sad news

I just got an e-mail with some very sad news. Broadway Music, my favorite music store here in Nashville, is closing in two weeks. If you've ever been then you know, it's like a graveyard for old, cool gear, (and for old, crappy gear, too, but whatever...) The best part about this place is that it's always teeming with people like me. After living here for eight years, Nashville has become my home, and it's a city that seems to grow smaller and smaller. For a part of our community, Broadway is our Cheers, people know your name, they know who you are and what you play. I've sold and bought a number of guitars there, bought my first amp there, an old Fender Deluxe that got stolen a few years later. Man, I'm going to miss that place. Their website is on my gear links if you want to look around. If that red Fender amp is still there I might have to work some budget magic before the 22nd.

a nice, lazy Saturday

Well, today has been very nice. I got back from a show with Andrew Peterson in Georgia at about 4 am, took a half an hour or so to get to sleep and then got up about noon. My friend Stephen Gause and his wife Kara just moved into a house two doors down from us, so Alison, Ella and I walked over and hung out over there for a while. Stephen was taking the moving truck back right as we got there, and it was fun to see their excitement of their first house and all of that. All the houses in our neighborhood have the exact same floor plan, so it's kind of weird, and cool, to see how different and alike they are.

Mike Taquino, the drummer for the Normals, is driving through Nashville tonigh on his way back to Alabama, where he lives now, so in a few minutes, Alison, Ella, Cason and I will have dinner with him. Haven't seem him in quite a while, so it will be fun. He's such a great, cool guy and he's a cop now, so he has awesome stories. He's on the SWAT team down there and that just cracks me up. He was our DRUMMER. Now he has guns and bullet-proof vests and all that jazz. He's so cool.

Last night's show was a lot of fun. It was just Andy P, Ben and I, and we played, all told, for about three hours. I did five songs by myself, three from Photographs, Mother India from STW and a new song called "New Beginning" that I've never played live before. It's always scary to play a tune for the first time, but I think it went really well, and got me excited about coming back to the recording, which is about a third done. Anyway, we got to meet some cool people at the show, had a great time talking there and back, and it was just great to play again. I haven't played a show out of Nashville in almost three months. That's the longest since I left college. I even wore two shoes, something I haven't done in a month. It was a pretty great night and a wonderful introduction to playing shows again. Thanks to all you who came and said hello and encouraged us to keep playing more songs!

Well, I should get going. I have some more stuff to share later, but I'm not sure when I'll have time to sit down and write it. Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend.

P.S. Today is Andrew Peterson's birthday, so send him an e-mail and wish him a good one!

Memorial Day

It's been a week since I have written. And a crazy week, for sure. My insomnia has been worse recently than just about ever before, so I've been pretty wiped. Last week I got some good work done in the studio, though. It was exciting to get to put some pieces together of the puzzle that is my next record. I worked mainly on two songs. One is my big, rock epic "Santa Barbara" that I'm just loving, and the other is a tune called "White Dove". This one I actually wrote around a loop that I built a few months ago, and until this past week have only had the chorus and bridge sections. Cason and I started recording it and left big holes for the verses and I've been working on them since. I'm just about settled on them, but one stanza is kicking my butt pretty hard, and won't give in. Still, I'm excited for the work that we've gotten done. We're going to try to get some drums on it this week, but it's all up in the air. Adding a real band to some of these will hopefully remove the "sketch" factor that's still there on them, and I think is the next step.

Other than that, this week I'm working a few days with Kevin Lawson and then playing a show in Georgia on Friday with Andrew Peterson. This will be my first show since my accident so I'm really looking forward to it, and also quite a bit nervous. I can still barely get from one side of my house to the other so a few hundred miles will be a good challenge for me. Granted, I won't be walking.

I decided not to go to Kansas this past weekend to work on the project with Don Chaffer. It was a bummer, and not an easy decision, but I'm really glad I got to stay home and spend the time with my family and catching up on my rest. I don't think I realize how hard this healing process is on my body. Don e-mailed me yesterday and said they had a great time and it turned out well, though, which made me feel a lot better. He said that they used the song he and I wrote together and it turned out well. I'm very curious to hear it, needless to say.

So that's about it. I'll be posting more later this week, I am sure, so stay tuned. For now, I'm going to go lose to my wife in Rumikkub and then try to get some real sleep.

American Idol - You've got to be kidding me

So I'm sitting here watching American Idol with my wife and a couple of her girl friends. I wish I could walk. None of these people can sing at all. They are terribly pitchy and they oversing. Seriously, I have like eighteen friends who can outsing these people any minute of any day. Why do people watch this? I can see better karaoke at a bar downtown.

Anyway, today was pretty fun. I had a morning session with Kevin Lawson (www.kevinlawson.com), who I'm doing a record with later this Summer. Then Cason came over and we started working on my next record again. We'll be working on it this week and next, and I'm so excited. Today we worked on a song called "Santa Barbara", which is my big, epic rock song. It's definitely the longest fast song I've ever written. There are a bunch of different sections, different vibes, and I think it will be a total rush to play live. I've had to sit on it for a little less than a year, and to finally hear it back on the monitors, even though it's just a few bits and pieces, was just a great feeling. Cason added some great piano parts as well. Can't wait to get back to it tomorrow.

It's nice to be able to settle down after Clay and Sarah's wedding. My folks left town yesterday, and Alison's left today. It was great to have them here, but man, I am so tired. 24 was great last night, as well, I have to say. Oh, now the girls want to watch the Britney and Kevin Spears show, I think I might have to go drown myself. Seriously, could that guy be any skankier? He's more gross then her! Hard to believe. Ok, I'm going to get some Chocolate Moose Tracks, the best ice cream ever, and try to read or something. I've finished every book on my list currently, so I don't know what to pick up, though. I have some Flannery O'Conner short stories I haven't finished, so maybe I'll look through that. Oh, and I'm still waiting for a piece to come in for my pedal board and then I'll post some pictures. Oh, and remember to vote for me on American Idol.

crazy week

Yeah, this has been a crazy week. I've been able to start getting around a little bit, which has been great. I've worked a couple sessions this week, but it really wears me out, and by the end of an 8-hour day, with my medicine and all, I am just wiped out. My brother-in-law Clay is getting married on Sunday, so family's starting to come into town and we've been busy working on details for the wedding.

We finished Andy P's record this week. The final mix was yesterday, and it's getting mastered tomorrow. It might be the best-sounding record I've ever worked on. I'm so mad at myself. Two of my favorite singers of all time, Jimmy Hoyt Washington and Ankle Jelly Jones, the famous old Gospel singers, came to add some background vocals on the record late last week. They also sang on "Behold the Lamb", Andy's Christmas record that we made last year. BOTH times, I took no pictures. Last year I didn't have a camera, this year it just slipped my mind until right after they left. I can't believe it, and it kills me. One of the highlights of my music career, and I have no photos! Other than that, though, I am very pleased with how the record came out, and how much fun we had making it.

The Caedmon's record is also nearing completion. I have two more songs to play on, and my part is basically done. I'm singing lead on two songs, and I got to do some guitar work I was pretty excited about. This record wasn't anything we were super excited about doing, but I think it's going to turn out really well, and has some great songs on it. I think it'll be fun to play a lot of these live, and hopefully they stand a chance of getting us back on the radio, and giving us a chance to be able to afford to continue to doing more "Share the Well" shows, and records of that idea. All in all, I'm glad we're doing it, and I hope it does really well. That would be very nice for all of us, for sure.

I did a big chunk of work on my big pedalboard today. It will now be housed on two separate boards, which I'll have on either side of my mic stand live. It's giving me a lot more room and flexibility, and I think it's looking pretty killer. I'm waiting on a few last pieces to come in before it's completely done, but I'm able to use it now. I've been taking pictures, so once it's all done I'll post them and the process. I can't wait to play a show with this new board. It's going to be so much fun.

Matt Odmark came over today and hung out for a while. It was a lot of fun. We were in a small group that was meeting for a while, but so many of us toured that it kind of fell apart. It was good to catch up. He also gave me a flat-screen monitor, that he wasn't using, for my studio, which is so awesome. I've been using this big, old nasty honking one for years, and the screen makes all my electric guitars hum really badly, so I always have to turn it on and off between every take. It'll be nice to not have to do that anymore.

Another thing I'm really excited about: Rick Felkel of Elloree instruments is building me two custom guitars right now. A twelve-string mando-guitar, which is an electric twelve-string an octave higher than usual, and a baritone electric, which is a 4th below a typical tuning. I thought it would be taking months and months, but he sent me an e-mail today saying that one of the necks was already finished and he would knock out the other one tomorrow. He's going to be carving out the bodies next week, and he got in all the electronics and tuners and bridges. I'm very excited for both of these, especially the mando-guitar. Malcolm had one and we used it almost constantly on the two last Normals records. You can hear it very evidently on "Romeo on the Radio."

Other than that, my parents are coming in tomorrow, which will be fun, and that's about all I can think of that's going on. My folks haven't seen Ella since she was a few days old, so I'm looking forward to them getting to spend more time together. I've been reading Harry Potter 5 again, getting refreshed before the new one comes out in July. I'll hopefully see Star Wars this weekend, even though I'm planning on it being terrible like the last two. We've been watching a lot of Seinfeld while I've been couch-ridden. Very good. Ella LOVES these Gerber daisies that we have in the living room. She'll stare at them as long as they're in sight. Next week I'm putting in a good three or four days on my record, and I'm really glad. It'll be good to get to add something to the little tiny bits I have now. I guess that's it. I was on the computer too much last week, so I've been trying to cut back this week. Sorry that means I don't post quite as often. Thanks for reading.