New Look and features

So I went through and updated the look and threw in some new features on the page. You'll notice the news feed is up now from Mlive as well as some Google news if you click on that link. Also, I figured that I should put up links to some great things going on around town. This includes musicians, local media outlets/organizations, and venues. I don't know who actually looks at this damn thing, but it's fun for me and a good way to show my appreciation for the abundant creative collaboration transpiring 'round these parts. I'll keep adding and updating here and there as I'm sure a few details have escaped me at the moment.

AB! & Coconut Brown are playing tonight at the Rendezvous Lounge in Eastown if you're free. I have a wedding and subsequent reception to attend so I can't make it. I would strongly recommend going. They own. Plus DJ Superdre is spinning right next door at Mulligan's Otherside. Two-fer!!!

A nice night sky for a drive and relaxing show.

I was driving up to Sparta to pick Jessie up from work last night and the sky was beckoning me to take a few snapshots.

After that, I had the fortune of being able to go see my good friend Steven Putt perform at Jukes. Old Trophy cat Nate was in town from Ohio and was playing drums for him as well as their friend Matt on bass guitar. It was a fun low key set showcasing Steve's various originals as well as a Buddy Holly tune. Great jams. Nate's fam was there in full effect as well as Josh, Casey(in from China!) and of course Jessie. It was a great time to catch up with people that I don't get to see much. Life is good.

The new guitar, practices, and departures.

Played my new Deluxe Nashville Telecaster with my amp turned up for the first time last night for expunk practice and boy howdy does it sound mighty fine. We have a few different songs we are working on as we are currently in the writing process and they are going to be fantastic pieces.

Chance Jones practice after that went very well. We worked on four new songs to try and tighten them up and get the kinks worked out. They are great songs and the next record should be killer.

My best friend Seth is moving away to go to school in Orlando. I've got more hilarious stories and memories with this guy than I could even try to rattle off over an entire day. I'm going to miss that sonuva bitch. A lot.

Founders show and tubes galore.

What a weekend. Worked a good 11 hour shift on Saturday as usual then went to the Chance Jones practice space to load drums for the show at Founders with Cabildo and AB! & Coconut Brown. Each band played two 30 minute sets and blew the roof off of the place. Cabildo was amazing and dancetastic with a killer horn section. The crowd was loving it. AB! did their usual thing and hyped the crowd laying down fantastic musicianship and deadly rhymes. I felt the Chance Jones sets went really well too and the crowd seemed to really like it. I knew the show was going to be great, but my mind was blown to smithereens during and after this one. Another great part of it was the great vibe between all of the bands. I got to talk to several members of the other two bands and they were all great guys. I had a blast throughout the whole night as i felt everyone else did as well.

Sunday morning came both fast and furiously. I had a bit of a fuzzy head from the previous nights events, but the Stanley Steemer tubing trip was a must. We went up to Vic's Canoes in Newaygo and had a riot tubing down the Muskegon River. I got to hang out with a few of the guys from the Muskegon shop that I never get to see, yet talk to on a daily basis. Much fun and debauchery was had and it may have been the most perfect weather so far out of the several years I have gone.

Oh yeah. I got a new guitar. It's a Fender Deluxe Nashville Telecaster and it's the cat's ass. Life is good.

Panoramic Pictures

Since I don't feel as though I have much to talk about, I figured perhaps I should post some pictures on here that I have taken. Namely ones that involve using a cheap program, a camera phone(or cheaper digital camera) and making a panoramic out of a number of images. So...



4 or 5 pictures.This was after getting out of work and racing daylight. It was taken from the parking ramp of Bridgewater Place in Grand Rapids in early Spring 2010.



This is a 5 or 6 picture shot of the still under construction medical mile on Michigan Street in Grand Rapids during early Spring 2010.



2 pictures. View looking south down the Grand River from the 6th St historic bridge.



2 pictures. Southward view of Grand Rapids from the Bridgewater Place parking ramp.




4 pictures. Chicago skyline from the Cermack/Chinatown Red Line stop. 4.11.10



2 pictures. Chicago skyline view from a park on the south side by Megan and Casey's place. They were kind enough to let us stay at their place while I was in town for my birthday/playing a couple of Chance Jones shows. 4.11.10



3 pictures. View from the back porch of what used to be a practice space for a band I'm in called expunk. Lance is the owner of the home and it rests on the bank of the Thornapple River. Early Spring 2010.



3 pictures. View of the sky from the parking lot of my workplace in Byron Center. 2010



2 pictures. View of the sky over Muskegon Heights. 2010



3 pictures. High contrast sky shot from the parking lot at my workplace. 2010



3 pictures. Another sky shot from my workplaces parking lot. Skies like this happen a lot in Byron Center it seems. 2010



2 pictures. Grand Rapids riverfront. Contrast and colorization applied. 2009



8 pictures. This is not so much a panoramic shot, but I felt it necessary to include it anyway. This picture consists of 8 shots taken by my camera phone. It is the view from the Marathon gas station in Byron Center right by my workplace. The sky was too perfect to leave without grabbing some pictures. Like I said, those Byron Center skies...

HTAFM Show with Charles The Osprey and a new guitar project.

The show with Charles The Osprey, Wonder Caverns, HTAFM, ans Seth Thompson went really well. We had a good time and got to play three new songs. We played for about 30 minutes which might be a little much as we were pretty much near death by the time we finished. We seem to play everything in excess of 100 m.p.h. at shows and with us not playing many shows at a practice a week(sometimes missing one), I think we're stretching ourselves a little. It was great fun though. All the bands played a great show and fun was had by all.

Next, I had bought a $60 First Act guitar from a pawn shop some weeks ago. This thing needs a lot of work. This is to be expected from a dirt cheap almost toy guitar. So far I have replaced the neck with a telecaster-style neck that I picked up from a guy on craigslist for $50 and installed tuners. The pickups sound as muddy as can be, so I need to replace those as well as all of the electronics(wires and pots alike) and the bridge piece. Before all of that, I need to sand down the face of the headstock as it was painted a cream color when I got it. Why would anyone put this much work into such a cheap crappy guitar? Because I liked the body style and it was $60. Who cares, right? Here's a couple of pictures of the guitar with the new neck on it:

Shows, shows, practice and more shows.

What a great weekend of music. I went out to visit a friend in Muskegon on Saturday night. He lives right by the Blue Note which is a live music venue out there. AB! & Coconut Brown(One of my favorite local G.R. acts) were playing. Unfortunately there weren't that many people there, but they played amazingly as usual. I took a few pictures with my phone just for fun:








The next day was the gulf oil spill benefit show at Billy's Lounge. Many fantastic local acts played and a great time was had by all. I got to see AB! play again as well as a full on freestyle finale assault ending the La Famiglia set. That set was incredibly tight. Chance Jones played a pretty tight and upbeat set at the show and I got to play on my new crash cymbal. Sounds great.

I think I may go play guitar for fun for a little tonight after I fix one of my pedals that went a little wacky. Expunk has practice Wednesday but most of it will consist of moving practice spaces back into G.R. I figured I would try to brush up on a couple things in case we did end up playing as well.

Heavier Than Air Flying Machines will be playing this Friday at Jukes for the Charles The Osprey show. This is very exciting as we will have a few new songs to play and they're sounding great. Hopefully we will begin recording sometime soon. Life is good.

My Day Off.

Allow me to preface this post by saying there probably isn't anyone that would find it too interesting if they would happen to stumble upon it. That being said, I feel it pertinent to document this for some day in the future where I ask myself "What the hell was I doing back then?" Actually, that really is the point of this whole thing anyway. Here it goes. My two days off from my day job are Sunday and Wednesday. This week's Wednesday(which is up to par with most Wednesdays as of late) consisted of the following:

Sleep in like crazy until 11:30am because of being up late the prior eve.
11:30-12:30-Bum around the house a little
12:30-1:00-Bring Jessie back to her house so I can return to mine for yard work(which I enjoy immensely. No sarcasm here. Yard work really is fun to me.)
1:00-1:20-Cook and eat
1:20-3:45-Dismantle the gutter pipes on the back of the house and unclog them. Get on the roof and clean out the gutters that couldn't drain prior to dismantling. Rake and remove branches from tall grass around former pile o' brush thus enabling lawn mowage. Burn aforementioned branches(Temperature in the 90s and quite muggy I do say.) Mow the back patch of long weedy grass. Get cleaned up to leave at 4:00.
4:00-4:30-Pick up equipment from Chance Jones practice space downtown on the way to pick up Jessie.
4:30-5:40-Drive Jessie to her job in Sparta(She is still a bit car-less) and drive out past the airport off of 48th St for expunk practice.
5:40-8:15-expunk practice.
8:15-9:40-Drive back to Sparta to pick Jessie up while getting a drive through bite to eat on the way there. Drop her off at home and go to Chance Jones practice.
9:40-11:30-Chance Jones practice.
11:30-sleep- Go home and decompress for sleep/work at 10:00am Thursday.


I did manage to take a few pictures while the fire was smoldering pretty decent with the sun coming through the trees in the back yard. Pretty neat looking stuff.

Random pictures and some shows.

There were a couple of pictures that were posted last from my phone. One of them was of myself with Melissa(Vocals in Chance Jones) in the background as we were doing a one-off live performance of Outkast's song Bombs Over Baghdad(More about that later). The other was a picture of the beach that I took when I was out in Muskegon Wednesday which was my day off. The picture above is of the same beach on a different day. I took three pictures on my camera phone and blended them together. Figured I would post that one for fun.

Back to the show on Saturday June 26th. It was the album release for Charles The Osprey's album 'Consider.' These guys are a two person instrumental rock group that you need to look up if you haven't heard of them. You can do so at http://www.myspace.com/charlestheosprey Rock/Metal/Progressive/Instrumental/Mathy/Awesome. Very hard to describe. It's just guitar and drums and nothing else is needed. Another group that played was Ozenza. Check them out at http://www.myspace.com/ozenza . This is another great Grand Rapids based group that I can best describe as Thunder/Sludge/Smash/Groove/Rock/Metal. Noblesville also performed. Those guys were amazing. Fantastic hip hop with smooth catchy rhymes and superb lyrical content. With Chance Jones opening the night, this made for an incredibly diverse mix of music consisting mostly of bands from the Grand Rapids label Friction Records.

Everyone played their asses off and the night was fantastic all the way around. Friends were in from other states/cities, everyone was having a great time and I couldn't walk three feet without running into someone I knew. Can't beat that! For the very last song, various members of the bands that played plus a few other local musicians came together to do a collaborative effort in the form of a live performance of Bombs Over Baghdad. This was complete with marching bass drums, marching snares, drum set, keyboards, guitar, bass, shakers and backup vocals. That was one of the most fun performances I have ever had the pleasure to be a part of.





Next we had the Boiling Pot Music Festival in downtown Kalamazoo. This was the first year it was held and it was a great time. It was a little low on attendance, but I have no doubt that it will grow as it hopefully continues each year. It was a beautiful sunny day and it was organized quite well. Two stages provided ample time to set up for each band as well as a contant flow of music for the audience. We saw some really cool groups play down there and I felt that our set went quite well. The sound crew did a great job as they were both accommodating and great at making everyone sound as good as can be.

After driving back from Kalamazoo, Jessie and I went to Mulligans Pub in Eastown to catch Beast In The Field, Mean Mother and Ozenza. I had never seen Beast In The Field before and I didn't this time either as we got there too late. Crap. At least we got to see Ozenza with there always slaying song 'Black Box' closing out their set.

I didn't do much but sleep for a lot of July 4th this year and I am strangely comfortable with that. My back has been killing me and I had a long Saturday, so it felt quite alright.

Goals for this week:
1. Work on new songs at expunk practice on Wednesday.
2. Work on new songs at Heavier Than Air Flying Machines practice on Thursday and also practice old ones to prepare for the upcoming recording sessions.

Life is good.