It's December 2020. We're all stuck inside the house, no gigs. Covid is raging. What were we supposed to do with ourselves? Well, how about making an album? Well, yeah, fine, ok. How about a live album? A LIVE ALBUM?!!! Wow!!! HOW DO WE DO THAT?

I put together a set of songs. Songs from the 90's, the 00's, the teens (or whatever that decade is

It's December 2020. We're all stuck inside the house, no gigs. Covid is raging. What were we supposed to do with ourselves? Well, how about making an album? Well, yeah, fine, ok. How about a live album? A LIVE ALBUM?!!! Wow!!! HOW DO WE DO THAT?

I put together a set of songs. Songs from the 90's, the 00's, the teens (or whatever that decade is called) and a couple new ones to prove to myself that I could still write a song.

I showed it to drummer extraordinaire Taylor Still, and the Spotlight Sisters. They all agreed that doing a pretend live show was the best thing we could do. Production commenced in January of 2021. We were all safely ensconced in our home studios. We communicated via ancient texts and phone calls.

I wanted to start over with the arrangements of these songs, many of which I had either released before or attempted to release. For many months we labored. It was hard. It was tricky. There were moments when I wanted to give up but I knew that we had to take this all the way.

It became apparent very quickly that I could not find enough audience clips to make it sound like it was recorded in one club, or hall, or stadium, or outdoor mega-festival. What to do? Let's pretend that we're on tour! Different audiences, different venues, even different musicians!

So we called up Handsy, the hottest guitarist in Germany, and he joined us for the first leg. Italian percussionist Victor Benocelli was there. The Brazilian Brothers got us going in S. America. Xing Wang joined us on bass in Asia. Chester "Mr. Thumbs" McCormick held down the keyboards.

This was great! I had never been on tour before so this was a new experience for me. Our manager assured us that we had the right stuff and that it we might even set records. That was enough to calm my nerves. I didn't ask him to elaborate.

In honor of the fact that no one involved had actually been within 20 miles of each other during the making of this tour, we decided to call it THE ME NEXT TO YOU WORLD TOUR. Me Next To You happens to be a line in Pop Me Like A Bubble (the first song in this set) and it makes sense when you remember (for those of you reading this in the safe future when there is no more plague) that being next to someone you didn't know could possibly kill you and everyone you cared about.

So, we did it. But then I had to mix it. It's one thing to FANTASIZE about a live audience, but to actually make the thing sound like you're onstage? After many false starts including taking it all the way to mastering, I decided to get some help. Pyramind.com (a music production school) in San Francisco to the rescue: Ryan Rey gave me some great pointers and I was able to finish.

Michael Romanowski mastered the album and it's now available on my website. Taylor Still and I made an old fashioned 30 second commercial for the album and tour that you can also hear on my website, www.alexwalsh.com

Produced by Alex Walsh & Taylor Still Featuring The Spotlight Sisters Audio Consulting by Ryan Rey Cover photo by John Mazzei (www.johnmazzei.com) Mastering by Michael Romanowski (www.coastmastering.com)