I’d be lying if I said I was going to tell the whole truth in this installment of our monthly update, so I guess the truth is I’ll be lying to you all. You see, in the interest of professional courtesy, and to avoid possibly creating a lingering tension that might fester and eventually manifest itself into some degree of open hostility; should the parties at odds have the misfortune of crossing paths again, I feel it would be best to neglect the details of whatever business was engaged in prior that could’ve conceivably spawned said tensions.
In other words, I won’t mention anything about the headliner of a bill we played on Saturday, March 25th at Diesel Dick’s in Tremont, IL, who showed up 30 minutes AFTER doors were scheduled to open, expecting to do a full set-up and soundcheck, but who wouldn’t enter the venue until the thermostat was adjusted to his liking, while his loyal fans waited an additional 90 minutes or so in the pouring rain, so his “band” and “crew” could futz around like monkeys told to build a jet engine out of soup cans & pie tins.
I’m not gonna mention any of that….or the fact that the show started almost 2 hours late, and all the support acts got their sets cut…some pretty drastically. Nope, not getting into the details, because you never know, we might have to play with these folks again…..and they might do their meet & greet at 3AM then too, which everyone knows is the ideal time to corral a bunch of folks who’ve been on their feet for 10 hours(much of that time spent outside in a downpour), just to maybe get a handshake and a SINGLE item signed(as per instructions). Everybody knows that’s the industry standard for M&Gs(that’s “meet & greets”, if you’re not in “the biz”). Duh.
I really miss Corey Haim.
Anyhow, since I can’t talk about that stuff, here’s what else has been going on, and a few things that are on the horizon.
Kenny & I ran up to Cincinnati to play a benefit show at MVP as The Die Youngs, and had the chance to do some material from that record, my solo release, and even a few fORMER tunes that hadn’t been aired in quite a while. I’m not sure how many bucks were drummed up, but I know it went to a worthy recipient, and we were honored to do our part. Plus, we got to see a few faces we’d missed, and help Josh Baughan celebrate the 3-yr. anniversary of his club while we were at it. Hopefully we can get the whole band back up that way soon. Thanks, BC, for hooking it up and seeing to it that we were taken care of. John Harmon, never ask me to run sound again…especially on a damn iPad. I’m more qualified to fly to a plane, trust me.
We got back into town just in time for me to get a few winks of sleep before heading to one last rehearsal for the Billy Wayne memorial show that Monday night at The Basement East. I’d like to think we did it up right for Mr. Goodwin, and that our renditions of Petty classics were reasonably faithful, but in all honesty, the night was a blur, and seemed to race by, so I’m not terribly sure. Whatever the case, here’s to you, B. Dub…wherever you are. Cheers.
Photo by Stacie Huckeba
The following weekend, I shot a video for “A Little Bit Broken”, from my solo album ‘An Overnight Low’, with my buddies Scott & Nate Moore(father & son….not brothers or life-partners, just FYI). The song is going to be featured in a ROKU/Amazon series called “Venture” later in the summer, so you’ll be seeing/hearing more about that soon. The footage I saw looked pretty cool, and it appears we’re going to do some more work together soon, either on another track from my record, or something from the currently-in-progress next TGA release.
Speaking of which, we’re well underway on that project, with the 8 basic tracks we cut at Switchyard getting a little TLC here at Pastry Park. Matt’s dropped keeper bass lines in on 4 tunes so far, and my guitars are all accounted for, save one number that I’m still mulling over. Scratch vocals are now in place for most of the stuff that I sing lead on, and all we have left to capture are Patrick’s guitars, Kenny’s scratch tracks, and the remainder of Matt’s bass work, before we can head back in with our engineer Michael Saint-Leon to start dressing this batch up. From there we’ll tackle another 7 or 8 new things, and continue on this path until we’ve exhausted our current stash of potential candidates for LP #6, and we’re forced to narrow it down to the 10 or 12 best for the final release. This might take us a while, but we wanna make sure we don’t “skimp on the gravy”, so please be patient.
OK, that brings us up to date, because as I mentioned, I’m not going to talk about that one thing…
So, here’s what’s on deck.
We’re back at John Brown’s On The Square on Friday, April 14th, where we’ll finally start unveiling a handful of these new tunes we’ve been working on in the studio, along with a somewhat revamped setlist for our favorite stop off the highway.
We’ll shake the new stuff out again on Thursday, April 20th at Twin Kegs here in Nashville, when we do a brief set for the next installment of Woodbine Rocks.
….and, at the end of April, we’re heading down to Savannah, GA, and Bluffton, SC to do a pair of Wild Wing Cafe gigs, before we’re back to work on the studio side of things for a few weeks, hopefully expediting the arrival of something intended to tide the anxious over until we can get this LP together. Stay tuned.
Goonies are good enough……?
D.