Tag Archives: new songs

News, Songs

T-minus 22 for our new single; time to learn some guitar chords.

First, tune your folk guitar to the standard tones. Okay, so how does that go again? Every Good Boy Does Fine, right? But what about the sixth string? Wait a minute – you mean there’s a DIFFERENT system for guitar strings? Man god damn. This is more complicated than I thought.

So, you may well ask, why am I furiously brushing up on my substandard guitar skills? Simple, my friend – we will be releasing our new single on June 1st, and I may be called upon to perform the number at some point. And pianos are heavy, or at least mine are, so it makes more sense to work up a solo version on my nice portable Martin D-1. Which I can barely play. Hence the drills. Get the picture?

Up “Against It”

I am authorized by Big Green’s counsel to announce that our new single, Against It, will be released on June 1. This will by our first commercial release in a year, since we dropped our fourth album, In Retrograde, on May 1 of 2025, and I guess you could say we’re excited. Yes, you could certainly say that, though saying it doesn’t make it true. We’re not the excitable type, frankly – we just kind of do our thing and chill, like they did in the old days.

That said, Against It is not exactly a chill track, so to speak. Unlike nearly all 24 of the songs on In Retrograde, this single is topical. And no, I don’t mean it’s the kind of song that comes in a tube and that you should only use externally. Against It can be termed a political song. We’ll have more to say about the lyric later. I can tell you that the cover art is a photo by a Palestinian photographer named Hosny Salah, who works in Gaza (see below).

So, hey … something to look forward to, anyway. Am I right? I said, AM I RIGHT?! Whoops. Apologies – I keep forgetting this is a blog post, not a face to face conversation. Wrong of me to expect instant affirmation.

Other things happening … and not

Aside from our pending single release and my ongoing struggles with a low-rent six-string, we’ve got a few things on the back burner. These include:

The Ned Trek Collection – As I previously mentioned, we’re planning on pulling together one (or possibly three) albums worth of our Ned Trek songs from the same-named podcast we ran in the twenty teens. These would mostly be remixes of the songs we included on the musical episodes, plus some material we never released (including eight tracks from the mythical “lost episode” that we recorded in 2018 but never finished).

There are – again, as referenced in previous posts – about 100 Ned Trek tracks. We’re going to work them over and see how many will meet our AMAZINGLY HIGH STANDARDS for commercial release. (Please keep the laughter down – I’m trying to think while I type.) In any case, whether or not we drop one, two, or three volumes via CDBaby or whatever, we will make the other tracks available for listening via other means (yet to be determined). Maybe a King Crimson-like archive! Or (far more likely) something infinitely cheaper!

New Songs – Lest we be denounced as mere retread-focused has-beens (or, in our case, more like never have-beens), we do have a raft of new songs just begging to be recorded (well …. Matt has new songs. I have song ideas that need work, so situation normal). Once we dispense with the Ned Trek remixes, we will move on to that little project. (Promises, promises …)

Write the colonel

If you have questions about anything to do with this lame-ass band, don’t hesitate to reach out at [email protected]. We always respond to inquiries … and I mean ALWAYS. (You can also consult our Freakishly Unanswerable Questions for more general info.)

News

Pre-add or pre-order Big Green’s In Retrograde

April’s here, and you know what that means. That’s right – rainy days, flowers blooming, trees budding, grass growing, and – most importantly – Big Green’s new album is available for pre-add or pre-order!

In Retrograde – our fourth studio album – is dropping May 1, but you can reserve your copy right now. Here’s how:

HEAR OUR TRACK “ONE DAY” ON AMAZON

PRE-ADD ON APPLE MUSIC

PRE-ORDER ON ITUNES

Non-corporate options

Not into these streaming platforms? You can also just contact us directly and ask for a copy. If you’ve been a listener of ours for a stretch (or don’t have any cash … or both), we will be glad to share some files. If you can afford to help us defray some of the costs of producing this stuff, that’s great, but not required.

Also, if you’re kind of a Luddite (like us) and prefer CDs, we’ll even burn them onto CDRs, depending on how many requests we get. In Retrograde is a digital release, but we’re not ruling out pressing a limited run of CDs if enough people request them.

In Retrograde - Big Green's newest album

Learn more

Find out more about In Retrograde (i.e. what the hell’s on it) by visiting the album page we threw together in a hurry:

IN RETROGRADE PAGE

News, Recording

It’s the time of the season for mixing

Damn, it’s hot out there. Hot enough to boil a monkey’s bum, as Monty Python used to say in a mock-Aussie accent. Mind if I call you Bruce, just to avoid confusion?

Well, it is, after all, summer in the northern hemisphere, which means balmy weather for the lot of us. But for your friends in Big Green, this year the solstice means that the season for mixing has arrived. Yes, brother Matt (a.k.a. “Mr. Ears”) has left the premises to keep a keen eye on his Peregrine Falcon charges … but not before recording his final tracks on our upcoming album, titled [INSERT WORKING TITLE HERE]. After two years of tracking, it’s time to start pushing those faders. (And, of course, pulling them occasionally.)

The job ahead: hard as f#ck

Make no mistake, we have a big project ahead of us: making sense of between 20 – 25 new recordings and arranging them in the general shape of what is still somehow called an “album”. But hey, Big Green has faced challenges before. Remember when we were almost captured by Captured by Robots? No? Well, perhaps I imagined that. Nevertheless, it hasn’t always been an easy road for us. Sometimes it’s uphill, sometimes down, but there are always plenty of potholes and no freaking shoulder. (Not mention the fact that it’s a toll road.)

Getting back to mixing, we try to keep things in perspective. Like all modern DAWs, ours has a virtually endless number of tracks and tools to work with. And yet, our favorite albums are mostly from the analog four, eight, and sixteen-track era. Multitrack recording was mucho expensive in those days, and most non-famous bands had zero access to it. In the 1980s, we got into a proper studio maybe three or four times total; the rest of the time we were bouncing takes between stereo cassette machines while playing kazoos into live mics. (Ah, those were the days.)

Placing the lime inside the coconut

Anyway, despite the distinct technological advances we now enjoy that weren’t available in the 1960s, we rely heavily on our musical forebears for inspiration. In other words, if they twiddled a dial a certain way to get a certain effect, that’s good enough for us. If they put a speaker and a mic in a big closet to get reverb, well …. maybe we won’t do that, but perhaps we should. The one thing they did that we won’t do under any circumstances is work super hard. Those are our principles. And if you don’t like them, we have other principles. (Shout out to Groucho.)

Now, that doesn’t mean that we want to imitate the previous generations. I mean, there’s no point in putting the lime in the coconut again, right? That’s been done. We have to break new ground, like any other band. Maybe put the plumb in the artichoke, then mix them all up. (See illustration.)

Unpredictable prognostications

Okay, I’m not going to be irresponsible enough to predict when this album is going to be finished, released, etc. All I can tell you is that [INSERT WORKING TITLE HERE] is fully recorded and on its way to completion. Looking into my magic crystal mixing bowl, I see a Fall release on the horizon. Fall of what year? No man can say, but Fall is a good bet. TO THE MIXER!