After Christmas Ramble

Howdy all! I trust that your December festivities went well. My Christmas was nice and relaxed. Melissa, Annabel, and I went to grandma's house to bury the baby in presents. First and foremost, the baby ended up with a beautiful red-lacquer toy piano. Sure, she's three months old, but one has to start somewhere. Something tells me that pops will be recording with it very soon... wait, he already has been recording with it. Musically, I ended up getting "Can't Buy Me Love : The Beatles, Britain, and America" along with "Inside the Music of Brian Wilson: The Songs, Sounds and Influences of the Beach Boys' Founding Genius". Both look great, and the Wilson book looks technical. Very technical. Since I enjoy that sort of thing (instead of the fluff pieces that most music related books are,) I am really excited to rip into that one. Also of note was the HD DVD add-on for my Xbox 360. I've yet to make it home to set it up, but it will soon be happily married to our HDTV.


Life has been very busy of late, but Melissa and I soldiered through the holidays and are looking toward having some downtime soon. I snuck in a some pre-Christmas music by doing some session work at Avast! 2, here in Seattle. They have a beautiful grand piano up there, and the cavernous studio-B is... well... cavernously huge. It's mind-blowingly fun playing on the piano that was used on the Shin's second record. It was my first time in that studio, and it is a beautiful, spacious, and relaxing place to record music.

Speaking of recording music, I promise that I will actually get out some demos of my newer material one of these days. I am trying to find the time to record the bevy of tunes rolling around in my head before I forget them. Here's a list of what's coming up soon (hopefully!)

- "Roadtrip to Disaster" Kind of a distillation of everything that I love about 60s music in one song. Curtains is working on this one for live use as we speak.

- "Selling the Future" A very simple folk-style song (possibly corrupted with synth drums... shudder) involving the parallel stories of (lonely) Sylvia and (broken businessman) Tim.

- "Dumb Angel" A pretty little song full of community-based hatred and such. Fun!

- "The Ballad of Molly McGinty" As it sounds from the title, it is a traditional shanty. It concerns a woman who supports the forgotten street children of her town by stripping! It involves such splendid topics as murder, homelessness, and pneumonia! Fun!

- "Sal & Ramona" Yes, I will finish this one this year, I promise. It involves the named old couple. It now has the addition of another song being stapled to the front of it, called, "Sal's Wild Years". The transition between the two is "The Man On the Flying Trapeze", as it fits well and is public domain. All in all, it will be around 10 minutes or so.

Other than that, not much is happening musically. We are on a nice vacation from practicing right now, but will be playing a show at the Seattle Art Museum on the 3rd of January. Come on down!