The dog days of summer are here, and with them all the attendant misery of life in TN when the mercury makes the slide past the 100º mark . Luckily, this year it is documented via constant Facebook posts featuring photos of various thermostats, so we know we're not crazy and the only ones feeling this heat. Thank you, amateur meteorologists, for confirming our sanity with your keen eye for these unique occurrences. Your work does not go unappreciated. Now, get out there and snap a shot of traffic on 24, so the rare phenomenon of gridlock does not go undocumented. It's your calling, clearly.
OK, now that I've got that bit of snark out of my system, here's what's up with The Great Affairs, and life in general around these parts.
We've been in and out of the studio the last few weeks, working on the first of several batches of tunes we'll be laying down this Summer and Fall. Tomorrow afternoon, Kenny & I are supposed to supervise the keyboard stylings of Michael Webb, as he drops in his parts on "The Ring" & "Shame On You". Once those are in place, and our engineer returns from some jet-setting, we'll dig into mixing those and "Sherrybaby", possibly to be used as part of a Great Affairs compilation, featuring stuff from the first 2 LPs, & the " Happy Ender" EP, since there are almost no physical copies of that stuff left anymore, and we need something for toting around to shows.
Speaking of "Sherrybaby", we're shooting a video for that tune with Darrell Frasier this Thursday afternoon/evening, at a couple of different locations. I'm not sure when this will be completed and ready for the eyes of the world, but hopefully right around the time that compilation CD I was just yammering about is set to appear.
As soon as we wrap that up, Patrick & I are splitting to Illinois for a few days, for business and family obligations, Henry's flying out somewhere...I can't recall...and Kenny is off with Bonepony for some dates. When we all reconvene, we'll get back to the business of playing some shows again.
The first thing on our books, is a Wednesday night, July 25th at The Rutledge, where it looks like we're gonna play a set mostly comprised of tunes we've never played live before, just to keep things interesting. I've never been a big fan of the "same set every night" rigmarole, so we're gonna ditch that notion in favor of keeping ourselves on our toes. Yeah, we might not be so tight, but we'll try to make loose look good. Besides, this is rock n' roll...it ain't supposed to be perfect. If you want perfect, go watch Shinedown(or any of their ilk, for that matter) pretend to be singing and playing all that shit "live". I promise you, if we're on stage, and you're hearing it, somebody up there is playing or singing it(good or bad)....unless you're unstable, in which case I have no idea what you might be hearing.
Alright, let me just climb down from my pulpit, and I'll continue....where was I?
Oh yeah, so we'll do that show on the 25th, and then Henry's gotta split for Atlanta for a few days, so I'm going to Vegas to squander all the money I make at The Rutledge on penny slots. When we both get back, it should be right about time to start mixing some tunes, and looking at when we're going to start overdubs on the rest of the tracks we have on deck...and just what to do with them when we're done.
In August, between work on that stuff and getting the live show together, Kenny has some Canadian dates with Bonepony, I'm going to Los Angeles for a few days, Henry heads to Minneapolis, and Patrick will be burning some Nag Champa and jamming along to Clapton records.
THEN, on the 24th, our good friend Joshua Ketchmark (http://www.joshuaketchmark.com) will be flying in from L.A. with his band, to celebrate the 2nd of 2 EPs he recorded here in Nashville last year. We'll be sharing the stage with him, and one other band(if we can ever said other band nailed down, that is) at The Rutledge, before rolling up yonder a piece to do it all over again the next night at Knoxville's Preservation Pub. Since we'll be closing these shows, we're gonna try to put together a slightly longer set than the usual 35-45 minutes we normally get on these bills. We'll pull out some new tunes and a few things we haven't done in a while.I think those of you that have been around for a while will be pleased...at least I hope so.
It would mean a lot to us, if you all would help us pack this one for Joshua. We've been trying to get something like this together ever since he came here to track with us in 2011. Check out his site to hear samples of stuff he did with fORMER and Bonepony backing him up.
I think that's about it for now. There should be a new demo tune up soon for free download at http://www.thegreataffairs.com I've tracked three different ones over the past couple weeks, so I'm not sure which one I wanna throw up there just yet. Stay tuned.
Cheers,
Denny
p.s. I added a few new videos to the "home" page here, so check 'em out....stuff with Best Of Seven, Bombshell Crush, The Beauty School Dropouts, and Lucky Drag.