As of about a week ago, you can pre-order my album, The Ill-Tempered Klavier, from The Rabbit Room store.

After over two years of on-again off-again (mostly off-again), my good friend Andrew Peterson, owner and proprietor of The Rabbit Room, has issued me an ultimatum to finally finish this album and release it digitally from his website on June 17th. And so it shall be done. If you pre-order now, you'll help me raise the money to put the finishing touches on the record. You'll also get a digital booklet and two bonus tracks (whatever could they BE?) as my way of saying thank you for your support. If you're, let's say, family, and you'd like to order more than one copy for, let's say, your friends, you can email me and we'll arrange for the record to be delivered to their email account.

Below is a synopsis of the record. You can find this article, as well as more Ill-Tempered news at The Rabbit Room.

This little record of mine is called The Ill-Tempered Klavier. The title is a dumb joke. It’s a play on The Well-Tempered Klavier, a collection of piano pieces by J.S. Bach. Klavier is the German word for piano, and Ill-Tempered has a double meaning. First, it refers to an oddity of piano tuning. You have to temper the tunings of the individual strings on the piano, that is to say you have to tune them just a little sharp or flat, in order to make the whole instrument sound in tune. In that sense, “The Ill-Tempered Klavier” could be paraphrased “the poorly tuned piano.”

But "Ill-Tempered" could also mean that this piano is feeling a little grouchy today. The title track (”Out Of Tune”) is the lament of dilapidated old piano that’s tired of being forgotten. And of course, the curmudgeonly old upright is me. A little out of tune, not always able to keep myself together emotionally. And I think the whole record sounds a little dilapidated but lovable. Or at least I hope it does.

So the songs (in no particular order) are:

New Year — In which I make the resolution not to be a jerk anymore.

She Is The Rising Sun — The moon confesses his true feelings.

The Old Man — “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed.”

Nothing For The Ache — Try as we might, we can’t stop the bleeding of our hearts. This wound must be there for a reason.

Rise Up — I made the mistake of tuning into hyper-republican talk radio one day. Five minutes later I was praying for the apocalypse.

Out Of Tune — “I’m just a jagged set of keys that unlock old memories. Sentimental melodies, voices echoing, beautiful funeral flowers.”

4th Of July — About something I witnessed at the magnificent Big Bang Boom in Norfolk, NE, where my wife is from.

97 — It hurts to grow up. A song about my senior year of high school.

Do You Remember — The title of a game Beth and I used to play, in which we’d take turns reminiscing about our history.

Wear Your Wedding Dress — Based on a quote from The Mystery Of Marriage: For now is the time to eulogize; now the time to deck with flowers.”

Binary Stars — AP wrote the lyric. It’s about a tragic near-miss.

Thank you for your support. I appreciate all the people who have asked about this record over the years. You’ve kept me going. Not to get ahead of myself, but I’d also like to thank AP, Cason Cooley, Andy Osenga, and Beth, who’ve been enormously helpful and encouraging.