Archive for 2005

Guess what, I just got drunk-dialed!!  Ha ha!!  By a very sweet very good friend who says he or she has been thinkin’ about me and cares a lot and just wanted to, like, reaffirm that good longstanding friendship.  AWWWW!!!!  My heart is full.  That absolutely made my day.  And I don’t even think he or she had seen that blog post I did earlier.  Good timing eh?

Sorry ’bout that last one, really.  I think I said it best myself: friendship can be a very hard thing for some people.  It is for me, and for that person who wasn’t havin’ it, and for my old drunk friend, for lots of people.  It takes a willingness to jump out there and talk to people, talking for its own sake, not with any hidden agenda.  I think human interaction is both an art and a craft, or rather it’s something you can be talented at, or maybe not, maybe you have to work at it a little more than other people to whom it comes naturally.  Bad grammar?

Read the rest of this entry »

You know when you make an effort to put yourself out there and try to be friendly to people and they’re just kinda dismissive, or completely take it the wrong way?  That happened to me today, and I sure hate that feeling.  Oof!!  It makes me feel stupid for even trying to be friendly to people, in a way.  Oh well.  I talked about this with Eric and he’s of the opinion that the reaction I got says a lot more about the other person than it does about me.  And he’s right, but it’s still no fun.  Also he brought up the very valid point that I have SO many pals I COULD be calling, to arrange coffee-meetups or see movies or what have you, and I don’t really make the effort to do that.  That is also very true.  But I’m kind of a loner like that.  I don’t go out very much unless I’m actually playing, which is what, two-three times a year unless I’m touring?  And I don’t tend to work very hard maintaining active friendships of the type where I could just call somebody and get together just for the fuck of it.  It’s not that easy for me.  I’m trying though.  Or at least I was, and maybe I will stick my neck out again soon; it probably gets easeir once you get used to it.

The Holiday Hoot was so much fun.  Everybody was supposed to do one holiday-related song and one other cover of their choosing.  I didn’t figure out wtf I was going to do until 5:30am last night.  I was going through my big folder of Christmasey MP3s listening to one after another after another and couldn’t find anything that blew my skirt up.  I was ready to throw in the towel and just use some non-holiday song, inserting the word "Santa" in there somewhere.  But then I found this one by the Seekers called "Mary Had a Baby".  THANK YOU ROGER McGUINN!!!  You saved my ASS tonight!!!  Such a great song.  The vocals are awesome.  I mean on the recording!!  I can’t speak for my own vocals, but if I had to, I’d say "a little shaky but not half bad." I love that kind of singing, it’s very… what’s the word.  Strident?  Strong, full-voiced.  It’s a folk tune but it’s more gospeley-sounding than anything.  OH!  And I got to do the thing where you stop playing guitar and start clapping and singing, and the audience is semi forced to clap along with you, then you come in with the guitar again for the last verse.  HOW MUCH FUN WAS THAT?!?  I’ve never had the occasion to do that before.  Awesome.

Read the rest of this entry »

Played two songs at Thomas Dunning’s Hoot Night Holiday Show at Schuba’s

My band: Tom Millard (drums)

Other performances by: Tom Dunning & Your Boyfriends, Joe Cassidy of Assassins/Butterfly Child, Jacquie Krupka of Joie de Diva/The Plunging Necklines, James Dague of Scribble Monster, Tommi Zender of Trinkets of Joy, Thomas Negovan of Ver Sacrum, Eric Ziegenhagen, Stacey Earley, Dan Phillips of Zapruder Point, and Dag Juhlin.

www.hootnight.com

It’s silly, but I was so excited to find out that Bob Mehr showed me a little love on this year’s top ten for the Chicago Reader.  I had been ego-surfing all the blogs with top ten lists, looking for my name and never seeing it, and thinkin’ "that’s what I get for releasing an album on November 15th!!" Oh of course it has to be a matter of timing, it couldn’t possibly mean they didn’t like my record enough, ha ha!!  Anyway it’s very cool and I can stop obsessing over it now.  :-) Also super SUPER cool that he placed M.O.T.O. at number one!!  Paul Caporino is the hardest working man in show business, and definitely the greatest songwriter I know doing that pop/punk thang.  There’s nobody on earth that deserves that spot more than him, IMHO.  All hail the Masters of the Obvious!!

HELLO!!  I am drunk right now.  Eric and his housemates had a MIX TAPE PARTY and I got drunk and now I’m gonna blog about it.  HA!!!  yes.  and I’m not going to hit the backspace key to correct my errors, because this is GOOD BLOGGING.  heheheheheh.  So the rule was: everybody who comes has to bring 2 copies of a mix CD.  And all the mix CDs get put in to a central location (in this case it was a backpack) and when you leave you grab 2 out of the bag, hopefully they’re not yours.  So what I did — I kinda broke the rules a little but it was good anyway — I made a DVD mix tape of all 80s hip-hop videos.  I will post the tracklist if I can, we’ll see.  But the POINT is, I had a lot of fun and I did drink a whole lotta wine (for me, like 3 or 4 plastic cups worth), and now I’m fuckin’ high as a kite.  I almost wrote a note to GOOGLE to tell them how much I love them, don’t ever change Goodog!  I LOVE YOU!!!  I llove all of y’all SO SO Much.  Yessss.

Read the rest of this entry »

Did an e-mail interview for EconoCulture — sent it over Sunday and it’s up already.  The wonders of the intermawebs.  Also, here’s another one that I did for Pioneer Press last month and forgot to post.  That one was a phoner.  I don’t do so well at those; I guess I’m a better writer than I am a talker.  Yeah I know that’s not saying much… ;-)

Just upgraded to ExpressionEngine 1.4.  There shouldn’t be anything majorly different but if you notice any bugs or error messages, please e-mail me or post a comment.

Check out this cool audio interview with my oftentimes bandmate Mark Greenberg, online at Gaper’s Block.  He hauls out a bunch of his musical toys, including the groovy Japanese table harp that we used on "If It Weren’t For The Words", one of the songs on my new rekkid.

So Lucie calls me today (=yesterday) and she’s all, "Hey Eda I thought you said you were going to start blogging again!  But I come back every day, day after day, and there’s nothing!  So what’s the deal, are you going to blog or what?" Bleh.  I’m a fat liar, I know.

Read the rest of this entry »

The first confirmations are rolling in for the US tour I’m doing with the Zincs starting on Valentine’s Day (heh — good angle for the press).  That’s heading east, and that leg of the tour lasts through March 1st.  Then we’re back in Chicago for a few weeks before we head out west.  Check the sidebar for the list of dates, or the master shows list — I don’t have any info yet for part 2 of the tour, but I will soon.  And after all that’s done, Europe!  I heard a rumor about Australia too, but who knows when that’ll happen.  In any case I’ll be posting any and all shareable info as soon as I know it.

Got a short interview in this month’s issue of Harp.  The quotes are taken from an e-mail convo I did some weeks ago with fellow musician Edward Burch.  E-mail interviews are good because I can think about what I’m saying before I open my yap.  Gotta love it when they let me speak for myself, or dig my own grave as the case may be!  They did an album review as well.  Thank you Harp!

Songs:Illinois did a post about my new record today… go over there to hear the song "Playmate" with my blessing.  Craig’s a good egg, the kind of blogger who likes to ask permission before posting stuff… I’m not saying everybody’s gonna act that way but I really appreciate the consideration.  So he has the edge… I hooked him up with some giveaways the ordinary joe wouldn’t be able to get his mitts on.  He’s posted my ancient demo version of "Lovin’ You Goodbye", plus a cover-song demo I did with Ryan Hembrey, called "Lula Lee".  It was once part of a country covers album project that never materialized.  Goes along with the two cover songs that appeared at the end of my Demos album, it’s from those same sessions.  Hope you like.  I don’t think he keeps his songs up very long so get over there now while the post is still fresh…

So the other day my 2-year old nephew Clark commands his mother to get me on the phone.  Very earnestly tells me "E-dupt!!  Don’t wanna be a man about it!!!" I’m all … "whaaa?" and start laughing.  "I DON’T WANNA BE A MAN ABOUT IT!!" Lucie takes the phone and explains they’d been listening to my new CD in the car, and I guess Clark got a little upset by that one lyric.  He took it to heart.  How adorable is that?  Sure hate to traumatize him but it was too cute.  :-)

Read the rest of this entry »

An interview I did with Gretchen Kalwinski a couple of weeks ago just appeared on the Venus website… I guess it’s going in the winter issue?  It’s a good one.  I’m a little hyper aware of the way she smoothed out my words, plucked out the non-sequitors and shuffled around the backwards thoughts so it actually makes sense.  Just edited it for clarity.  I dig that, I would’ve done the same thing if I were transcribing my own interview.  I hate the way I sound on tape…!!  Like, I just sound, just like… omigod!  Soooo retarded.  So that’s cool.  And look how she’s treating me so respectfully regarding the personal stuff.  She doesn’t try to hype up my heartaches, she doesn’t even pull from my blog, just lets me speak for myself with my own fresh up-to-the-minute thoughts.  That’s really good interviewing skillz, dude.  Thank you Gretchen!!