It’s almost February, and just north of our home base here in Nashville everything is frozen, filling me with a scarcely containable ebullience at the thought of our impending trek to Terre Haute, IN for the kickoff of our 2019 season. I love almost nothing as much as I adore humping gear in and out of alleyways in sub-zero temperatures. It’s practically a fetish of mine, and precisely why I encourage staying busy during the months with the harshest expected inclement weather. And don’t get me started on the way driving in these conditions gets the blood flowing to my nether regions. I’ve practically gotta take my seatbelt off.
OK then, enough with the sarcasm. Truthfully, we are pretty jazzed to be getting back in the saddle. I know Jean Claude Damme Van has been looking a little down in the mouth out there in the driveway, stuck in park for over two months. We had to get a few things out of the way before we could commit to putting in any miles, but it looks like we’re ready to see if this boxer still has his punch.
Before anybody calls us on it, I know we promised we’d be dusting off a few things and even maybe sticking one or two new tunes into the set, but we’ve had some hurdles thrown up over the last couple of months that precluded us from getting down to work on that stuff just yet. Now, with that said, I’m going into the studio with Kenny in a few weeks to help him out while he continues work on his solo stuff, and we’re going to attempt knocking out some additional drum tracks while we’re at it that I can then drag back to Pastry Park and commence overdubbing for later use.
Additionally, I’ve been nose to the proverbial grindstone during our collective down time, writing and recording a whole bunch of stuff for the guys to mull over as we look at the possibility of doing a followup to ‘Ten & 2’. In fact, here’s a little something I cut recently, that I handed off to my buddy(and frequent collaborator) Joshua Ketchmark for mixing, mastering, and just generally making it hopefully not sound like one of my usual one-man-band, half-assed demos. It was something I’d just floated it out to the crew for consideration, when Nathan Mantor approached me to be a guinea pig for a video project he was looking to bang out in short order. We shot this one afternoon in my writing room, and it’s called “Lights Of Home”. Hope you dig it. Maybe it’ll show up somewhere else down the line, but who knows?
In other news….well, I don’t have much other than what I’ve already divulged. We’re gonna shake off the rust in Terre Haute on the 8th, before returning to the rehearsal room to address any issues that being in mothballs for most of the Winter may precipitated, and then get back down to business as usual come March 1st, with more shows in IN, IL, and GA(me solo acoustic in Atlanta), along with a hometown show on March 16th at The High Watt with Generation Down and Red Wine Hangover. With any luck, by the time I post another one of these entries there will be a few developments I can elaborate on, but for now I think that about wraps it up.
Be good to each other, and we’ll see you out there,
Denny
aaaand Patrick, Matt, & Kenny
The Great Affairs