Okay boys and girls, here’s a report that nobody asked for and probably nobody gives much of a fuzzy rat’s ass about. I’m currently “engaged” in seven Tom Dyer recording projects. They are all in various states of assembly and production. A couple are probably, at best, wishful thinking, but the future is still right around the corner. They are: 1) Pop Star Devils, 2) The Icons, 3) The First Christian Church Pipe Organ album, 4) The Erotic Muse, 5) Tom Dyer & Fishtrap 6) Piano Songs and 7) High School Songs , plus 8) the 2026 GMR Xmas album.
The deets.
Pop Star Devils is the newest and most likely to appear on an internet near you soon. The band is an all-new electronic pop duo thing being produced by me and Michael Stein, one of several drummers for The True Olympians, and maybe Lisa from The True Olympians. The band members have chosen to remain masked and diligently anonymous. We believe they are in a witness protection program. We also believe people deserve second chances. Sometimes. Their first single is, “Open The Door”. Last week we went to Tacoma to do a killer dance remix with Smoke M2D6. Never had done a DJ remix before – came out great! This week, I’m hoping to do a remix of Smoke’s remix … in my spare time. And do a video for the main track..
The Icons – 3 (Luv You). The Icons are my band from 1983. We made our first record (Masters of Disaster) back then – remixed and reissued in 2009, our second album (Appointment with Destiny) was in 2011, and now we’re making our third record. Original members Steve and Rick are back like always. We are on our third drummer. One per record. The late Tim Nelson was our first, James Gascoigne from The Queen Anne’s was our second, and our current drummer is Carl Wilhelm, formerly of The Green Pajamas (who have a great new record out). We have currently tracked nine songs and are in the “overdubbing” phase. I think we’re going to have one more session for basic tracks with another four or five songs. As is my current bent, there are no rehearsals for these sessions. Just make a crummy demo, send it to everybody so they can listen to it, and then show up and record. Plenty of opportunity for spontaneity! While Steve and Rick’s songs are all basically brand spanking new (and excellent), mine are all really old, at least 40 years old. For some reason I decided to go through my old handwritten pre-computer notebook of songs and pull out songs that have never been recorded, not even demos. Shockingly, even though generally I can’t remember jack anymore, I can remember all these songs just fine. Just looking at the lyrics, with no chords or melody notated, I know how they go. I expect this hoary beast will come out sometime early next year.
The First Christian Church Pipe Organ album is making a little slower progress than I’d hoped for, due to some technical mishaps. I’ve already written a big ol’ Substack about this project: https://substack.com/@greenmonkeytom/p-207706806. We’ve completed one tracking session so far – our next session will be in October, so this might possibly come out before the end of the year. Possibly.
Tom Dyer & Fishtrap – Boogie! A year ago or so I went out to see Fishtrap play at the Pig Bar in Olympia. Their drummer is Jeff Parkhurst, True Olympian drummer #3 (and GMR solo artist) . Fishtrap is your basic white guys Chicago blues band with guitar, bass, drums, and harmonica played through one of those Green Bullet Shure microphones going into a combo amp They do some traditional blues numbers but then they do non-blues songs in the blues style. I just went to be nice, you know how that is, and it turned out I loved this band. Killers! When they took their break I walked up and said, “Guys, I want to make a record with you! I’ll be the singer, you’ll be the band. I’m not going to play any instruments.” I came up with a whole song list, mostly some of my previously recorded songs that will be reinterpreted through this lens. However, Jeff had to have shoulder surgery, which is going around amongst old drummers that I know. His surgery went fine but the project has been on hold for several months. News Flash! Jeff is playing his first gig back with Fishtrap tomorrow at Porchfest in Olympia. Yahoo! We will probably get this started next year sometime.
The Erotic Muse was an idea I came up with when I couldn’t find any healthy drummers to play on my records. How could I make a record with no drummer? Hmm. I found this book of bawdy songs titled The Erotic Muse down at Half Price Books, published in 1972. I said to my pal Lisa, “You want to make a record of dirty songs?” She said, “Sure!” The idea was that I was going to do this while I was waiting for all these other projects that needed drummers to get going. Now The Icons album is going, so this one hasn’t got started yet. We’re going to make this record for sure. It’s going to be a simple folkie music album, like you might hear in a pub late at night in Ireland or Pennslytucky somewhere or something like that. Acoustic guitar, singing, accordion, that sort of thing. God knows, but this one’s going to come out next year too in theory.
Piano Songs/High School Songs. These two are a little more vague but I got the idea to do a record of songs that I performed when I was in high school and a few other places over the years (traditional Italian arias like Giovanni Paisiello’s “Nel Cor Piu Non Me Sento”, show tunes and stuff like that). I’ve got song lists assembled for these albums and potential players, but that’s about it so far.
The 2026 Christmas album? It’s going to happen. The entries are beginning to roll in. Possible title – Expeditions Through The Holiday Mind: GMR Xmas 2026 .
Other than that what am I up to? Nothin’. You?
Originally posted on Green Monkey Noize, Tom’s Substack.