Ok let me give you some “specifics” on the progress of “Jeremy Tharp,” and not in the ethereal sense. I feel a lot of pressure on the heels of “Unnatural” to make a very complete, exhaustive, musically coherent and lyrically coherent album, basically being autobiographical. That is, I want to give an accurate representation of how I feel, and I want the songs to maintain a musical style. Of course, the beauty of metaphor is there are hundreds of avenues available to accomplish this one task. As far as the musical cohesion, that will take place in the recording stage, and “Unnatural” worked out well because I recorded it all in a three day span. Nothing about it makes me want to make changes other than production flaws. But the songs I have written so far seem very sporatic, specifically musically, and I don’t feel like the complement each other just yet. Like I’ve said before I may break it into two albums, although I’m not sure where I would make the division.

I also feel a lot of pressure to write songs similar to the ones I have in the past, although the majority of the songs from my first two albums I can no longer relate to, because they applied to very specific moments in my life that are no longer relevant. One of my goals as a songwriter is to incorporate the appropriate amount of metaphor so that I can disconnect myself from the emotion, with just the right tough of specifics so that other people might get something out of it. As it stands right now, “Jeremy Tharp” is ridiculously abstract and very unfocused. Like I said, I am a little anxious about it. I need it to accurately reflect my own reactions or it will feel like a failure.

Part of the process that made “Unnatural” a success to me was that I was writing non-“Unnatural” songs at the same time, and I had a well defined theme. Right now I don’t have that, because my other projects are at a relative standstill, and who can really apply a theme to himself? I just need the right inspiration with the right motivation all at the right time, so for now I am just going to write a lot of songs and hopefully be able to bring myself to axing the ones that don’t fit. Period. “Jeremy Tharp” is not even beginning to resemble perfect …