Happy New Year!

I'm super busy, but hey, only took 2 years to make a new post! Follow me on instagram / twitter at jc_monterrosa or find me on my dormant facebook. hah.

And another year flies bye UPDATES!

I haven't logged on here in forever; most of my social interactions happen on instagram or twitter these days, it seems. ( jc_monterrosa for both). A lot has gone on since I last posted. While I've spent most of my time working with Desmond Child at the Gentlemen's Club Studio, working with various talents on the production side (Steven Tyler of...you know, Luke Spiller of the Struts, Concha Buika, up and coming rock band De La Torre, country sensation Levi Hummon, as well as working with super talented songwriters), I added a few hats to my job description. I accepted a position as Creative Director for his company, Deston Entertainment this June of '16. In addition to my normal duties overseeing the studio here at the Deston Building and music production, I'm also now involved on the business side of things, working with our writers and their catalogs. It's the best of both worlds, right brain, left brain. I still get to create music, but I also get to branch out.

Working for Desmond took me to Budapest, Hungary over the summer, where I was recording a song he and Andreas Carlsson wrote and produced. Hungary was on my list of countries to visit, and it definitely didn't disappoint. You can find the song we recorded on youtube: Egy Szabad Országért
(you can see a spooky close-up of my eyes at :06) Loving languages, I found it exciting to work on a song sung in Hungarian, working with Sándor Sasvári, Kati Wolf, Csaba Vastag, Tamás Vastag, Ferenc Molnár ‘Caramel’, Feró Nagy, Mónika Lakatos and the Romengo, Szilvia Péter Szabó, Gigi Radics, István Pál (from the Hooligans). Mehet! 

On my personal side of music things, I've been writing with some super creative people, and looking forwarding to collaborating with them into the new year. I've been working on a few songs with Cody Longo, and I'm glad that we've been able to create music, he's a talented actor and musician and I love working in the studio with him. I hope to share some new music I've written with him and with other people with everyone soon(ish).

Cheers

-j.c.

Time flies like an arrow...

...fruit flies like...a banana! Sorry for the long delay, but more often than not, I forget to post on here, or am plain exhausted and just want to veg when I get home. Things have been going great over at Deston, lots of exciting projects and music I've had the chance to work on, record, write, etc. I'll be posting pics and updating the site, stay tuned and please keep in touch!

Not Enough Time

for all that I want to blog. Not enough time. But here I am, finally back from trips to New Orleans and Indiana! Not sure exactly who actually reads these posts, but that awesome project I worked on for Patrick Droney is almost complete. Have been keeping busy with Black Moon Lilith stuff (new tune should be finished later this month). I'll probably do some sort of EP release later in the year. Why not? I've been having great feedback from it and it's been fun creating. Getting ready for a busy week of songwriting, so looking forward to what new tunes I get to collaborate on. Headed to California later this month, so I'll have some music to look forward to there live. Cheers!

Time

Well, I've never been good with keeping up with anything resembling a journal, and unfortunately, this falls under that category. However, I've been busy working on delicious little morsels for you! Going backwards in order of completion, uploaded a new track today. I've been working on electronica tunes, sometimes an echo of Nine Inch Nails, other times mellower Combichrist, and other times Crystal Castles or Depeche Mode. DM has a new album coming out, curious to check it out. Anyway, check the songs out at soundcloud.com/blackmoonlilith and follow on twitter @BML_Music . I spent a weekend in Orlando, a few weeks ago, and when my plane landed, I had a voicemail from @chadhannah telling me about a potential music licensing opportunity for a movie, and asking if I was interested in writing and recording a tune. Due date was one week from that date. Naturally, I said "yes". 7 days later, we handed in a completed song. Chad handled the vocals and rhythm guitar, I handle keyboards, guitars and production. It has a great vibe and it's almost like a song in 3 parts. The band name for that endeavor is Super Hit. Keep track of that project on twitter @superhitmusic or soundcloud.com/super-hit . Only 1 track on there and a preview of the one that Mike Catalano is playing percussion on today. Wait, let me backtrack, Mike Catalano did a great job of laying down the thunder for the 1st Super Hit release "Nothing Left To Hide". Okay, now where was I? Super Hit, yes. Well, we've got a couple of tunes we're working on, I'll post them up soon. Toodles!

Well, it's a new year...

...not sure exactly how happy it is sports-wise, but hey, today is yesterday's tomorrow full of promise, and tomorrow, the 49ers play in the NFC championship, sooo, could be great! Notre Dame got crushed. Great season, unfortunately it ended in disaster. That is all I'm saying about that, but thanks for the memorable season, just the same. Music-wise, however, it's been creative (so glad to be an agent of creativity)! I've been co-writing and playing guitar on some of the songs we've been working on. It's always a positive thing in my book, to be able to work in different genres. Some people concentrate on only one or two, but for me, it's all music. I co-produced three songs with Adam Deane (a Silverback Audio production) for Shai Littlejohn over the summer, and we'd talked about co-writing for a while. We started a song just before the holiday rush last year, and we got together again this week to keep working on the tune. It's a pop tune about moving on and being on your own after a relationship goes awry. It's coming along nicely, hope to finish it soon and get to recording. Right before I left for Miami, Adam (ASCAP) and I started working on a really cool tune. It had this Pixies meets Oingo Boingo kind of vibe that totally went into its own direction. I love playing guitar, and playing around with guitar parts is a great way to spend the day, knowing that this song isn't for a band I'm playing with specifically, but rather exists as a recording. I get to play different parts without having to worry about playing an amalgam of them live. Adam and Mike Catalano laid down the drum and bass foundation.  Also on my plate this week was playing keyboard and guitar parts on a song I'm co-writing with Chad Hannah. That man is a catchy-song writing talented cat. He's the one that got me in to the whole music licensing thing, so many thanks to him for that. That song is...singer/songwriter-y/atmospheric/indie? Man, who needs labels? And I'm always in some sort of creative process with my BMI-brother, JJ Brown. I love his drive and songwriting, and we're juggling 2 new songs right now (while still promoting his latest single we co-wrote, Say A Little Prayer that benefits the HUGS Project). Stay tuned!

15 Years

I moved to Nashville from Boston back in January of 1998. FIFTEEN YEARS AGO. Wow. Tennessee is now inching closer to being the state where I've logged the most time. Fifteen years of peaks and valleys (music biz), great friendships, 5 Lakers Championships, 2 Giants World Series Championships, 1 Notre Dame Championship appearance (and hopefully a win!) I wrapped up 2012 working on exciting projects for Live and for an up and coming artist, Patrick Droney. Nothing like working on great music to end a year to amp you up for the upcoming one. I don't really make new year's resolutions, but I'm looking forward to working on more great music, spending time with loved ones and a Notre Dame Championship. Don't let me down, GO IRISH!