… which will be here too soon… which is why I can’t even stop to tell you about my recording session with Edith Frost… or the amazing set that Joe Rut played tonight at the Bazaar Cafe…. there is more, more, more, …

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Last summer, when I was out in the Bay Area scopin’ out the place to move here, I met up with Sonny again to do some more vocals, for his ONE ACT PLAYS project.  This was at his studio at the Headlands, near Sausalito. Also just one song (“Treat Me Mean”), but it’s a doozy!  It was so much fun to do, I had tons of room to play around with the harmonies and ooh’s and ahh’s and funny little curlicues.  Anyway that project has been released too… self-released, anyway.  I’m really not sure how you’d go about buying that one.  I’ll look into it.

And OMG, I almost pissed myself when I saw this on Sonny’s homepage.  Check it!!

In other news, regarding this-here personal website, I’m still working on it and I’m still sick of it!  I really dig Twitter though.  All the blabbing I used to do here, I’m doing over there now, in micro-bursts.  I think it’s become quite clear that I’m going to continue with that, so I might as well get used to it, and fix my site to reflect that shift of content… putting my actual music-related news on THIS blog, and the extraneous bullshit elsewhere.  I do like the idea of folding outside content into the website somehow though — not just displaying it, but fully indexed and searchable with everything else.  It would be nice… something like the lifestream thing I’m playing with over at Jaiku.  Anyway.  Hard to know what’s best.  For now I’m just working on badge-type things for my front page.  Twitter is done and Flickr’s almost done too, so at least they’ll be displayed.

Thanks for clicking the "more" link.  I wanna tell you I really want to start blogging more regularly again.  There’s always the feeling that I want to keep my private life private and not say stupid-ass things lest they end up getting used as pull-quotes in all my record reviews…!!  But on the other hand I’ve been feeling weird about this blog for ten years straight and it ain’t never stopped me before, or not for long.  I do plenty of stuff in public anyway, why not talk about that at least?  And maybe, a little about what’s going on with me if I feel like sharing.  Unfortunately at the moment I got nothin’.  I had a very quiet Thanksgiving.  There you go, whoo-hoo!  Bloggage.  :-P

Yep I guess I’m going a little stir crazy what with all this gloomy weather, another Chicago winter looming ahead.  Don’t quite know what to do with myself these days, now that the hubbub of the record release is over.  But I’m enjoying the feeling too ‘cuz pretty soon I’ll be touring for like sixty-eight weeks straight!  And who am I kidding, I love being at home doing my thing.  I’ll be missing that solitude when I’m on the road, for sure.

I haven’t been super isolated though, just a little bored maybe.  I have been making the effort to get out and hang with friends a little, and talking on the phone a lot, with Lucie, Sarah, Alyce… Eric too of course, he’s been really sweet and supportive the past few weeks.  We’re keeping in touch just about every day and have hung out four or five times both with other people and just the two of us.  A few tears involved but no big drama (I wouldn’t talk about it if there were).  It all seems very healthy and amiable, in the truest sense of the word… es un hombre bien amable, y lo estoy amando como un amigo.  So that’s about as good an outcome as either of us could hope for.  I mean it hurts of course, because we wanted it to work out, it’s a big disappointment.  But all in all this has been a piece of cake as far as breakups go, unlike some others I can think of!!  No third parties, no shared household or pets or merged record collection to split up.  It was just a regular boring ol’ it-didn’t-work-out kinda thing.  So that’s a big relief for me, in retrospect.  And it greatly increases the chances that we’ll remain good friends as it was intended.  He wasn’t the one for me but that’s okay… I’m resuming my assumption that my partner in crime is out there somewhere and will make himself apparent to me at some point.  In the meantime I have so much work to do, and a lot of good friends to hang out with if I want to.  Including Eric, whom I still love and respect a whole lot, and vice versa!  He’s a fun guy, super smart and creative and goal-oriented, and a real bon vivant too, super fun to be around.  Great friends too.  I’ve really enjoyed being a part of that world for the past year and I’m psyched that there’ll be plenty more good times to come.  We have a lot in the bank, it’s a solid friendship, and that’s a gift that I so appreciate.  Plus he kinda raises the bar as far as the kind of guy I would ever want to date in the future.  I don’t think that’s a bad thing…

Speaking of friendship, I had an awesome little sushi party on the day the CD was released… Eric helped me pull it together, not that there was much to organize.  We just sent out e-mails and commandeered a restaurant for a few hours.  I never do that, I don’t have parties!! But this was the most fun I’ve had in I don’t know how long.  Over a dozen people showed up — some folks who worked on the record (Laura, Emmett, Josh and Jason), some Drag City folks (Dan K and Zach), some of my gal-pals (Sarah and Sheila) and of course Eric and a few good pals I met through him (Geoff and Nell and Emerson).  There was wine and beer, there were multiple toasts called out, a bouquet of flowers from Laura and scratch-off lottery tickets for everyone.  Very good times.

So yeah, that left me feeling really great, and so blessed to have all these amazing people swarmin’ around me.  I’ve been in Chicago nine years now and I’ve had my finger in a lotta pies, mingling in many different social circles that overlap each other through music.  That group was just scratchin’ the surface, a lot of good friends and bandmates couldn’t come that night… these are all such great people.  Creative, funny, talented and fascinating folks.  I’m really lucky to know them, and even more fortunate to be able to work with these people to make this album I’m so proud of.  Just having the chance to celebrate a job well done, it’s the best feeling.  And this is a big milestone for me after all; it’s been a long time coming, a lot of blood sweat ‘n’ tears.  It’s a special record, it captures a mood that I think will easily resonate with a lot of people.  So it worked out well.  I think it does a pretty good job of painting a picture of where I’m at today, even though the songs were written over the course of many years, and I sure wasn’t in that mindset when I recorded it six months ago!  Just coincidence it ended up that way I’m sure.  :-|

The Hothouse show on the 19th went great too.  It was the perfect amount of people; all the tables were filled up and and some people were standing but it wasn’t uncomfortably crowded.  The opening bands were excellent, though I couldn’t pay much attention what with all the smoking and pacing in circles looking worried… heheh.  I’m always like that before a show.  But it went fine.  The band was awesome, it was me on my blue 335, Emmett on electric guitar too, Ryan on bass, Jason on drums and Lindsay on keyboards and backups.  She had her digital keyboard set up next to the baby grand so she could play either one.  It turned into a longass show, like an hour and a half.  We played the whole album front to back — might as well, it’s a release show and it sure cuts down on the decision-making!  Then we played the two songs that ended up as outtakes, then the two cover songs that were on my Demos album.  For the encore we did a couple older songs, "Telescopic" (with Jason doing his sweet melodica thing), and Cars & Parties.  We had a little problem with the mikes early in the set but after that the sound was just so beautiful, what a great room.  I think it’s about 300 capacity so it’s a pretty big room but the acoustics are nice and airy and crisp.  My pal Mike Sturgess did sound — he’s a musician too, he fronts the band Clyde Federal.  But he’s my favorite soundman in town and knows my shit the best.  I mean, he’s done sound at the majority of the Chicago shows I’ve played over the past five years or so, therefore he knows what it’s supposed to sound like, what we’re liable to need in our monitors etc.  I barely ever have to say anything to the guy, he just knows what we need, and if there’s a problem he’s right on top of it.  He might as well be another bandmember, I’ve been working with him so long.  So that was great.  We played well too, far as I could tell.  I was singing well (even though I’m SMOKING again goddammit!!) and played almost all my chords correctly, though I did screw up the words a little here and there.  Blanked out on a couple of lines and had to make something up in a few unexpected places, but it worked out okay.  I don’t worry about it as long as it rhymes.

What else have I done?  Last week I tagged along with Brandon to see "The Squid and the Whale"… it started out as a bowling party but everybody bailed so he decided to make it a movie party instead.  It was good too, and the ending was a nice surprise.  I won’t spoil it but I had heard from Eric that this was a a very sad film, and then I heard the same thing from Donna, one of his roommates.  And Brandon had heard the same thing from two other people!  And it was sad, but I think we were both sitting there waiting for something REALLY awful to happen.  So the ending was kind of a surprise and a relief, we were both expecting all hell to break loose.

Oh and guess what I did at the beginning of that crazy-ass release week?  I went to Electrical to do backups on a couple of songs for Daniel Smith.  Both the songs were really cool and I really enjoyed the task, doing that kind of fast-paced, clipped style of singing.  Some crazy harmonies in there, it was a lot of fun, and it was great working with Dan and Steve too.  We’re all friends and pros, we all know the routine so it’s a nice jovial atmosphere for gettin’ things done.  I really dig getting the chance to work in a lot of different styles, i.e. contrasting this with the very languid singing I did earlier in the month with Barry and Pramod for a new Morning Recordings album.  Or the country harmony I did on the Canasta record, and the really balls-to-the-wall one I came up with for "Impostors" at their release show at Subterranean.  I guess I just really get off on playing music in general, and the physical act of singing in particular.  It’s an activity that requires (and enhances) physical and mental and spiritual energy all at once.  I dig it.  I have a good job.

And that’s enough catching up for now I reckon!  Heheh.  Went off at the mouth a little didn’t I.  :-)

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I’m half-sick right now… I’ve had a weird throat thing cooking up for the past few days, with really painful swollen glands on my neck.  It never really affected my singing thank god; I’m not hoarse, it’s just hard to swallow.  Whatever, I have a weekend to recuperate, and all I have to do next week is sit there and use my ears.  Piece o’ cake.

The tune I sang on is an uptempo western swing handclapper… lotta words, and a super precise melody and harmony with some groovy dovetailing.  I spent an hour or two last night learning the parts, and boy am I glad I did my homework there!  Had to use my 8-track to learn it, ‘cuz it’s the kind of thing where the melody really can’t exist without the harmony and vice versa.  Which means if we ever try to do this song live, I’m going to have to sweet-talk Kelly or Sally into helping me out on the bottom part, that’ll be even more fun.  :-)

Drag City’s own Rian Murphy produced the whole deal and played some too. (Rian’s the man!!! I owe him beer for life, for everything he’s done for my music… but sadly, he won’t drink beer. ;-) I tell ya, I felt like Cinderella playing with these people, but they’re all such nice guys, and so intuitive with the music, it was just a joy to work with them. And gawd, I’m just drooling over the results. It’s going to be a great album… smooth beautiful eerie tunes peppered with strange nightmares.

Oh yeah, and guess what, I got to open for Jonathan Richman on Sept. 8th at the Knitting Factory, along with Mimi Goese and Chris Whitley. The show was part of the CMJ New Music Marathon and it was quite an experience for me to get swept up in that convention fever; it was fun but I wouldn’t want to do that every day! I had to play all by myself, since my guitar-pickin’ pal Mike Daly was off on tour with Swales… but I pulled it off just fine, didn’t make any major onstage lyrical revisions or nothin’. The Knitting Factory is a great place to play, under any circumstances.

Gig alert!!! The Holler Sisters are playing at Two Boots in Park Slope, Brooklyn, on November 1st. Come out and see us, and bring along your drinkin’est pals!
~ and ~
I myself will be opening for Royal Trux at the Mercury Lounge in Manhattan on November 7th. Rawkin’!!!