GUITARS, INSIGHT, & FRUSTRATION

this morning we recorded acoustic guitar for three songs, two with words and one instrumental. i used my larrivee, a great sounding guild on loan from glenn's wife cynthia, and a small alvarez high strung to 'nashville' tuning. after that we recorded electric guitar on three songs. we also added a few synth pads with glenn's omnichord. now that is an outstanding piece of technology! all together a productive day. also, i'm sorry about not getting the new clips uploaded. i'll try to get them up soon.

one of my classmates in high school passed away this weekend. he was a nice guy. sometimes i like to tell myself i'm not afraid of death, but those thoughts often fade quickly when i wake up in the middle of the night wondering if there's a man in my house with a large axe. maybe i just fear pain. pain sucks. or is it the unknown? no, it can't be that. i don't know. neither do you. or do you? let me know if you've figured it out. i'm going to bed.

ARTWORK

back in north carolina for the moment. i'll be driving back to atlanta soon, but figured i would come home for a couple days since i haven't been here for three weeks. i walked down to owen's bagelshop this afternoon and worked on some layout options for the artwork. dom should be coming to atlanta soon to show me some rough drafts, so i'll have a better idea of how the artwork will look after that. but if you want to be surprised with the final product, you should probably stop reading here. as far as the manufacturing is concerned, we've decided to go for an altered digipak design for a 'bound book' sort of feel. pulling this off might be difficult, but hopefully we can do it. we're smart guys. at least we like to think we are.

DINNER WITH PHIL

phil skipper is a wonderful person. aside from being a wonderful person, he also introduced me to perhaps the best veggie burger i've ever had.

i played absolutely nothing in the studio today. we edited keyboard tracks for eight hours. we captured some great sounds, but now my eyes hurt. so i figured i would embrace the feeling and type some. tomorrow i'm headed home for a few days. frankly i'm a little tired. i've been home a total of one day over the last three weeks and we're moving to kentucky in a month. lots to do with packing and such. we're also having a yard sale next weekend, so if you need a set of couches and a mint julep, feel free to stop by. alright then. i'm off to get another bad night of sleep. more clips coming soon enough. sorry for the delay.

TODAY WE WORKED ON ACOUSTIC GUITAR, BASS, AND KEYBOARDS

the acoustic tracks went fairly quickly, but i ended up having a rather difficult time finding the right bass line for this one song in 11/8. i got it eventually though. we didn't have time to edit all the keyboard tracks this afternoon, so we'll be sorting through all that tomorrow. we're approaching a stopping point on this initial round of tunes and are now thinking about what songs to attack next. i have also consumed an extraordinary amount of coffee.

MY APOLOGIES EVERYONE

i got stuck in traffic on the way to the studio again today. it appears to be a recurring theme. we worked on more drum and bass edits this afternoon, building from the ground up i suppose. next week we'll be working on acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and keyboard arrangements. then we'll take another short break i guess. these pauses between sessions have been working out nicely. in the past, the projects i've worked on have all been recorded during one long stretch. this new approach is clearly a superior method. time to reflect and all that. oh, in case anyone cares, i'll be posting some new clips this week at some point.

BACK INTO THE STUDIO THIS WEEK.

i've been listening and taking notes to what we've already done. i thought i'd have some more time at orphan this past week, but kenny rogers took my dates.

so in lieu of being able to record, i drove to destin florida for easter with the weihes. aside from the obvious joy of being in a city with only a one-letter difference from my name, i got to immerse myself for a spell in the gulf of mexico. plus this morning i finally paid my taxes. a blast as usual.

sorry. you probably don't care about any of this. who are you anyway? i wish i knew you. here i am delivering segments of my life on this machine, typing these little pieces of plastic and then posting it all on a website with my name on it. i just let out a large sigh. i’ve wondered a lot about how it would feel to keep this journal. i guess now i know. but is there value to this? am i providing insight or confusion? is this even remotely entertaining for you?

well, regardless, perhaps this will interest you for the time being. i was in sixth grade when i went to see my first show at a club in louisville that had been converted out of an old laser tag arena. the following is a site from mister Bryan V about the hardcore punk rock history of louisville. it's fantastic. i grew up listening to most of the bands on this site and wanted to share them with you just in case you wanted some information on some of my earliest and deepest musical influences.

i hope you enjoy.

FIRST DAY OF RECORDING

i woke up around 9:30 and drove to the studio north on 85 and promptly got stuck in traffic. some sort of construction i think. i arrived about 40 minutes late. awesome. by the end of the day, we had drum tracks for five songs, plus we added some loops and overdubs. it felt really great to actually collaborate with someone for a change. i've been listening to these demos for so long that it was exciting to hear some fresh perspectives. i haven't had the opportunity to discuss making music with anyone since the days of filboyd studge. so next week glenn and i will tackle bass and guitar, then we'll move on to keyboard and string arrangements i guess. i say (or type) all this, but i'm figuring this out as i go...

after we finished up for the day, i drove down south to explore atlanta and find a place to eat dinner. i stumbled upon a place called the varsity and quickly learned it was the perfect place for me at that point in time. the coke i ordered even had that special type of crushed pellet ice that makes for excellent crunching. then it was back to the home of beth hudson in brookhaven. she's a friend of my wife that has bestowed the incredibly gracious offer of a spare room. there is a post office, grocery, coffeehouse, package store, sushi restaurant, drug store, and pizza parlor within a mile of here. so i got that going for me, which is nice...

i'm listening to jonathan downing right now as i type. he's a friend of my pal dom guarnaschelli. i met jonathan a few weeks ago in tallahassee when i was in town to discuss the artwork for the album with dom. we played bocce on the lawn for a while and then ate steaks and such by a bonfire behind dom's apartment building. good times. another ensemble i've been enjoying lately is reading. last year they released an album with one of the finest design concepts of all time on debauchery records, a louisville label with several other solid artists including my good friend john whitaker.

by the way, the urban ministry center opens its new building this sunday, a very important occasion for the homeless population of charlotte. estimates are that about 5000 individuals go without shelter each night in charlotte, so the center provides free counseling, showers, laundry, phones, transportation, health care, and lunch everyday except sunday. lawrence cann and i are working on having on open mic night there soon. lawrence is the art director. once a year he organizes an art auction comprised solely of works by the homeless. and he also coaches the center's soccer team and traveled with them to the homeless world cup in edinburgh last year. please consider for a moment how amazing that is. if anyone has any instruments or materials they could donate to the center to assist with the open mic, please contact them through their website above.

so it turns out i haven't really included much here about recording. sorry. i guess it's only been one day. just stick with me everyone. now that everything is underway, i'll be posting more often.

GREETINGS EVERYONE.

at the beginning of last year i started working on a collection of songs for a new record. i'd usually develop a beat on a drum machine and then layer bass, guitar, and so on with some scratch vocals at the end. i suppose i was attempting to stretch myself into new writing methods, whatever that means, but in retrospect i don't really know what i was trying to do. over the past five years or so i had only written on guitar, so this process was a little different.

i had written a few songs on a drum machine years ago in a band with my friends victor jory and caleb copeland. i remember we were listening to a lot of big black at the time. a local band named sunspring was also playing some live shows with a drum machine. i've never played drums in a band, but i knew i could figure out some type of rhythm, albeit on a rather remedial level. some ideas still came on guitar, but most just began with a beat and matured from there. i never intended to have any of it on the actual record. i simply thought of it as a way to get some thoughts down into a fixed state. and i guess most of it will still assume that role, but i don't know yet. it was fulfilling to have control of everything. but the more time passed, the more i felt the need to return to some sort of collaborative effort.

so now i am about to start recording soon at orphan studio in atlanta. and i plan to describe everything here for you in this 'journal' or whatever you call it. i'll update it frequently with more news, clips, photos, and whatever else i feel like saying i guess. please keep in mind that this is my first attempt at keeping a journal of any kind. well, except for that dream journal i attempted last year. anyway, thanks for your patience.

ok time to stop. photo of Renelvis below. thanks for reading.

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