim, in Octavate. I can see the guys taking them, and making the parts their own for some playing live. 

Well, here's hoping we can get the full band to record something in 2020, and maybe look to get into some public place to perform these songs for you, hopefully early 2021 (that is me wishful thinking).  I'm ready to play some lives shows NOW!