So, here's what's been going on as of late….
We played Preservation Pub in Knoxville,TN last weekend, upstairs, in The Speakeasy. Now, we tend to struggle a bit with our volume in this room, which is usually reserved for acts of a less-aggressive nature, BUT, upon the advice of our Far Far Away brethren in attendance, we kicked it up a notch in the home stretch and probably did ourselves a favor by letting go of any concerns we had about offending anyone. In fact, in the hour or two we spent hanging out afterwards, drinking beer and noshing on our complimentary pizzas, we were each asked repeatedly when we were going to resume playing, so I guess anyone we rankled had skipped out earlier.
And speaking of having pissed folks off, with Henry at the controls during what passes for soundcheck when we have to do our own, the staff and earliest happy hour-goers(along with us) were treated to a generous ear-gouging burst of feedback that incensed one shit-hammered redneck to repeatedly refer to us as a "high school" band. Clint, as I'd like to imagine his parents named him, had been discussing his generous endowment and the fact that he'd "been thrown out of better places than this" for the duration of our load-in, and was already a source of mild, yet distant irritation. The high school comment brought him into a more immediate focus, and I was fairly certain Henry was going to walk over and give him a Hulk/Loki-style thrashing, a la "The Avengers" at any minute. Alas, and probably to our ultimate advantage, he did not. (Amazing side note: This drunk idiot was STILL standing at 11PM…some 5 hours after we had first made note of his advanced state of inebriation…..here's to hoping he drove himself home, along a lonely country road lined with tall, sturdy trees and sharp ravines. Cheers.)
The night before, we played a set at The Rutledge in Nashville, TN, and got to witness an awesome post-show altercation between what appeared to be the love child of Jon Bon Jovi and Chris Jericho vs. his would-be sugar mama, all stemming from a rather sizable bar tab he had accumulated on her plastic. Various insults to his manhood and lack of gainful employment were bandied about during her tirade, and I'd be hard-pressed to deny that their blowout wasn't the highlight of the show.
Since these excursions, I've been holed up in Pastry Park Studio, toiling away on a handful of new song demos, some of which are actually not "new" ideas, but rather ones that have been dusted off for recent acoustic shows, where they received the kind of response that made me think maybe they might be ready to leave the bench. So, this week has been devoted to tracking "I Can't Sleep Alone", "The Ride", "All In The Livin'", "California(Turn To Stone)", "Too Far Gone", and "The Fear". What will become of these is, as usual, anyone's guess, but I hope to have them all done and mixed by the end of next week.
In the meantime, we head off to Cincinnati this week, to play Southgate House(actually in Newport, KY) on Sunday(4/7), assuming I survive the bachelor party I'm attending/chaperoning on Friday.
The next gig on the books will be our Louisville debut at Gerstle's, with Digby on Saturday, April 13th. Louisville folks, please spread the word on this one for us. We get a longer set here..an hour to an hour & a half, so we'll probably take this opportunity to try out a few tunes that don't often see(or haven't yet seen) the light of day.
A couple of weeks off, and we're in Murfreesboro at 3 Brothers Deli, and then we have some down time while Kenny does a few Bonepony gigs, I do some producing for another artist, and we both get back to work on the "Nothing's Broken" record whenever we can. I got some great guitar tracks back from my buddy Don Mabus, who is playing on 2 or 3 tunes, and we had some pedal steel cut for the title track while we were working on the Joshua Ketchmark record, so that album is slowly coming together, a piece at a time.
June sees us in Columbus, GA, & Bristol, TN, with a handful of tentatives awaiting confirmation..and July will have us in Marion, IL, Creve Coeur, IL, Los Angeles, CA…and several points in between here and the West Coast, once we get those nailed down…stay tuned.
Currently listening to: Trinity James "Baby"…good guy, cool record…think an unholy union of The Strokes & Bon Jovi….yeah, it's like that.
Good flick: A Beginner's Guide To Endings…Harvey Keitel, J.K. Simmons…just watch it.
-Denny