New album from local artist

Photo: Dustin Godfrey

A Penticton musician is getting ready to put out his ninth album, which, for the most part, he produced entirely on his own.

With a bit of backing from some featured artists, Kyle Anderson wrote all of the music, played all of the instruments and did all of the production on his new album, "The New Originals".

Anderson says he made use of all of his 22 guitars – which include various types of guitars – in his latest album, describing each guitar as a different kind of paint brush to complete the painting.

"I don't have two guitars that have the same configuration, because why would you have two paintbrushes the same," he said. "I use my guitars for different styles, for different textures."

While the album came together over several years, with at least one song being written in his youth, Anderson says the time to fully produce an album by himself would be a couple of months.

"This one took years, because I bit-and-pieced it," he said. "If I were to sit down and pull it off in my studio, a couple of months."

One of the challenges, he said, is being able to line the tracks up when they are all recorded separately, including the drum tracks for five of the songs, which he said were recorded by a friend in Vancouver. But modern technology, he said, makes that far more attainable than before.

"I emailed him the tracks, he laid his drum track down and emailed it back to me," Anderson said. "The technology today is such that it's a lot easier to create the illusion of everybody sitting in a studio, having a good time recording."

Anderson describes his music as happy music, and the genre as "Caribbean country".

"You'll listen to some of the songs, and you'll go, 'Gee, that's a ska beat,'" he said. "It's all happy music."

Anderson will be holding a CD release dinner and concert on Jan. 28 at the Nest & Nectar.

Tickets are available at the door, or advance through the Nest & Nectar for $40 plus tax, which includes the show and a buffet dinner. Doors open at 6 p.m.