I’ve been on a nostalgia kick lately so I’ve been scouring my various hard drives finding music that I’d forgotten I had. Here’s are a few things I’ve come across.

This first thing is probably the most bizarre piece of music I’ve ever written. It was the very first demo I did for Christopher Gustave’s Six Comforts project. When Chris asked me to write some music for this thing I had an idea that we were going to do some super-over-the-top-just-how-weird-can-we-make-it sort of thing. Chris was not as amused with this piece as I was. After that I got a little better grip of the direction he had in mind. The quality of this recording is pretty lousy but it makes me laugh every time I hear it. It gets a tad repetitive in the middle but it’s only 2 minutes long so stick with it, the end is worth the wait. Any fans of Dr. Demento will appreciate what I was going for here.

Click here to download

This second piece actually ended up on the Six Comforts album as background music for a thing Chris and I put together called “Pardon My French”…I think. This makes me laugh too. I love this song. Again – a bit repetitive but it needed to be that way for our purpose.

Click here to download

The third mp3 is a compilation of the cover songs we did at The Drew Johnson Band CD release party. I forgot that we did so many. Each song is edited down to keep this thing from being a half hour long. I gotta say my guitar tone was totally killer that night. It makes me wish I had my Matchless back. This is just a recording straight from the sound board so it doesn’t sound that great and you can’t hear Steve hardly at all but it’s still worth a listen. I’m probably breaking some kind of law by posting these songs. Hope not.

The song list is:

War Pigs (Black Sabbath)
MLK – instrumental (U2)
Spanish Castle Magic (Jimi Hendrix)
Funk 49 (James Gang)
Helter Skelter (The Beatles)

Click here to download

The last thing is a video of The Drew Johnson Band playing some more cover tunes at practice. I have no idea what I intended to do with this other than maybe to see exactly how fat I look playing other people’s songs. Once again these songs have been edited for length. The first few seconds of this are Dino showing off his guitar chops to Steve.

Songs list:

I’m Going Home (Marvin Gaye)
Jumping Jack Flash (The Rolling Stones)
Hey Bulldog (The Beatles)
Crosstown Traffic (Jimi Hendrix)

Click here to download

I’ve got some video from our last two overdub sessions. This one is a little longer than some of the others so please be patient with the download time.

Click the picture to download.

3 minutes 45 seconds

17.9 MB

I think Dog and Pony Show may actually be done. Thank God.

In a comment from my last post Jeff asked for more video from the show. Since Angel’s surgery is tomorrow I’m going to be pretty tied up for the next few days and I don’t think I’ll have time to put much together. Being that I’m very much a novice video guy it takes forever for me to sync up the good audio recording with the video and I’m feeling very lazy. It’s definitely an excercize in patience. But in an attempt to do as I’m asked I’ll post the video that I put together before I had Dino’s audio recording. Please be warned that this video sounds like dog shit. It’s just the audio from the camera so it’s all distorted and crap. It’s about two minutes long and it has short excerpts from a bunch of different songs.

There is one cool thing that happens in the video that was just a total accident. Dig the transition from Home to Chumps American Style. It’s pretty cool. I’m singing the same note through the fade from one to the other so the effect is kinda bizarre.

Download the shitty video here.

9.41 MB

Angel’s surgery is at 11:30 AM tomorrow so be thinking about her and send your good vibes her way.

We met at the warehouse today to watch the video of the Off Broadway show. There is a lot to be learned from watching your live show. Listening to rehearsal tapes is one thing but seeing your live show is really the best way to learn what you do right and what you do wrong. We all agreed that we did a hell of a lot more right than we did wrong but there are some things that definitely need to be tightened up before The Pageant show.

The one thing that really stood out from watching myself was my lack of stage presence. I’m normally pretty good at putting on a show visually but this time I was just boring. I don’t know if it was the fact that I hadn’t been on stage in so long or if it was the nerves or what but whatever it was, it needs to be corrected in a hurry.

Speaking of nerves, we were all pretty nervous before this show. I like that in a band. In fact, I like that a lot. I’ve played with musicians in the past that never really got nervous before a show regardless of how big or how important it happened to be. That kind of scares me about a person. Nerves are good. If you can keep them in check I believe that they give you an advantage over the guy who acts like a show is no big deal. I get nervous before every show. It doesn’t matter if it’s for five people at happy hour or in front of thousands of people at a festival. Every show is important to me. Every show is a big deal.

Here are a couple of videos from the Off Broadway show. The first was the opening tune – Dog and Pony Show. The second one is our version of The Beatles’ Hey Bulldog.

Sorry for the huge file sizes.

16.2 MB

14.0 MB

I found some video of the band Kristopher Curtis and I used to play in called Koffterweid. I haven’t posted any video lately so I figured I could put this on here. I think this is the only live recording I have of this band. This was the era of my life where I thought I was Stevie Ray Vaughn. This is me trying to prove it.

Click the picture to download.

6.75 MB

This next one is sweet. Angel caught Riley singing in his room the other day. If you’ve never heard the “I like to move it move it” song this probably won’t be as funny but check it out anyway. I’d like to apologize for the state of his room when this was shot. He’s three…give us a break…he likes to move it move it…he likes to break it break it….he likes to mess things up mess things up.

Click the picture to download.

808 KB

This video has nothing to do with the band. It has everything to do with me. That’s why I love it.

This clip is from one of the best musical performances I’ve ever given and it doesn’t involve a guitar or singing…go figure…maybe I should take a hint. This took place about two months before the ass-busting video I posted a few days ago. This was my junior recital in college. This was at the peak of my saxophone playing. The song is A Love Supreme by John Coltrane. This is from the solo section so you probably won’t recognize the tune. The solo was probably about six or seven minutes long so I’ve edited it down a lot. If you’re not into Jazz don’t waste your time downloading this. It will only sound like a big fucking mess. It’s not, but I could see how someone would think that.

There were a few updates to the site today. The Photo page has some new stuff (make sure you refresh the page) and the Video page (refresh, refresh, refresh) now has all of the recording videos on there. Check ‘em out.

Click the picture to download.

5.54 MB

Here’s the video I mentioned yesterday. This was on April 21st, 2001 at the CD release party for Invention of the Wheel. My buddy Joe Yurko gave me his guitar to smash on stage. I was elated. I will prove once and for all that we are the coolest band around. How often do you get to see someone smash a guitar in person? Not often enough…and not on this night either. Psyche! I was able to beat the piss out of the stage but that’s about it. I was mortified.

The club owners asked me if they could have the guitar. I figured what the hey, it probably still plays perfectly fine goddamit. They took the neck off and it is still to this day used as the handle on the front door of the club. That’s pretty cool. I was honored.

The copy I have only has sound out of the right channel. I don’t know why. Sorry. It’s not really about the audio anyway.

By the way, if you’re looking for all of the blog entries with video clips, click “Blog Categories” up on the top right. Then click “Video Clips”. That will show you all of them. Your welcome.

Click the picture to download.

1.4 MB

I checked the stats for our site today and I was amazed. The total visits for the month of November were almost three times the average of the last nine months or so. Thanks to all of you who are helping to spread the word.

The download numbers for the recording videos have been pretty high. Since I don’t have any more of those to post right now, here’s one that was on the site a while back that was wildly popular. This clip is from a rehearsal for a band I was in called The Fugitive Popes. There’s not really much to tell except that I bust ass really hard. You’ll also notice that my hair gets caught in the button on my shirt. This is definitely one of my most shining moments as a rock god. Incidentally, the guitar player in the band is Barry Graul who is now in an extremely well known and successful Christian band called Mercy Me.

Keep checking back for more video stuff. I found the video of me attempting to smash a guitar at the CD release party for Invention of the Wheel. I’ll try to get it up soon.

Click the picture to download.

2.77 MB

Today was the last day of tracking at the warehouse. I can’t believe that in 7 sessions we got about 75% of the record tracked.

This week Dino and I were batting around some ideas about a totally different way of approaching the drum part on Songbirds. So Dino came in today and friggin’ nailed it on the second take. Pretty impressive considering he was still drunk from last night.

The acoustic guitar that you’ll hear on the video is only a scratch track. It was recorded direct and it sounds like shit. We know. Don’t email us.

Mike wasn’t able to make it until the last minute today. He ran into a bit of a snag this morning. He didn’t quit the bad. Don’t email us.

Here’s some video from today. Click the picture to download.

7.33 MB

We got Admiration Day tracked last night. It rocks. We slowed it down a tad from where we were playing it on Sunday and it helped a lot. Dino had to be convinced to accept his drum performance as awesome. I won’t give it away (you’ll have to wait for the album) but there’s this tiny, tiny, tiny little thing that happens in the middle of one of his fills that bothered him. (FYI, that drum fill is not the one we talk about in the video) Everyone else thought it was cool as hell. We listened to it over and over and over and over and over…and over, telling Dino that we liked it. He gave in. Dino is the most perfection driven person I know. For him to accept the little quirkiness of that split second was a huge deal. I on the other hand am happy if I get through the day without crapping my pants. Different strokes…

So here’s some video from the Tuesday before Thanksgiving when we did Waterloo…and some from last night.

Click the picture to download.

7.40 MB

BONUS!!!

While we’ve been recording, my son Riley has been working on recording an album of his own. He’s got this cool little toy that is sort of a mixing/recording console. I caught him doing take after take just like dear old dad. He prefers to record in his underwear just like me. Dig the quick booger picking/eating action. I taught him that too.

Click the picture to download.

4.89 MB