Christopher Gustave just sent me some really great pictures he took at our show last weekend. It’s kinda late now but I’ll get them on the site tomorrow. The guy’s got a great eye…and he’ll own yer ass at Trivial Persuit too.

Our first recording session at the church with J. Christopher Hughes is fast approaching. I’m getting nervous because I’m not sure we’re ready but that’s kinda the way I wanted it. We haven’t done the usual marathon practice sessions in preparation for this one but I think it’ll be better this way. Hopefully we’ll be able to capture something fresh and spontaneous.

I don’t know which guitars I’m going to use on which songs. I don’t have any leads worked out. I haven’t practiced the background vocals. We don’t know how we’re going to approach the drum tones. We don’t know if Steve should play upright on some songs. We don’t know which keyboards Nate should play. We don’t know for sure which songs we’re gonna play. Ahhh…it’s gonna be perfect…perfectly imperfect…I can’t wait.

Thanks to everyone for coming out to the show last night. We had a really good time. I decided to ignore the doctor’s orders and stand up for the show…I’m paying for it today. I saw the video of the show and with as little as I was able to move I should have just been sitting down anyway…sorry about that.

I had hoped to be able to put a clip from the show on the site but the sound quality is pretty lousy and I really don’t think it was very representative of our usual shows since I wasn’t able to move around much. I was pleased with our musical performance though. It seems like we play a lot more relaxed now that Nate is in the band. We all don’t have to work quite as hard…that’s good…very good.

Our show at The Hi-Pointe on the 4th of March will be our last local show for a while, unfortunately. I’m going to be having knee surgery in the middle of March and won’t be able to walk for a couple of months after that. We’ll be concentrating on recording the album during that time but we’ll be back in business late-spring/early-summer.

No Blog entry in over a week??!! WTF there Johnson???!!! The last week has been so bizarre that I just haven’t felt like doing it…although this would have been an interesting week to document. I thought my knee was getting better but it turns out that the Doc thinks I need to be back on crutches. More X-Rays, CT Scans, appointments…and on and on. I also got some kind of 24-hour stomach virus the other day. That means I temporarily turned into a barf/poop machine. Riley (my 2 year old boy) has got pneumonia too…fun fun fun.

I’m supposed to go back to the doctor AGAIN tomorrow to see if I need surgery…which will mean I won’t be able to walk for about two months. I’m not sure if the gig tomorrow night will be a standing or sitting one…I guess I’ll find out tomorrow.

Happy Birthday Nate!

I just added a new tune to the Audio page…you can download it directly from here. It’s an acoustic demo of You Devil You. I haven’t written too many tear-jerker type songs but this is one of ‘em. The recording was made through a haze of Vicadin. There’s not really a whole lot of things I can do with a gimped knee but recording is one of ‘em.

I also recorded a little demo of Songbirds for Nate to have and learn but it sounds pretty awful so I’ll spare the gentle listener that agony.

The last couple of days have been rather interesting. Yesterday I went and met with a sleep specialist. My personal doctor thinks I have Sleep Apnea. It turns out that the sleep specialist thinks the same thing. Sleep Apnea is a condition where you stop breathing many many times during the night. You don’t know it and it doesn’t really wake you up but your brain is (of course) aware of this so you never really get any good sleep.

Sleep Apnea is very often mis-diagnosed as depression…which I was diagnosed with about a year and a half ago. They’re going to do a sleep study on me this Thursday night and see if they can get me straightened out.

But wait…there’s more. Last night I re-injured my bum knee. This is the fourth time in the last year or so but this time it was far worse than before. I went to the hospital and they said I had torn ligaments, cartilage damage, and a fractured knee cap. I’m supposed to go see another specialist tomorrow and find out if they’re going to have to do surgery…but at least I got a script for Vicadin. It’s not really strong enough to kill the incredible pain I’m in but it does make the pain seem a little more amusing.

If you haven’t seen “Shaun of the Dead” yet, go buy it. Don’t bother renting it because it’s an instant classic. It’s one of those movies (like Pulp Fiction, Fight Club, Boiler Room, Friday, etc.) that you know you’re going to want to see five hundred more times so just go ahead and spend the money. It’s wicked funny.

I quit smoking today. I’m just tired of feeling like dogshit all the time. I’ve been a smoker for years and I don’t think it’s had any noticable effect on my voice but I know that can’t go on forever. So I’m done. I’ve been through this before. I know that for the first couple of weeks my lungs will rebel and I’ll be coughing like a bastard day and night. Then it’ll calm down in time for us to start recording. Then with all the nervousness of recording I’ll just start smoking again…problem solved.