Last Quarter!

I can't believe it's already my last quarter at MI. New classes are:

Guitar Repair and Maintenance 

Guitar Heroes of the 60s and 70s 

 learning solos, intros, etc from the greats

Guitar Studio Recording 

learning some songs inside and out and re-recording the guitars to back up tracks

Advanced Groove Concepts 

 gettin' funkalicious, playing in odd meters and over meter/groove changes

Developing the Art of two-line Improvisation 

this really old, brilliant gentleman who's played with all sorts of people you wouldn't believe got bored and started trying to improvise two lines at a time like a bach fugue, or with chord tones, scales etc. should be mind blowing!

National Doughnut Day!

Yeah, this is for real. check the googler. I celebrated! twice. once before i knew...and once after.

pancakes

I was defeated by this glorious (or embarrassingly gluttonous) plate of pancakes recently at the Griddle in West Hollywood. As with most places in Hollywood the food's not cheap but, c'mon, pancakes for dayz! In the future i would recommend this plate for 3 people who are really pumped about eating pancakes. The list of pancake types was intense. These particular tasties are of the Baileys and kahlua variety which, ended up being a bit rich for my tastes.

Today with a more manageable portion of homemade mulit-grain blueberry pancakes i had an unfortunate incident when cutting into them. Anybody know how to get a blueberry juice stain off of white paint?

the Hoff

my best friend Jeff is visiting me this week, and as we were strolling along toward the record store who did we see? none other than David Hasselhoff.

we followed him into urban outfitters to confirm the sighting. he had a purse dog. he struts exactly like you would think he would. awesome.

people who know people i know or sorta know or used to know

i'm constantly amazed at the small world network of rock'n'rollers having a go at following Jesus.

one night last week while i was rehearsing with Jon Hans and Friends my guitar tone was particularly bitchin. it called to mind an album from a little known (or so i thought) band called The Cinematic Underground. i asked if any of my bandmates had heard of these genuises, and Jon said, "how do you know them?" Which i followed with, "How do you know them?" Jon, a former YWAMer, had spent a summer with Nathan Jonhson, the super-genuis leader of the Cinematic Underground, at a YWAM conference in England. I know of the band because they are friends of the Contemporary Music Center of which i am an alumnus, and had briefly met Nathan a show in Brooklyn on the CMC road trip. weird.

last friday i helped some of my new friends from Jon's band put on a show at a cool warehouse space downtown. a rockin' new band called Brown Sugar Sinks performed. good people. And i met some other good peeps at the show including some who go to my church whom i'd yet to met. in one random conversation, the band Telecast was brought up, i think because of a mishearing of the name of this sweet band. Anywho, I told the others that i used to know some of the guys in Telecast, because some of them played in Buddy Ruckus, who was a big brother band to my band growing up. Apparently one of the guys, who i hadn't seen in mmm, 7 years is the lead music guy at a church nearby. huh.

i think there were more too, but i'm failing to remember. it's just interesting (not new news, but wonderful news none-the-less) to me how God blesses those with a common mission, in him, to run in the same global circle. He is so good.

the big time?

this week i played out in Hollywood for the first time with my friend Jon Hans. We played this Irish pub called Molly Malones, a cool space. We arrived early, having not played there before. The drummer notice that Nick Lachey, formerly of boy band 98 degrees, was in the bar. We thought that was odd, but ya know, it's Hollywood. Next a few singer/songwriters hit the stage, trading songs (that weren't the great). Petty soon our buddy Nick was right up on stage next to the host of this little singer/songer party. Apparently they share the same label and had done some co-writing. So he joined her for a couple songs. Then, Chris Daughtry, came out a did a few songs. What? yeah. So i'm weirded out and chuckling to myself when i realize, Nick Lachey and Chris Daughtry are opening for us!

Ah yes, the fine print. So after all their whole set (which ran late and made all our peeps wait around), the hosts invited everyone to the after party at the bar around the corner with no regard to us. I'm sure they and their posse were all gone by the time we started. So, were not the big time, as you knew already. But while they beat us in vocal chops, we totally beat them in rock'n'rollness.

Come on Down

well, shoot. I meant to get this up before monday...I went to the Price is Right! it was a lot of fun. It kinda became a whole day experience between, the waiting in line at 6am for tickets, coming back early for security checks and an interview with the producer and finally the taping. Well, if any of you happened to be watching the price is right on Monday, i was there in the audience just to your right of contestant's row, 5 rows back, which got me plenty of camera time! only i forogt to post this, so probably just my parents saw me.