New show excitement, practices, etc.

Once again, it seems to be hoppin' in the land o' music. Had a really good HTAFM practice last night. Reminded our collective brains of the two newer songs we have and things went well. Also played a few new things trying them out for potential new tunes. Five more to go. Once we get those five written, good ol' Kremo will more than likely be recording a 18 track monster album for us. We'll be recording it mostly live with only vocals being overdubbed. Way excited for that. Our friend Joel Potrykus has taken some footage of us at a show(mostly closeups) and made it black and white with a grainy looking, so once the recording is done,we will be splicing the live video with some government civil defense films to make a couple of music videos. It's a little ways off, which is why I wish I wasn't so excited for it already.

Expunk practice is tomorrow and I'm hoping to work on a song I've written guitar lines for. We didn't get to practice last week, so it'll be fresh and very productive. I can feel it in the air tonight already. I have some great news to share with the guys as well. I am currently letting my brother Ryan's studio borrow most of my microphone collection as a former partner left with a lot of his. This worked out great as I had given Ryan the expunk disc 'Time As Faust' last week and he said they will master it for free for me lending some mics. Yahtzee!!! After expunk practice, I'll be going to the Chance Jones rehearsal space to work on the songs we are covering for the 60's tribute show on May 13th. Great songs, fun times.

Thursday finally brings the show at Billy's with Chance Jones and AB! and Coconut Brown. Can't wait for that as it will be a blowout of a good time.

Got to take it easy on Friday, but Saturday is The Apostles, Lights At Sea and Mean Mother at Mulligans. I've heard good things about Mean Mother and the other two groups are huge favorites of mine on the local scene. All for free with cheap PBR tallboy cans! Dig it.

Lastly, I just got word of Chance Jones playing at The Strutt-organized outdoor festival in Kalamazoo on July 3rd. This is going to be great for at least two reasons.
1. I love playing outdoor shows.
2. Different city to play in at a great venue. The people of The Strutt are fantastic to deal with.
This coupled with the recent news of CJ opening for Man Man on May 11th after our show in Chicago on May 8th makes for a pretty exciting summer calender on top of everything else we already have planned. Life is good.

The long long weekend and things to come.

Holy goodness. That was a weekend! I had such a great time in Chicago after playing a show with Chance Jones in Kalamazoo at The Strutt, then playing another at The Red Line Tap in Rogers Park on the north side of Chi-town. Got to see my cousin Scott and his wife Courtney as well as hang out with my friend Megan. She was nice enough to let myself and my ladyfriend Jessie stay there while we were in through Tuesday afternoon. I'll have to post some more pictures other than the ones I sent via my phone. What a grand time. I guess we've got another show in Chicago at the Red Line on May 8th, so that should be sweet as well. On a somewhat seperate, but Chance Jones related topic, I heard "Cute With A Knife" being played in the background of a bumper for Michigan Radio's series on Muslims In Michigan. Nobody in the group knew about it, so I wonder if Kaomi Getz had a hand in it. Hmm. In any case, super cool!

In upcoming things, I'm looking forward to getting some of my gear repaired by a well-referenced guy in town. Quite excited about that. I'm also looking into buying an overdrive pedal kit from www.buildyourownclone.com these guys send you a kit with all the fixins and you assemble and solder it together on your own. The demos I've heard online sound sweet and for $95 you can't go wrong. Probably going to get the mosfet upgrade kit as well for $7 more. Need to build a pedalboard soon so I can fit more gear under my feet!

Expunk show is tomorrow night and I'll be able to use my uni-vibe pedal live for the first time. (Thanks Jarrod!) Looking forward to blaring out some jams and kicking down a few drinks with friends.

There's a lot more going on, but I'm done typing for now. Life is good.

Testing the mobile picture blog for the Chicago trip.

The previous picture I just posted was one that I took of the sky after leaving work last night. I just wanted to test out mobile image sending to my blog for the upcoming trip to Kalamazoo/Chicago. That trip begins in about 5 hours and 25 minutes. Not like I'm counting it down or anything. This weekend will be a busy and exciting one and I'll be sure to post pictures on here as well as Facebook to document it. That's about it. Yep, life is good.

Recording and mixing and playing and hangin'.

Title sums up the basics as of late. Finally transferred the tracks of the live Chance Jones set on the final weekly show at the B.O.B. One of the channels was nothing but line noise as there apparently was a bad output on the mixing board. The audio seemed to turn out okay for the most part. Only checked out a few songs thus far, but it seems to lack some keyboard in the mix due to the malfunctioning PA channel, but I'll try to mess with the eq on it. Kremo said while covering the console, he realized there was a bad output channel and panned everything center at some point in the show to compensate. We'll see what happens. The mics picked up a decent sound, so there's that to work with too. Not sure on turnaround time on this project, but I'll probably pick out the songs that turn out best and focus on those. Started picking through a guitar riff that just kind of popped up at expunk practice the other week. I'm glad I remembered how to play it. Threw 3 guitar lines down on "tape" and will be bringing it to practice this week to work on additional parts and arranging with the blokes. I think this song will be pretty cool once we get it down. I'm eager to get more songs worked out so we can get another album out this summer. That band is kicking some ass in the writing department. Tomorrow brings two practices. Expunk, then Chance Jones. Chance Jones is practicing to get Ryan(Jarrod's sit-in keyboard player) further acquainted with a few songs before we head to Kalamazoo and Chicago this weekend. It will undoubtedly be a great Wednesday. Looking forward like nobodies business to this weekend in Chicago for my birthday. Life is good.