This morning, it was brought to my attention that October 19^th is National Evaluate Your Life Day. I had to chuckle a little bit. October 19^th is the Monday before the deadline for having my album tracked in its entirety. Hopefully I will have my life evaluation on lock and a re-evaluation will be unnecessary.

I’ve kept the details for my album under wraps for a while now. Obviously, there is the mystery and anticipation factor that I was shooting for (from my handful of fans haha!). But honestly, I think my biggest reason for keeping the details to myself was because of my track record. I have written plenty of times (in various blogs and whatnot) that I would be releasing new music, only to have it never happen. So I guess I was just afraid of letting myself down again. Luckily, I am at a place in my life where I can focus a lot more on music. I am also not getting any younger. I haven’t professionally released anything to date, so if I don’t do it now, it will probably never happen. That is something that I can’t do to myself, or to the people who have always believed in me and tried to push me creatively.

With that said, I would like to formally announce the details of my debut album!

• The album will be titled While You Were Sleeping. (Note: This has nothing to do with the movie starring Sandra Bullock or Bill Pullman….Although Pullman is the man!).
• There are currently eight tracks in production, with two more left to be written.
• “WYWS” can best be described as a concept album. I tried to steer clear of this initially, but the album has grown into a much bigger overarching idea than I could have ever imagined.
• One of the first tracks of the album will be a song written by Mr. Aaron Blaze and myself, which happens to be the song that the entire album is based off of.
• Finally and probably most significantly: I am writing about 95% of the lyrics, arranging and playing all of the instruments, and producing this record entirely by myself. I will have the album mixed and mastered elsewhere, but it was important to me to be at the helm of this project in every aspect.

There are a few other surprises and ideas I have in store, but those still have yet to work themselves out. Just know that I like to think big. My favorite word to use in the music writing process is “epic,” so believe me when I say the ideas I have left to hash out will be well worth the wait!

I hope that this news is as exciting to you as it is to me. This has been a LONG time coming, so to finally see it coming together is pretty special. Feel free to spread the word and direct people to WatanukiMusic.com. I am planning on creating a few other social media outlets to keep people informed, but nothing can compare to word of mouth!

Stay tuned for more updates including album details, song clips, a studio diary, and release date information! I leave you with a glimpse of how the tracking is currently progressing: