grammys

so here i am stuck in richmond virginia hoping to get home in time tonight for the grammys. it'll be fun to watch. for the past couple years some friends and i have gotten together at someone's house to watch. tonight is kinda bittersweet considering that i came very very close to having a credit on a grammy nominated album.

first i need to offer a huge congratulations to my buddy steve wilson. steve and i were in a band together called The Class of 98 a few years ago and even toured the country for a bit. you become very good friends with someone when you spend two years in a van. steve is incredibly talented and one of the best writers i know. he produces a ton of stuff and every now and then calls me to help out. you see, he producers AND engineers so sometimes it helps to have someone there to take a bit of the load off when you're recording drums. last summer i got one of those calls from him asking if i could come help record drums for the new Leeland record.



he didn't have any money for me but i'd probably get a credit and it was only one day of work. i looooove recording so i would probably do it for free anyway. well, to make a long story short, i didn't end up getting a credit. and that record was nominated for a grammy. so technically if i had gotten that credit, i wouldn't necessarily have gotten a little statuette, but i'd definitely have a grammy credit under my belt. i don't blame steve at all for this. there's plenty of roadblocks to actually getting credit on a record. legal issues, formalities, etc. and really, i only worked one day. does one day deserves accolades from the industry?? no, probably not.

ok, i didn't really mean for this to happen, but this blog sounds kinda bitter. and i don't mean it that way. i'm very proud to have even been a small part of the whole process. steve is a good friend and i couldn't be happier for him. he continues to help me out all the time. and i should take this opportunity to let you know that he and i are working on some new music for The Class of 98. we're not sure how or when it will be released, but we're definitely excited to be creating music of our own again. if you have never heard the previous record, go to www.myspace.com/TheClassof98 or check out the music on itunes.

hilarious

ok, this commercial is hilarious to me. everything from the MAN keeping people down and quoting a t-pain song to the white girl talking all ghetto. it's so bad i almost wonder if it's on purpose.

guy time

right now it's about 9:57 on tuesday night and i'm watching scott brown's victory speech. he's the republican senator who just took the senate super majority away from the democrats by winning ted kennedy's old seat in what has historically been a democratic stronghold. WAIT...HOLD IT....i saw that. you started rolling your eyes. oh, here he goes again getting all political.

relax. i'm not going to start ranting about health-terror and demopublicans.

no matter what side you're on, it's kinda cool that any political office is up for grabs, and a person's vote actually matters. i have a rule when i vote.

When In Doubt, Vote Them Out.

when you go in to vote for the president every four years, there's usually a bunch of smaller state and local elections you vote on too. if there's a smaller election and i'm not sure who to vote for, i ALWAYS vote against the incumbent no matter what party they're in. even if both candidates are equally good or bad, it's better to unseat a representative who is likely to continue their inevitable journey down the road to compromise. our politicians should live in constant FEAR of losing their positions. they should walk on eggshells and lose sleep at night worrying about losing their seat because they didn't stand up for what their constituents want. it's kinda like how in court you're presumed innocent until proven guilty.....except the exact opposite.



see? it wasn't that bad.

ANYWAY, i'm thinking that i need to put more work into my segues.

so this week tricia is halfway across the world in Uganda on a trip for Compassion International. and i'm here alone....well, i have the dogs, but pretty much alone. sidenote* does that last statement give you an insight into my psyche? are you starting to wonder if i'm one of those animal people who sees their dogs are real people? well......MAYBE. what's wrong with dressing your dogs up in hoodies?? do i talk to my dogs?? all the freaking time!


no, i didn't find this on google images. this is my dog.


ok, we have derailed. let's get back on topic. i'm home alone all week. when my wife leaves it's like a magic button is pushed and the place gets trashed. have you ever seen old gangster speakeasy movie footage where the push of a button makes walls move and flips tables to conceal the gambling? well, somehow when trish leaves the sink fills with dishes, clothes go everywhere and there's stuff all over the bathroom. i mean, usually we get out of bed and sometime during the day, the bed gnomes come out and make the bed because it's always made when i go to my room at night. but when trish leaves, it's like the gnomes leave too. hmm..weird.

here's a few things that are on the agenda for the week:

1. giant hoagie sandwich
2. shooting guns with buddies
3. wrestling with the dogs
4. eat more of giant hoagie sandwich



also, i'm working tirelessly on my sister's music. her name is Aliegh and me and Trev have been working with her for the last year and a half and we're almost done. Aliegh is a much better singer than me and she's a lot funnier and prettier and looks better than me in a dress. wow, that's kinda weird. any of you out there have multiple sisters? ok, then you know that if you compliment one, you have to compliment them all. my sisters Aubrey and Ashley are also better singers and prettier and funnier than me....especially when ashley does her sound effects. sometimes she tells stories and tries to accent the story with big sound effects, but instead, they end up sounding tiny. for instance, a big gun will come out sounding like "pew! pew! pew!"...and also she makes the best chili ever. ANYWAY, i can't wait to show you aliegh's stuff when it's done. i think she's going to do really well.


Left to Right: Aliegh, Ashley, Aubrey
I'm gonna get so much crap from them for posting this


and speaking of artists i've worked with, check out a band called At Cliffs End (www.myspace.com/atcliffsend). they're on tour right now. i think they're in baltimore tonight. they've been working hard and are on the verge of some really good things happening and i'm really proud of them. check out their schedule and if they're playing in your town, definitely go see them and tell them that you know me. don't worry, i'll vouch for you.

ok, it's time to get back to work. that hoagie is calling my name again.

a new year

here we are. another new year. and what do we do on new years? we resolve. we make resolutions. is it cheesy and cliche? of course it is. is that a good reason to not do it? NOPE. i'm a firm believer in having goals. and this year, my goal is to write every day (songwriting, specifically) . Even if it's just one line. Even if it's just one riff. I've heard so many great writers talking about developing the discipline to write every day so i've decided to try out their advice. the hardest part is motivating myself. cause right now i'm all fired up. but next week i won't have the willpower to do it. how do you force your will to do something that it doesn't want to do? you enlist the help of others. so i've gotten 4 people in my life who have committed to call me once a week for the next year to push, shove and gently nudge me to keep writing.

and it's working great so far. i haven't missed a day. it's actually incredibly liberating. here's how my writing cycle used to work:

1. write a song by agonizing over lyrics and melody for many hours
2. neglect to write for 3 or 4 weeks because i'm so burned out from the previous day
3. feel guilty cause i haven't written in so long
4. finally muster up the willpower to agonize over another song
5. go back to step one

but now i just write a little bit every day. a verse melody today. chorus melody tomorrow. verse lyrics after that.....and before you know it i've got a finished song and it seems so easy that i'm even more pumped about doing more writing. and another cool thing is that the people who i asked to remind me once a week are very important to me and it's a great way to keep in touch with them. so there's my resolution. i'll let you know how it goes in a year.

Also, there's this:



my photographer extraordinaire friend david molnar ( www.DavidMolnar.com ) and his wife treated me and trish to a showing of Avatar. We saw it in 3D at the Imax in nashville and it was incredible. seriously. love love love love loved it. ya know how sometimes when a movie is built up like it's this huge thing it lets you down even though it's a good movie? well, i kinda wondered if that would happen. but i STILL thought it was amazing even though it was so built up in my head. if you haven't seen it yet, i would definitely recommend 3D imax. such a cool experience.

And lastly, this:


The guys in Silverline ( www.myspace.com/silverlinemusic )were hanging out at my studio for about three days where we wrote and did some work on their songs for their new album. they're a good bunch of guys. if you haven't heard them, you should check them out. also, whatever you do, DO NOT go to google images and search for "silverline" because i just did and the first image is gross. seriously. this isn't a joke. don't do it.

ok that's it for now. talk to you all later.

tablets, loudess and Ke$ha

oh man. apple is coming out with a new tablet computer. well, at least that's the rumor. all i know is that thing better mow the lawn or something cool cause between my iphone and laptop i'm not sure why i'd need one. but apple has a good track record of not only coming up with gadgets that we need, but new stuff that we didn't even know we needed....and i use the word need very loosely. i mean seriously, is it necessary that i check my facebook 12,390 times a day?

i've been thinking a lot lately about mixing. for those of you who don't follow the audio world, there's been a battle raging for about the last 15 years called the Loudness War. to make a long story short, every band out there wants their record to be louder than the other guys. but there's a ceiling on a CD of how loud it can be. so the only way to make it seem louder is to compress the snot out of a song. compressing evens out the peaks and valleys so that the loud parts are quieter and the soft parts are louder. on first listen, a louder song may seem better, but it's not. it fatigues the ear and takes away a lot of the energy in the song.

to check out more on the issue, go to youtube and just search "loudness wars" and there's plenty of video/audio examples. Here's one:



Anyway, i did a lot of mixing in the last half of 2009 and the more i think about it, the more the loudness war seems ridiculous. i know how to get a bands' track loud. it's not that hard. but what is hard is knowingly degrading the sound that i worked so hard to achieve. what is also frustrating is that the bands respond to it even when they know nothing about it. i've sent mixes back to a band when they couldn't quite say what they didn't like about it. but as soon as i smash it and compress it they LOVE it. although that's probably partly due to the fact that it's loud rock music. i imagine that if i mixed a three piece jazz outfit then it might be different.....emphasis on the MIGHT. i'd absolutely love to work with a band that would have the courage to let their record be a little softer than the others yet pack a crisp dynamic that doesn't make your ears tired when you turn it up. a band that wouldn't mind if the listener just turned the volume up a little more to really experience the dynamics. whenever i mix a project now the first thing i ask is if it's going to be mastered by anyone. if it is, then the burden of compressing it and making it loud is on them. i mix without bus compression and even though you can drive a mix a little into the red without distorting, i give the mastering guy plenty of headroom to work with. but i'll be honest. it's scary. maybe they'll never use me again or tell their friends' bands that i suck at mixing because i didn't make it loud enough. blah.

ok, on another random note, there's this girl:



if you aren't living under a rock, you've probably heard her song Tik Tok all over top forty radio. what's crazy is that she used to live in nashville. many of my friends and i used to see her all around town. she was just kesha. i knew she was trying to do music, but what the heck, everybody in nashville is. and she never played any shows. then she moves out to LA and a couple years later all of the sudden she's huge. what the heck. i dug through my old archives and found this:


click to enlarge

this was taken at my old apartment at birthday party for ben harms, current bassist for the glorious unseen and lifelong friend of mine. we made fliers with his face on it and called it the Guy-apalooza because everyone called him the GUY back then and we were copying Mitch-apalooza from the movie Old School. there are two things that are funny about this. the first is that all my friends look so young. the second is the fact that the girl in the background all the way to the left is Kesha back when she used to dress like a hippie before she became a pop sensation.

anyway if any of the girls happen to see this photo, i hope you enjoy. haha....ok i'm going to bed.

here's a few tips

i turned 29 last friday. that's right. my birthday is on christmas. i'm really getting up there in age. i mean, that's practically 30. i've realized that since i'm so old now, that must mean that i'm very wise. so this old sage has prepared a few tips on life in general that i've come across in the last year for all you kids out there. enjoy.

1. if you drop your iphone in the toilet, put it in a ziplock baggie with rice. it works. trust me, i learned the hard way. and if some of you were wondering why my iphone was with me in the bathroom, let me say that Words With Friends, The Deep Pinball and this Euchre app i found are ruining my life.

2. guys, when your wife asks you how she looks, or if this dress looks good or any other question dealing with how she looks, RUN. it's a trap!



3. if you plan on swinging your guitar around your neck, maybe sure your straplocks are on good and tight. technically, this was a little longer than a year ago. if any of you have seen our live show, sometimes i like to throw my guitar around my neck. well,the last show on the creation tour a year ago i didn't have my straplocks on correctly and when i swung my guitar, the strap came off and it went flying off the stage and almost hit a security guard. on a related note, ask me if you ever need a guitar repair guy in nashville. ed beaver is amazing.

4. stay away from credit cards. credit cards are like a christian and alcohol. technically, it's not wrong for a christian to drink as long as he doesn't go overboard. but it's soooo easy to. many of you are responsible enough to handle credit cards, but many are not. just stay away. this last year my wife and i paid them off thanks to the dave ramsey plan and we're definitely happy to be done with it.

5. don't cross the streams.

6. enjoy spicy food while you can because it won't last forever

7. i'm sooooo over IKEA. sure, their stuff looks cool and it's not expensive....but another word for not expensive is cheap. and that's what it is. cheaply made crap that won't last longer than the semester you will use it for in college before you realize a good piece of furniture costs more than $60.

8. pedaltrain pedalboards and cases. amazing. if you're a guitarist that travels, just save yourself a lot of pedalboard headaches and get a pedaltrain. and i'm not sponsored by them.

9. many of us have a natural knee jerk reaction that we are only interested in things or hobbies that we discover. get over this. if someone tries to show you some thing they think is cool, LISTEN to them. they're probably right. and think about this, if someone is taking the time to try to make your life better and tell you about something awesome, how much of a slap in the face is it if you instantly write them off purely because you didn't discover it yourself?

10. write a blog. it's fun and when you go back and read old posts it's actually kinda cool to remember where your head was at a year ago.

ok, that's enough for now. talk to you later