12.8.07

I watched a movie called "elegy of a voyage" last night. A character from the movie was a german man, who visited the U.S. and was wrongfully arrested here. He was stripped of his rights and humiliated. After a short period of time, the authorities realized their mistake and released him. He was very angry and after being released from prison returned to germany and became a hermit for like 8 months. He realized in his malaise that the only thing that could restore his life was love. To reach out to people and forgive. He also said he'd like to change god's name to love. which i thought was interesting.

After that i watched a "george harrison" dvd, which has all of his videos from the last 20 years. I did'nt realize he sang the song ".....i got my mind set on you!". Anyway, there is about 1 hour of interview clips with george harrison, where he mostly rambles about love being the greastest thing that we can hope to achieve. And love being the "creative force" which is of god. These were such great things to hear this week, as i was sort of lashing out a bit, on account of my own decisions.

11.26.07

I've been writing for a while, so i got a bunch of new songs. pretty simple songs i've written on a classical guitar. who knows what they'll sound like with a band, but in january i'll start working with tim on arranging them in a "rock" format for the new discover america record. i met with jason mcgerr last week about recording drum tracks at his new drum studio. jason plays drums for the underground indie band "death cab", you probably have not heard of them. but he's got like 15 vintage drums kits just laying around, and i think tim might poop himself upon seeing this.

i've been thinking of making a trip to crater lake in oregon. it's at the top of an old volcano, and it's said to be a surreal experience. The waters will transfix you. here's a pic.

10.12.07

Things are moving along with the studio. I finished painting the walls, and it's much more cozy and inviting. This week i began construction of the isolation booth. it's a pentagonal-shaped room big enough for drums, but i can track guitar amps there as well as organ, vocals, etc. Here the floor is being framed up with 2x6's. The room will be mounted on rubber shock absorbers, to keep vibrations from traveling into the rigid structures of the building.

Here is a small ampbox i made last year. it's constucted from 3/4 inch birch plywood (this shit is heavy). the inside is lined with 2" acoustic fiberglass. I can fit a small combo amp inside, like the blues Jr. above and crank the bejesus out of it.

Here is my new computer that i am very much pleased with. there is a man's head on the left, and a cougar skull on the right. I don't know why.

Lastly, here is a painting i that i love. I think this guy is trying to connect with his granddaughter by taking her on his fishing boat. What he does'nt realize that she is totally freaked out, and not enjoying their time together. classic generation gap. why would someone paint this?

10.3.07

The weather is getting shitty here. It's kind of a big deal, this changing of seasons. especially after such a long and warm summer. The dark overcastness kind of makes everything look different, which is kind of a nice change. I'm kind of stoked about spending the next few months in my new recording space. I found a nice artspace in my favorite town of ballard, that i am slowly converting into a studio space. The building is a historic brick building that many years ago was a department store called "kress department store". I'll be making music where 50 years ago people were shopping for sweatpants and houswares. it's a nice location. a block from a fitness center, movie theatre, record store, and a puerto rican resteraunt.

Today i worked on the entry door, installing some weather striping and a threshold below the door, to limit noise leaving and entering the studio. I'm also in the planing phases of builing an all-purpose isolation booth for guitar, drums, vocals, etc. it's going to kind of look like this: booth

Other than that just working on a few more tunes. Tim might be coming around later this year to make some music together. Other than that i saw this movie called "zeitgeist" the other night and it kind of blew my mind. you can watch it on google video for free. I must warn you it's kind of religiously offensive, but there is a really great segment about origins of religious symbolism, and how it relates to our calender and our holidays. very very eye-opening. you can watch it here.

7.29.07

On November 30th, 1999 there was scheduled to be a huge World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle. This would start a new round of trade talks which was to be a huge step in globalization. The WTO talks were quickly overshadowed by the largest globalization-protest in america. There was an estimated 40,000 people who showed for this. The protest was initiated by a small anarchist group from Eugene, Oregon.

I found some neat YOUTUBE videos from the protest. Here is one of them.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=SX35re580ew

7.24.07

i've been working on a bunch of new songs for a solo record and it's going well. i bought a new classical guitar to write on, and i like it. i wasn't totally in love with the tone of it, until i realized it was tuned an entire step down. Now that i've brought the guitar up to it's intended pitch, it sounds incredible. The best part is that i only paid 200 bones for it.

I've been wanting to use really thick reverb on vocals for a long time, but i could'nt get the reverb to be dark enough. I've always had a problem with the SSSSS's in my voice. If i'm going for that huge vocal reverb sound, i'd always hear the SSSSS's reverberating and it sounds very cheap and digital. So basically what i do now is after i record a vocal track, i create a duplicate of that track. So i have 2 tracks of exactly the same vocal. i take the 2nd vocal track and turn the hi's way down. I add reverb to that track only. I leave the first track dry(no reverd)That way, you hear the presence and clarity of the original track, and the only thing that is reverberated is the warmth of the voice.

7.13.07

I just got home from tour, and i'm totally exausted. i wish i would have kept a better journal on this tour. It's impossible to encapsulate all that happened on this tour, so i've decided to make some lists of notable experiences. One list for the high points and one for low points.

High Points:

1. Playing Abeliene and making some new great friends(Dustin, Grant) seeing some old ones(Dax) and getting a bunch of free books(Thanks Grant).
2. Beach Days(virginia beach, turkey creek, and destin florida)
3. Camping trip with james monaco, making hot dogs, making smores and making bad jokes.
4. Meeting the incredibly generous multi-millionaire Paige Jenkins, who later invited all 12 of us to stay at her house and throwing a lavish pool party that lasted until 6 in the morining.
5. The pickel Barrel (http://local.yahoo.com/details?id=14961886)
6. Sick dance party in coby's garage in rural central Ohio.
7. Watching White Cross at cornerstone. "All the People! In the City! living in Sin! Such a PITY!!!"

Low Points:

1. Held up at gun point in kansas city, infinitely sucked, but hey...no gunshot wounds.
2. Upon arriving at a party in denton texas, saw a young man get ferociously stabbed in the stomach. We promptly left with no idea of why it happened and if he survived.
3. Axle on the trailer broke, and the tires of the trailer squeeled and smoked in the wheel wells of our rented Uhaul. Subsequently we got free hotel rooms from Uhaul on account of renting us a 1970's rusted peice of shit. So it was a low point, with a high point resolution.
4. Air Conditioning in the van broke.

So that's 7 good, and 4 bad. Not bad at all.

Thanks to state bird, and to the winston Jazz routine. I hope i get to tour with these bands again. great players and great guys.

kansas city 6.27.07

Today was about the craziest day i've ever had in my life. We had a day off in kansas city, and stayed at the house of our new friend seth. The neighborhood was a little questionable(read: ghetto). He was a friend of The Record Machine(local indie label)and graciously opened up his home. Me and Ryan(state bird) were sitting on the porch around 5:30pm checking our email when 2 young men who looked about 17 approached the house. They were acting very suspiciously, and asking us if the house was for sale. I was feeling a little uneasy, and was delighted to see nathan and ryan(winston jazz) pull up to the house. Just when nathan and ryan were coming up the steps, one of young men pulls and gun out of his pants and tells us all to get on the ground. Then he instructs us to give him our cash, credit cards, keys to our cars, and our I.D.'s. I whipped out my wallet and threw all the cash on the ground and slipped my wallet back in my pocket, thinking this might appease them. Which really sucked because i had close to $300 in my wallet. I had been keeping my merch money in my wallet for some stupid reason. They did'nt insist on the credit cards and debits cards (thank god) but got all of our driver's liscences for some unknown reason, and all our cash. They got the keys to nathan's moms car which was a brand new Saturn. They asked me to pass over my laptop, i looked the gunman right in the face and said, "it's got all my music on it" in a pleading sort of voice. I guess they were not completely soul-less because they relented and did'nt take the laptop. They got a little spooked and ran away. I thought they were going to steal the car but for some reason they did'nt.

We called the cops and filed a report with them but i don't really expect anything. They said most of the city detectives were busy with a shooting that happened a few hours earlier.

I've had so many random thoughts floating around in my head about what happened today. It's opened a whole world of conjecture about power, violence, my attatchment to material things, law enforcement and social problems. I've got plenty to think about. I suppose the common sentiment among everyone is we're glad we did'nt get shot today.

kansas city 6.26.07

Tonight we played in kansas city at a wonderful country music venue called The Record Bar. I felt out of place there because it's a country bar, and as you might have guessed, people go to a country bar to hear country music. On the bright side: i recieved some complimentary drink tickets and got sufficiently liquored before cramming the entire discover america band into a photo booth for a low-budget photo shoot. Thanks to papa nartan from the record machine for hooking this show up.