Thursday, January 28, 2010

Shows and Recording

The Billy's show went well last night. We played two 45 minute sets with a short break in between. There was a good selection of songs and everything seemed to sound good(as good as it can from behind the drum set onstage, anyway). We ended the set with 'My Machine' which is one of my favorites to play, so I'm a happy guy. Tonight brings a fun three song show for the 90s tribute show with Justin and Mike from Jones. I should listen to the songs today to learn the drum parts. Not too familiar with Pavement.

On a separate topic, I have worked with my longtime friend John Thompson on some songs he was writing for his album that he's been wanting to release for years under the name Francis Fugue. It started last summer when John came into town from Detroit wanting to have me play drums on a recording of three demo tunes. We haven't been able to work on anything since due to busy schedules and living on opposite sides of the state. That being said, in order to rehearse and record with him I had to take a few vacation days otherwise it would not have been possible. Also, John wanted the drum sound to be as good as possible, so he called up Andy Mitchell at Audiobay recording studio up in Cannonsburg, MI. John recorded there with two previous bands of his and I have recorded there myself with a former band called Joyride years ago for two different albums. It will be great to see Andy again. He's a great talent and a wonderful guy all around. It looks like we will be rehearsing the songs on Feb. 8th & 9th then recording the drum tracks at Audiobay on the 11th. Another great bit of news from John is that Tim Broderick from Ghost Heart will be providing auxiliary percussion during the session too. This makes for a great time guaranteed. Busy and on task as always, but life is good.


Francis Fugue myspace page:
http://www.myspace.com/francisfugue

Audio Bay Studios site:
http://www.audiobay1.com

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

The Peninsular Guitar Returns Along With Shows

So I got on Craigslist the other day and found a post from a guy that had pickups for sale. They're Duncan Design humbuckers for the bridge and neck positions taken out of a Jagmaster he recently purchased. I met up with him and he sold me both for $25! Not only that, but he gave me a free guitar strap to boot! I love Craigslist. He was a really nice guy on top of it all. Anyhow, now I have a pickup that I can put in place of the stock humbucker that came with the guitar as well as a neck pickup to put in at a later time after I buy a new pick guard and rewire some more. After that, I plan to put on chrome pickup covers on both and move on to replacing the tuners. Much work ahead! Can't wait. Pictures to come once it gets underway. Also, looks like this week brings two unexpected shows on top of the one I already knew about. First is the show at Billy's on Wednesday night with Chance Jones. We usually play at the B.O.B., but instead have AB! & Coconut Brown covering this one for us as the Billy's show was booked far before our contractual agreement. Next, I found out that the show was confirmed for Friday night with expunk for the horror film after party at Sazarac Lounge. One of the horror films features an expunk song called "They Taught Themselves How to Fight." Lastly, I was talking to Justin from Chance Jones yesterday after work and he had forgotten about a 90's tribute show in which he had agreed months back to play three Pavement songs at. This would be Thursday. I don't know any Pavement songs, but he needed a drummer, so I said I would do it. Fun challenge. Somehow I ended up with a full last half of the week. Life is good.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Local Films and the Music That Goes With Them

I had a great time at the nearly sold out premiere of the locally made film Coyote that played Saturday night. The movie was written and directed by Joel Potrykus. Very entertaining and put together very well. There was a Chance Jones solo acoustic tune featured that Josh(in the lead role) strummed out during a scene at his squatting place. Also, at the end of the movie, Chance Jones' "Nobody's Baby" from the album The Incident at Primrose and West played out the credits. What a fantastic short film. It was preceded by a trailer from an earlier film of Potrykus' titled Gordon, a 1:30 student project from Joel's college years and before that there was a short 6 minute mock trailer called "The Devil's Pussy" which was hilarious. This Friday brings another showing of Coyote at the Wealthy Theater along with some locally made horror films. One of those films titled "5 For 5" features a song from my other band expunk at the end of the movie. I'm very much looking forward to seeing that. Exciting times in the realm of music for myself and other bandmates. Life is good.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Great Time at The B.O.B. Last Night

Everyone in Chance Jones had a great time at our regular Wednesday night stint at The B.O.B. last night. Played a lot of tunes to fill the 2 hour timeslot and it seemed to go even faster than last week with a better turnout! Can't ask for anything more. All of the songs are getting tighter and tighter as the days go on, mostly due to the amount of time we've put into playing, of course. The funny thing is that no matter how many times I've played the songs, they never get old. Bonus. Other than that, I've got some work to do in regards to an expunk song. One of the songs off of the 'Time as Faust' CD we just made is to be featured in a locally produced movie that our drummer Joe is in. That being said, I have to seperate the three segments of the songs to send out on a disc so they can use parts in sections of the movie. How exciting! I can't wait to see how this turns out. I have a guitar to repair, another one to modify, basement cleaning, guitar part writin' and various other things to keep me busy. Plenty to do in the coming days...

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Redoing things to Hopefully Not Need to be Redone Once More...

I need to repair the input jack on this guitar that I had modified and shown in a previous entry. I discovered this last night. My hood won't release on my car after flying up on me going down the highway some weeks ago and has aquired a subsequent phantom rattle. I am in the process of re-reformating the hard drive on my computer at work due to a conflicting display driver. Not sure how long that's going to take on top of the 4 hours put in already to get to a blue screen of death while I'm wading in idiots and bullshit. Well, at least I have tomorrow off from my day job, loading from 2-4 for the B.O.B. show with Chance Jones, expunk practice from 5pm to 7:30pm, Chance Jones from 9-11, and packup/load-in at the rehearsal space afterward. Wait a minute. That means I'm busy. Oh well, music is fun and at least the guitar looks good finished... Life remains good.















Monday, January 18, 2010

Did That Just Happen Last Week?

Practice on Sunday. My friend John was in town from Detroit, so we had some drinks at the Meanwhile on Tuesday then went to Rich's house to party and watch The Hangover while eating some delicious food Rich cooked up for us. This went into the wee hours of the morning. Wednesday was without expunk practice in preparation/loading for the Wednesday night B.O.B. show with Chance Jones, which went very well as I said in my previous post. Next up, Thursday night's show at Founders with AB! & Coconut Brown was out of sight. I love watching those guys perform every time. The whole night of music was well received with a lot of people in attendance and a lot of dancing. I had the chance to chat with a few of the guys from AB and there was some great conversations held as they're all really cool cats.

Friday morning was fuzzy and tired from physical exertion and of course a few wobbly pops didn't help that much in the recovering effort. As soon as work was done, I got a few things together and went out for the weekend to Fennville where myself, my lady Jessie and 11 other close friends rented a vacation house. This would ultimately be the pinnacle of debauchery in terms of a party blowout. Plenty of shots, beers, and everything in between. I had such a fantastic time not doing anything but partying at a pretty sweet house with great people.

Coming back into town on Sunday afternoon found me racing to get to my bed for a nap. After not long enough of slumber, it was that time of the week again for Chance Jones practice. Practice went great and Josh had a couple of rough ideas for new songs which sounded great and will no doubtedly end up as fun energetic songs to add to the lengthy backup of live artillery. Those are a ways off, but it's good to feel continuous progress on top of progress. Also, there was much talk of the shows to come this year. I am thrilled to say that Chance Jones looks to be getting our fingers in the collective cookie jar that is th Pacific Northwest with shows in Seattle and Portland sometime this summer! I've never been to that area of the country, so it is indeed an exciting time!

After practice, I stopped over to Jessie's place to drop off an overnight bag she left in my car. This is ironic because I was so worn out I myself was to stay overnight instead of heading home. Three reasons:
1. Jessie's cool.
2. I was exhausted and the bed was comfortable.
3. The television remote was misplaced, thus the channel was stuck on TBS. This meant the feature presentation was The Rock with Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage. Very entertaining when doing a mock Connery voice throughout. Irony was present once more when the next movie that came on was Standing Tall with.... yep. The Rock. There were so many hilarious things about this flick that it was actually enjoyable only with someone alongside you with a good sense of humor. Think Mystery Science Theater on a way smaller scale.

I definitely needed last night to decompress especially since work was to come rather early at 7am. Ugh.

Did that just happen last week?

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Last night and lastley, tonight.

Had a great time at our first of ten shows at the B.O.B. We seemed to be well recieved especially by staff, management and the owner as well. Greg Gilmore(the owner) had very kind words for Josh and that makes all the difference in feeling welcome there. All of the songs went pretty well and 2 straight hours of playing went quicker than I thought. Must be because they're always fun to play anyway. Tonight is guaranteed to be a blast for sure! We're playing with AB & Coconut Brown who just so happen to be some of the most bombastic musicians on the hip hop scene especially in Grand Rapids. Not only that, but there's no cover charge for the show so people can check out a killer show and focus their spending on delicious Founders beverages. Looking forward to this one! Life is good.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

All Hail the Peninsular Axe!

The work has been completed and I've got myself a newly redone guitar! Looks like I just have to find another one to do the same thing to seeing as how I don't have a project anymore.











Friday, January 8, 2010

...And Mods For All (Part 2)

So after becoming rather enthused about modifying my Fender Stratocaster with a collection of bells and whistles I stopped to remember that I have a show coming up where I need to use it. This being said, I have decided to temporarily reassign my attention to a guitar my good friend Jef had given to me. It's original color was red and had a Cocteau Twins poster adhered to it with some serious industrial glue. This seemed like a project that I would never get to as it already sat for over a year untouched. The idea was that I wanted to strip it down and mess with some of the edges, bevel the headstock and what have you. This week I finally started work on it and it's going quicker than I had anticipated it would. I do plan on working on the electronics of it, but will save that for a later time. For now it's just body work. I've already done the paint stripping as well as all of the sanding and it's really looking good. Today I begin the staining process which is the fun part I've been waiting to get to. Below are some pictures so far...