Rehearsal #1

On Saturday evening, we had our first rehearsal in preparation for the album - and it was great! We rehearsed as a 3-piece - Robbie on pick-bass, Jesse on keys, me on guitar and singing. We worked through some arrangement ideas, altered with chord structures of certain songs, and just in general had a good time messing with songs and helping create a "unified vision" through all the material. These are the songs we played (the names will mean nothing to you now, I realize - but I don't care):

- Heaven
- Change Your Mind
- No More Crying
- Sunken Eyes
- Long Distance
- I Will Never Change

First 6 songs out of a likely 12. And we'll then try to pair that down to 9 or 10.  We're doing our best to channel the Scott Walker / Lee Hazlewood / Lambchop classiness that is inspiring this record. It's hard to channel class ... you kind of just have to learn how to be classy. It's a work in progress.

This is the one and only photo taken at the rehearsal ... I swear there will be more next time.

Entitled "Still life with Fender bass on floor, Jesse playing keys, while Robbie eats a chip."

And so we begin ...

So I have had plans to record a solo record for ages now. After a few failed attempts, many songs written, many songs trashed, many concepts thought up and many concepts forgotten, I am finally making the strides to actually make this record. It's about time! Only took me 5 years to start.

I've got some pretty amazing folks who are going to be helping me out - Robbie Augspurger (of Ozarks), Jesse Dreher, Brady Swan (of Greylag), Daniel Dixon (of Greylag), Jay Clark (of Dolorean) ... and I'm positive many others by the time everything is said and done.

I thought it'd be fun to start a blog that would not only serve as a sort of "website" for my solo stuff, but also a place that I can keep updated as I go through the pre-production, rehearsals, recording, mixing, of this record. Any of you who want to follow along, see photos, read stories, hear snippets of songs, etc etc - be my guest! This will be my archive of the little album that could.