Been a bit since we’ve blogged. Been incredibly busy, as you can imagine. Re: Kickstarter and funding for Exile, here’s a very quick thank-you to pile upon the pile of thank-yous that have already been thrust upon you: thank you.
I are bloggings.
Eating brunch at Brooklyn Label.
In Brooklyn at the moment having brunch. Debuted some of the new tunes at Lit Lounge last night, and I think they’re coming along very well. We were initially pretty nervous about working out live arrangements for these; for all our other records, we spent months working out live arrangements before recording, and we did no such thing for Exile. But yea, it’s coming along nicely.
Was also our first gig with James Willetts drumming. It was a blast. Our buds, Radio America, played some new songs as well. They’ve been working on this double album for a while, and we’re excited to hear it already. Tim O’Brien (of the late great Ferns) is drumming for the boys now, which totally makes sense.
Pretty sure there are pics floating around from last night, which we will dutifully post soon.
Huge highlight: Steve Koogan was hanging out outside of the club. Our desire to chat and take some pics with him wasn’t as strong as our urge to—collectively—not be that guy. Still, it was pretty awesome seeing him in person.
I do love this town. When I’m not in a car, that is.
At last. That’s all I can say. Mixing for Exile ended yesterday just days away from mastering. We’ve been working on this record on and off since April/May of ’09. Writing it started in January ’09 and we kept writing right on through recording. First it was a Double A side single. Then it was an EP. Then after a meeting it became a full-length. It’s come a long way and a huge weight will be lifted off our shoulders on Wednesday. You see on the 21st Dan, Henry and I will be visiting Jeff Lipton at Peerless to master this thing. It’s the last process for the sound/music part of this adventure. Jeff is a wizard and we couldn’t be happier about having him reprise the role he played on Fan the Fury.
But getting back to that weight on the shoulders… Finalizing the music means we can concentrate our efforts on the other huge projects we’re working on namely the 10,000 mile national tour and the Kickstarter campaign. These projects need our attention. The record will be out on October 5 and we’ll be heading to CMJ a few weeks later. After a week in New York we head out for Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Washington and California. We’ll spend some time in San Fran, LA and San Diego and then we’ll start making our way back playing shows in New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana and who knows where else. This is something we’ve been thinking about doing for a while and can’t wait to embark on. Mind you of course it is going to be a lot of work putting it together. Annie’s been working on dates, Henry’s been working on colleges and I’ve been emailing bands and now venues in Seattle, San Fran, Denver, etc. This will all be a lot easier when we don’t have to worry about finishing the record!
Many of you know about the Kickstarter campaign we’ve started. Many of you have already donated. THANK YOU! Really it means so much to us. For those that don’t know, basically it’s a way to pre-order Exile and the money helps us promote this record and make this tour a reality. We’ll be buying a new van, launching a national press campaign and traveling all around this country to get Exile out to music lovers, but of course that will all take money. In an age where the record label is kind of non-existant, Kickstarter is an amazing way to bring music appreciators and music makers together. There’s also a bunch of fun rewards we’ve attached to the different levels of pre-orders ranging from bonus material to to half price tour tickets to songwriting sessions to private performances. Our goal is to raise $5000 and the way Kickstarter works we’ve got to raise the whole $5000 by August 9th in order to receive any pledges at all. If you’re able to, we encourage you to pre-order.
We’ll also be making Kickstarter updates throughout the course of the campaign. In the last update you’ll notice we’ve released details for the Boston CD release. Mark your calendars: Thursday, September 23, 2010 @ Church of Boston. Relax, it’s the one day that week there’s no Sox game, so enjoy the free parking in back. St. Claire will be joining us along with another group TBA. Of course, we’re planning lots of special goodies for this show. There’ll be more video updates to come and more importantly Henry and I will be recording some acoustic performances for songs off of Exile to be shown exclusively to Kickstarter backers. It’s a little thank you to everyone who’s donated, so if you’d like to see those be sure to check out the page.
This week has been filled with new album goodness for us. We launched our Kickstarter campaign to begin taking pre-orders for Exile. We’re ever nearer to the final mixes. We’ve met with Matt Jatkola who will be producing the artwork for the album. We’re very excited to have some outside help on this. It’s a first for us and I’m sure we’ll be pleased with the results. I’d love to tell you some of the ideas, but… you know… just hang on a minute!
This past Wednesday we had a show at the Space in Hamden, CT. It’s an all ages music and arts venue. It’s decked out pretty cool with lots of different pieces and props throughout the room. This was my favorite… does anyone know what this piece of a ship is called?
It was a bit of a different gig for us. You don’t get a chance to play the non-club show too often. There were about 6 other bands on the bill and we were somewhere in the middle. The kids were absolutely great, getting up with us to dance and joining on egg shakers for our campfire moment with The Last Time. If you’re unfamiliar with the egg shaker campfire bit you can click to the middle of this video and see what I mean. We’ve been playing three of the new tunes and since we’ve already announced their names from the stage I can tell you they’re called Exile In The Night, Darkest Days (some of you at the shows might know it as the love, love, love song) and Broken Hearts. They went down very well and my fear that they might be too out of place in our set was unfounded. I am looking forward to playing more new songs. Oh here’s when I snuck up on Charles at the gig while he was sitting on one of their comfy arm chairs.
The following day we had a little movie screening. Charles, Annie and Chris (who’s shot some of our previous music videos) came over to watch Michaelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up. It’s a crazy movie from ’66 about a photographer who shoots this couple in the park, but when he blows up the photos realizes he’s witnessed a murder. Of course, that has nothing to do with the movie which is just trying to capture that time in London really. There’s a cool scene with the Yardbirds where you can see a ridiculously young Jimmy Paige and Jeff Beck. It was also Antonioni’s first English speaking film. That man could use a camera. There are some interesting shots in there. About six bottles of wine later… hilarity ensued.
Hilarity... ensuing.
Ah, what a life. After our meetings yesterday, I started painting and drawing. I had a blank record sleeve lying around and decided I’d pretty it up.
Henry and I had been joking back and forth about a cartoon we’d love to make called the Animal Beats. You’ve got Jack Keroucat, William Burrows etc. I came up with Allen Gingsbird.
Allen Gingsbird wrote his most famous poem 'Squawk' while binging on pistachios.
Well, I’ll bring this to a close. In a few hours we may or may not be heading to Patriot Place for another show. It’s an outdoors thing this one and it looks like it might rain. We’ll have to wait and see.
Very sad day over here. Many of you know C.D. DiGuardia from the pieces he’s written on us for Performer, C.D. on Songs over at Boston Band Crush, and as keyboardist for Spirit Kid. About a month ago he and his wife had a baby, little Emilia Marie. She was premature and was in the NICU for about a month. Sadly, she didn’t make it and passed away late last week. Emilia’s obituary is here. They’re laying her to rest today.
I can’t fathom the amount of suffering they must be going through, and words seem woefully inadequate; that said, our hearts and thoughts go out to our friends C.D. and Danyelle.
It’s been a hot minute since I’ve written to you, but we really had a fantastic studio session last Friday and I wanted to let you in on it. Friday started off a little off schedule. The night before while we were driving to our acoustic show in Salem the ‘Service Engine Soon’ light lit up. The van’s been a little finicky lately. It has been 122,000 miles after all. Our session was to start at 1pm, but the mechanic was a bit backed up, so we didn’t make it to the studio till 4:30. Van’s still being temperamental, but that’s a story for another day. There was a lot of mixing that got done that day and a sorting out of ideas to be worked on throughout the week. Our two pages of notes came down to 3/4 a page. Mainly there’s some level balancing and sound effects to be mixed in. Speaking of sound effects that’s what we did a bit of later that day. We started out with this monologue I’d written to be performed over one of the tracks.
I won’t tell you who read it or what’s on it, but I will say that we put the reading through a tape machine and slowed it down to disguise the voice and make it a little more surreal. Next up we recorded pulling out a piano bench and the creaking sound it makes when you sit on it.
Very exciting. The big project though was dialing up some radio effects. We put one of the tracks through an iPod radio transmitter and hooked it through this old dial up radio; the kind your grandparents had in the house. So, we put the track through that for a bit and recorded a bit of radio static and dialing to use as well. Perhaps one of my favorite moments of recording was all this fun sound effect stuff. I love that sort of thing on records. Doesn’t hurt I was reading a lot about it in Many Years From Now.
Here’s a bit of us messing around with all that in the studio:
Here’s something kinda new: I’ve been semi-actively watching sports—specifically, the Finals and a couple World Cup matches. World Cup, I’ve been paying less attention to, but I’m intrigued by it. My knowledge of soccer falls well below my knowledge of other sports (and we’re already scraping the bottom of the barrel with that). Anything beyond the axioms “kick goddamn the ball into the net” and “David Beckham is a douche” is fairly new to me. Jen, Dan and myself saw parts of the England v. U.S. match when we had a bit of downtime at this Saturday’s mix session. Soccer gets a lot of (mostly hilarious) flack here in the States, but it looks extremely exhausting. Might catch a Revs match at some point this summer. I believe there’s a game going on the day we’re playing at Gillette, may try and grab tickets for those. There was also an interesting docu on PBS (American Masters, methinks) on Joan Baez that we caught a little bit of.
On the way back from the Rosebud on Friday. I was le tired.
Eh. Could be worse. We’ve evolved to the point where there are much, much, much, much worse things on TV, amiright? Watching the news is no good. Oil spill’s getting worse, I heard there was another one in SLC, more stupid assholes are running for office and pushing dumbass laws because there’s nothing better to do—par for the course, really—and there were some flood-related deaths in Arkansas. I care, I really do, but it’s all been too much to handle lately. Overwhelming, really.
Best I can do right now is repeat the usual reminders: donate to the Red Cross, read more books, and cross your fingers.
Caught a couple of shows at the Rosebud in Somerville this weekend, starting with Muy Cansado and Sun Lee Sunbeam on Friday (great, great show). Saturday, I saw many of the same folks at the same place for Mixtape 1993, which had St. Helena, Exile in Somerville, The Rationales, and The Luxury playing songs from (you guessed it) 1993. So much flannel. It was my first time at the Rosebud, too. Really dug the place.
As mentioned, there was a mix session this past Saturday. We have yet to tweak a few minor things on a couple of songs, but we’re at the point where we’ve cleared a majority of the tracks. Could probably get that done in one session. Mastering session is nearly booked (I think?), and we’re already putting the feelers out for packaging, getting prices for pressing on vinyl (I hope) . . . Extremely anxious to get this goddamned thing out already. Been at it with this record for a little over a year now, and that’s if you don’t count the time we were just demoing and writing half the songs. I’m already thinking about what the record after that is going to be like, and Jen and I are already putting down a couple rough demos here and there.
Dates are beginning to line up for the fall tour, too, including a couple in the west coast (FINALLY). No turning back now . . . Things Are Happening.
Ahh . . . It’s all very daunting and we’re tempting the fates more than we probably should, but nonetheless it’s a good time to be alive in this band.
Henry
PS: Charles makes a mean burrito, but I think he’s trying to kill me with bird’s eye chili. I’m onto that crafty bastard’s game.
Hello, all. I don’t particularly feel like blogging at the moment. It’s been a while since we last talked, though, so I should at least try, yea? I’ve been having a hell of a time readjusting to life after floating around in the Caribbean for a week. That was about two weeks ago, and I still don’t feel like doing a damned thing. There’s a glut of things I want to write about that I’d just as soon stay quiet about it all and move on.
Local advice in St. Thomas, USVI sez: go to a bar called Betsy's.
I will say we drank some fantastic local beers in St. Thomas (Blackbeard Ale) and Puerto Rico (Old Harbor, and Kofresí). Strangely enough, we also ran into some Boston folks. Dude who runs this shop called The Pirate’s Chest in the Virgin Islands is originally from Quincy, and—pure happenstance—this band that was playing at the other end of the boardwalk, Charlie Christos, is from here as well. Amongst the Sox haters that populate the island, it was nice to be surrounded by people with a little taste (baZING!).
That Brendan Boogie residency show I played last week (-ish) was as weird as it was fun as hell. I’ve been playing music on a stage for a long time, but it didn’t occur to me until after I said I’d do it that it would be the first time I’d ever be playing on my own (let alone without Jen there). Had a lot of trouble arranging a set list, too. The last thing I wanted to do was have this become an excuse to play stuff we already play, right?
In the end, the set list was primarily stuff written from 2002-2005, with a couple covers thrown in here and there:
From Somebody Like You
Pretty Little Picture
All I Can Do
Julie
(Hey Now) What’s It To You
Remember The Way (song we wrote in ’03, never played before)
Don’t Look Back in Anger
From A Northern Sky
Don’t Trust the Radio
Younger Man’s Game (song Brendo and I wrote for this shindig)
I’ve Just Seen A Face (also with Brendo)
Which is unfortunate, because Nate Rogers wasn’t present, and he may be the only human being alive on the planet who remembers half those songs. Brendan played a set in the middle and it was great. His songs are pretty damned clever, and it was easier to appreciate the subtleties in an acoustic setting. Same with Township, who played afterward. Somehow they pulled off this badass three guitar attack with nothing but acoustics. We all headed out to the Highland Kitchen for beers and food. Felt like half the Boston scene was there. (I do love this town.)
Finished up Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72. Spoiler alert: Nixon wins. A lot of it hilarious and most of it eerily reminiscent of Bush v. Kerry ’04. In fact, a lot of the history I’ve been diving into lately shows me something: it’s all happened before, and most people either don’t know or remember, willfully or otherwise. It’s hard not to get depressed and wonder what the point in anything is. That’s why I’ve got the windows cracked open, my shoes are off, and I’m listening to Rumors on vinyl. Tomorrow’s another day for writing violent hyperbole with regards to the oil spill in the Gulf. (For example: “BP CEO Tony Hayward deserves to have his toes smashed one by one with an iron mallet while watching repeats of Two and a Half Men.”)
Some people have no souls.
Anyway . . .
After reading three of his books this year, Hunter has firmly entrenched himself in my brain as my literary hero. Next up is On The Road. I feel guilty for never having finished this book. I got through Part I years ago (damned if I remember any of it), put it down, and never picked it up again. I’ve even read Dharma Bums, for god’s sake. Twice.
(This blog is going nowhere, as usual.)
Ohmygodwe’rethisclose to finishing up with mixing the record. Everything’s mostly in place. We’re just obsessing over the details and finessing a few things. I think a solo somewhere may need to be re-recorded in one of the tunes. But it’s coming along, and it’s sounding great. We may even release it!
Okay, muchachos. Must return to motivating myself out of total lethargy.
Wednesday, May 26th, 2010
The Wedding Posted byJen @ 10:00 pm
We traveled on American with a bridesmaid, Beca, two groomsmen, Martin and Dave and one guest/bass player Charles. The plane touched down in Miami at noon on the 14th. My parents picked up Henry and myself at the airport. To get you up to speed in case you don’t know Henry and I are both originally from Miami and while my parents moved to Raleigh, NC a few years back most of our family resides in our hometown. The ceremony was set to be performed on the Carnival Liberty the next day after which ourselves and a small group of friends and family would set sail to the eastern Caribbean. Got it? All right.
So we drove to my grandparents where Henry’s parents picked him up. We’d be meeting later that night. It had been a long while since I’d seen my grandparents let alone the flock of cousins, aunts, uncles and godparents showing up the next day. Mom, grandma and I made a short stop at the cemetery to pay our respects to my great grandmother, Clara. She died just before I left Miami in 2001. I used to sit her the few times my grandparents went out for dinner. The music line sort of starts with her or at least the part I know about. Clara played piano by ear as did my grandmother Gladys. It skipped my mom, Cary, though that didn’t affect her tasteful record collection.
The main event of the night was a party being held at the Beguiristain family home in Hialeah. Henry’s grandma and mom had been planning this for months and it did not disappoint. The oppressive sun had gone down and the breeze was blowing in. The food, chicken imperial, was tasty and the company plentiful and full of goodwill. I met a lot of Henry’s family I hadn’t before and they got to meet mine. And then there was cake… smashed in each other’s face. We made a mess. Henry may have gotten cake up my nose. We may have had an impromptu Aloud set with the guitars laying around the house. But it was getting late and we had to be up early. My brother, OJ, drove us downtown where we were staying with my sister’s friend Danny. Here’s the view from his apartment:
Aw yeah
The boat was just over that bridge. It seemed a natural choice to stay here for the night.
I could have used a bit more sleep, but I was up and running at 8am to prepare. Two of Danny’s friends were coming by to do make up and hair for myself and my sister, Alessandra. They did a pretty good job, eh?
The Twiggy Pose
If you’re in Miami and are in need of their services check out Alore.
Ok, so off in the cab for the short ride over. We get there and we’re the last to arrive, but we check in and get ushered into the reception area where all these aforementioned cousins, aunts, uncles, great aunts and uncles and godparents are all waiting. They look great in their formals. It’s amazing and heartening to see them. I feel warm and happy. Needless to say I’ve been a bit gushy, but that’s fine. I’m allowed.
Our wedding coordinator and officiant need to go over a couple things with us, so we sit down and run through the ceremony while our guests board the ship. After Henry and I board we realize our wedding garments have disappeared. Yikes! My mom had them and then gave them to Henry’s mom and then got passed around, but we found them and went up to our cabin to change into our mod duds. We didn’t look too bad…
Minutes before
We also find a couple swans waiting for us…
It was a looooooong wait. I mean a LONG wait. At this point, it’s about noon. Henry’s supposed to show up at 12:45 for a short rehearsal with the wedding party. Every time I ask him what time it is I’m lucky if ten minutes have elapsed. FINALLY, it’s 12:45. Henry heads off. In another 10 minutes the coordinator, Beca and Ale (we call my sister Ale) and the photographer show up. We take some cheesy photos and start making our way to the Tapestry Lounge. Show time!
OJ and Henry’s sister, Jenny, walk in first, then Dave and Beca followed by our maid of honor and best man Ale and Martin respectively. We’re up. What tune are we walking down to? In My Life by the Beatles. The crowd whoops. Yes, hoots and clapping and we’re walking down the aisle. You know that gushy thing I mentioned? It’s turned up to eleven about now. Our officiant Barbara is awesome. She leads us in and asks the parents to come up and bless the union and such. More almost tears. Next it’s Hugh. Yep the same Hugh who produced and made possible our first album, Leave Your Light On. He launches into a reading of Bob Dylan’s “Wedding Song”. This is Dylan of course, so in the interest of time we picked only a few verses. Really had to hold back as that Bobby is a real poet and Hugh read it perfectly. Check it:
I love you more than ever, more than time and more than love
I love you more than money and more than the stars above
Love you more than madness, more than waves upon the sea
Love you more than life itself, you mean that much to me
Ever since you walked right in, the circle’s been complete
I’ve said goodbye to haunted rooms and faces in the street
To the courtyard of the jester which is hidden from the sun
I love you more than ever and I haven’t yet begun
You breathed on me and made my life a richer one to live
When I was deep in poverty you taught me how to give
Dried the tears up from my dreams and pulled me from the hole
Quenched my thirst and satisfied the burning in my soul
It’s never been my duty to remake the world at large
Nor is it my intention to sound a battle charge
’Cause I love you more than all of that with a love that doesn’t bend
And if there is eternity I’d love you there again
Nice, eh? Next the vows. Jeez. Talk about mushy.
The vows were maybe my favorite part. And no, I’m not publishing them here, but rest assured they were heart felt and thoughtful and dare I say it a little beautiful. All right, all right. So, rings exchanged and then bam! Kissing time! And we’re off down the aisle after Henry’s quick high five to his old man. All to the sounds of the Beach Boys “Wouldn’t it be Nice”.
The High Five
This is getting a bit long, so I’ll be brief with the reception. Yes, it was fabulous. Great speeches from Martin and Ale, fantastic food and general amazing atmosphere from all these fantastic people we’re so lucky to have on our side. Here’s some visuals:
The walk down the aisle
Whoa that's a lot of family.
It was perfect. For realz. Thanks to everyone who helped especially me mum.
Whoa and hello. How is everyone this week? I’m pretty much, mostly fantastic. It has been quite a good week and it only gets better. Don’t mean to gloat, but you gotta take advantage when it’s good, right?
Friday, Henry and I went out for wedding haircuts. We went back to see Dominique at Miss Laura’s in JP. She’s a blessing. I had her do the Twiggy cut on me back in March to make sure it would work out for the wedding. I loved it and now she’s done it again and given Henry a damn good hair cut to boot! Seriously, check them out.
This past Saturday we had a studio session. We had to polish up a couple of things and we’ll probably continue to do so as we keep mixing. The big piece of recording is all set, but you know you hear new things along the way or decide maybe something should have been done differently and as long as you don’t go overboard with this sort of stuff it’s fine to go back and correct. In any case it was an awesome session and we’re looking forward to diving back into mixing when we return.
Mother’s Day. Called me mum and grandmum to let them know how great they are. Mom was already down in Miami helping Grandma and my brother, OJ, find a dress and tie respectively for the wedding. Yeah man… Only a few days away. Really now that most of the planning is behind us, I’m quite excited.
After the Mother’s Day calls we went out with our bassman, Charles, to Manchester, NH. His birthday was the day before and he decided we should all go shoot some guns. And so we did…
Henry and I had never shot before. Gotta say, it was kind of a lot of fun. I had to get over that initial “Shit. I am going to injure myself or someone else” thing. Charles was a real help guiding us along the way. We shot a .22 Revolver and a 9 millimeter sig. Also, Henry? Wow. What a shot that kid was.
He is a natural. Watch out!
This week sees errands to be run. We need to do some packing for the wedding and cruise. We should probably get those garment bags to transport our nice wedding clothes safely by plane. Our flight takes off Friday morning and we’re in Miami by noon. We’ll get to hang with our families for the day and then Saturday BOOM! marriage time. And then just as soon BOOM! cruise time.
Our favorite manager, Annie, will be posting a few never before seen vids on our Twitter page while we’re away. Watch out for those next week. Shows are also being booked while we’re away. We’ve got some help from Wes at Precedent Entertainment for the summer before really hitting the road hard when this new album is out. I’ve been doing a bit of casual lyric writing as well. If you know us, it’s no surprise that with all this stuff going on and a record still to mix we’re already thinking about the next one.
We’ll see you when we get back!
Jen
P.S. Henry and I saw Dr. Dog last night. If you don’t know them, they’re an exceptional band from Philly you ought to know. They may be playing a sold out show near you.
P.P.S. Here’s some footage taken by Bernie a.k.a Melody Matters from our show at TT’s last week. Look out for those egg shakers.
Ouch. That’s my response to speaking this morning. Last night was a ridiculous ride. It was our big show for Ford Fiesta and Ideo Productions. They were kind enough to have us play their free admission open bar party and we were glad to be there. So many things though or enough big things kind of fell in the way of me doing my job on that stage.
So the show went down at Church of Boston right in the Fenway neighborhood. A Red Sox game was happening that night, so we knew parking was going to be troublesome not to say anything of the traffic. Luckily, Travis who was behind the drum kit again for the night remembered his girlfriend, the wonderful and generous Leesa had a parking garage in the building she worked at that we could use. It was about a 15 minute walk from the venue which is not bad a bad alternative to $40 parking.
Henry and I met Charles at the space, loaded up, sat in crazy traffic till we got to Fenway, unloaded, met up with Travis and parked the van. Leesa, Travis and I walked back to Church running into Magen from St. Helena on the way. I’d already woken up with my throat feeling the worse for wear, but somehow on the walk back it began to hurt to speak and my mouth and throat were dried up no matter how much water I drank on the way. My hydration attempts were futile, but I figured I’d be fine in time for the set.
When we got back the place didn’t look too bad. It was early still, but the crowd looked good and I saw some peeps I hadn’t in a while. Free show, free booze on Monday after work. It’s a good thing. At this point I made a mental note to keep the chatting to a minimum to reserve my voice, but from that first note in Hard Up I knew I was in trouble. It was worse than I thought and in my head it sounded pretty frog-like. Did I mention this was being streamed on the internet? We made up for it by playing more Henry sung tunes and through the kindness of the crowd who bought my whiskey shots to numb the throat pain. It actually worked quite well. I felt immediately relieved and almost sounded like my old self if only for a few minutes, but of course it got me really drunk really fast and that’s not particularly helpful to me at least on the stage. At least it was at the end of the set.
I gotta say though my favorite moment at this show and the last two in Cambridge and Portland is still when Henry and I walk into the crowd, hand out egg shakers and sing The Last Time. We’ll have to get footage of that up soon.
All in all, I think we overcame the odds last night and we really did have a magnificent time. If you were there THANK YOU for coming. THANK YOU to everyone who watched online and THANK YOU to everyone who RSVP’d in an effort to get us to Bonnaroo. We’ll let you know if it happens.
I’m happy to say I’m feeling much better today. What I thought was a cold (I’d been battling off some sort of throat tickling since last Thursday) must have been allergy related because I took a Claritin today and feel so much better. Life presses on…
In a little over week Henry and I are saying our I do’s and we’ll be on that cruise checking out the Bahamas, St. Thomas, Puerto Rico and Grand Turk. We’re pulling together some vids that Annie will post on Twitter and Facebook while we’re away, so watch out for that.
Also, have been reading Hunter S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels and have decided I’d really like to take a ride on a motorcycle. Anyone offering?
The big project though was dialing up some radio effects. We put one of the tracks through an iPod radio transmitter and hooked it through this old dial up radio; the kind your grandparents had in the house. So, we put the track through that for a bit and recorded a bit of radio static and dialing to use as well. Perhaps one of my favorite moments of recording was all this fun sound effect stuff. I love that sort of thing on records. Doesn’t hurt I was reading a lot about it in 
