I'm donating some money today to the Red Cross on behalf of the Chilean relief effort. Chile's always been this sort of magical place to me. I'm a big fan of Chilean author Isabel Allende who's work a lot of takes place in her homeland. It's a bit helpless seeing the earth devastate itself and the people living on it like it has recently. Earthquakes, tsunamis. Whole towns ripped up. Cracked. Not much you can do to stop one of these things. When mother nature wants to yawn and stretch, she's gonna do it. It can all make you just sit there dumbstruck, you know? If you'd like to send something their way you can do so via the Red Cross.

Big news to report on the upcoming album. Aside from a trumpet overdub, we have wrapped it all up as of last weekend. That's huge! Matt Girard who you may have seen playing bass for us last summer will be coming in to lay down that final bit of brass that will complete the record. But for all intents and purposes we're in mixing stage.

Rehearsing tonight for our Great Scott show on the 25th in Allston, MA. Info here if you're looking for it. Oh and as I was walking to the train today I noticed Patti Smith on the cover of the Phoenix (our alt weekley for those outside of Boston). They're running an excerpt from her book (the one I mentioned in my previous blog). Pick up a copy of check it out here. I finished the book last week and was sad when it was over. An excellent memoir.

Oh and I might I add that Conan is now on Twitter? Brilliant.

Cheers,

Jen

Still generally avoiding news and—according to my Magic 8 Ball—my outlook is good.

That said, things do filter through and I've been very loosely keeping up. The latest to make the bile rise to my throat is seeing "Jay Leno" and "The Tonight Show" without seeing ", the former host of" sandwiched in between. I was finally able to read the long out of print The Late Shift in three large gulps last week, and even then someone as high up as the president of NBC thought he sucked. It's not even that I think he's evil or anything, just middling. He does nothing interesting with the show. Taking the history of the Tonight Show into account, the man is an anomaly. Completely unimaginative and uninventive. Coco should raise an army led by the undead Johnny Carson, Jack Paar, and Steve Allen. Then they can tie up some tea bags to Leno and repeatedly dunk him in hot water until he comes to his senses.

All major combat missions vis-a-vis this album are complete. We finished up tracking on the record this past weekend. Friday, we had Charles come in to track some bass on this last song. Ate burritos afterward and talked about Cool Runnings quite a bit. (He was in Arkansas last week and this movie kept coming up.) All that's left is some future session to track some brass on a song, but for now, this shit is pretty much done, son. (When will this awesome sauce be released? No clue yet.) But I'm terribly excited to get this mixed, mastered, and out for you to—literally—eat with your ears.

Also been working very, very hard on a new version of the website. Google is ending FTP support for Blogger which, as it happens, is exactly what we use to run part of this site. So, because Google sucks, we will be soon using the vastly superior Wordpress and the site will look as pretty as ever. It'll be awesome.

I can't believe I almost forgot about the Beachcomber show last week. We hadn't played there since 2005, but seeing as how it's about 10 minutes away from our current abode Jen and I played an acoustic set. Reworked a couple of older numbers and messed around with arrangements to accommodate the kind of set we'd be playing. To further compliment the blast from the past: Joni and Mark (aka Ross' parents) were there, and Joni even took a couple of pics like old times (which will be posted soon to our Flickr page). It was really great catching up with them, actually.

With recording all but wrapped up, the weekends are opening up some and I'm looking forward to spending this coming Friday heading into town for coffee and pretending I can afford stuff.

And beginning rehearsals again...

Henry

Currently reading:
Man in the Dark
by Paul Auster

Oh my friends it looks as though we are closer than we thought to finishing this record. I suspect that aside from a possible, leisurely sax/trumpet overdub session we should be able to complete tracking in the four day stint we have scheduled this week. Our progress is due in no small part to our fabulous strings players. Big thanks to Beth, Josh and Veronica. They came in on Saturday and tracked their bits thus completing two more songs. Hallelujah!

We've spent this week working out songs for this Thursday's acoustic show in Quincy, MA at the Beachcomber. We've rearranged some tunes from Leave Your Light On and Fan the Fury. There may even be a new track in there. It's actually been a lot of fun working within the acoustic bounds. We may have to do more of these shows. It's kind of a nice way to really showcase the songs.

So that's all been very good news and one of my greater solaces in a time when this wedding business is becoming increasingly irritating. I'm not much the kind for traditional anythings and now that the fun of picking out our outfits has waned and the phones calls from home have increased, I'm trying to set my mind on the cruise that will directly follow the reception. I really would have been extremely happy exchanging rings at Boston City Hall with a great big dinner with friends and family, but I'm sure after all this dust settles all the chaos will be overshadowed by our immense joy... and this awesome cruise! Until then we'll continue trying on those rings.

I'm also in the middle of a reading frenzy. I'm on three books and must recommend them all to you. The first is a classic: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I'm sure Henry's mentioned that we've been on this Holmes kick ever since we saw the Downey movie (thanks Brendo for the recommendation). The Granada series is pretty fantastic too. It's a very easy world to get lost in. Also on my shelf is Revolution in the Head given to Henry and I by our friend Ben. This book recounts the details on all the Beatle recording sessions. Need I say more on why I'm so in love with it? Now I know how those crazy tape loops on Tomorrow Never Knows were made. The third is a book by rock n roll poetess Patti Smith called Just Kids. Thanks to James for the heads up on that one! It chronicles her friendship with artistic soul mate Robert Mapplethorpe, a true artist in his own right. A glorious story set to a New York 60s/70s backdrop. I can't put it down.

One more thing I'd like to mention was a documentary on an event Henry and I participated in called One Night Band. If you're not familiar, the basic idea is they took all these Boston musicians and broke them up into bands with people they'd never played with before and some they'd never even met. These groups went back to designated rehearsal spaces to write three songs and learn one cover which they would perform later that night before an audience that didn't know what to expect. We were very happy that Boston Band Crush asked us to take part and even better was the proceeds when to Zumix, an organization that introduces kids in East Boston to awesomeness of playing an instrument. Really, everyone should play something. We'd be much happier human beings. You can check out Henry and I in that docu below.

One Night Band: The Movie from Band Crush on Vimeo.

Cheers,

Jen

As has been mentioned before, the entire recording process has been strange compared to the other records we've made. Yesterday, we laid down all drums and percussion (plus a guide vocal at the very end) and nothing else. We get into these things where something's really weird and we laugh about it, but we keep going with it. Most art (or music or what-have-you) that I enjoy has an arc of "really, I don't give a fuck right now what other people are going to think of this, I'm having too much fun". More than at any other time, we've really hit our stride with this record. It's been strange. It's been fun. (Even when it's been frustrating.) There's still a bit of mixing to get through afterward, but it'll be interesting to hear everything as one solid, cogent piece.

Fuck, my back is killing me right now. Don't remember doing any heavy lifting yesterday.

Bit of an active day yesterday in the Boston music scene (which doesn't actually exist, I'm told). It all stemmed from an article in the Phoenix on our compatriots in Township. It was a perfect storm of toe-steppin'. The angle of the article is pretty lame to begin with, and I'm not sure when/where this alleged inter-scene quibbling is actually happening. Maybe I'm just assuming most people in their [shudder at the hypenated word] "micro-scene" don't actually care enough to get into real fights with anyone else. Entirely possible I'm so ensconced in my own thing that I don't actually care about the politics and am missing something.

I guess I just find the whole thing a dumb 700-word look in the rearview. Yes, there has been sniping and bullshit in the past and will continue into the future, but even at its bleakest Boston's always had a bedrock of support for local music (trust me, I've been to lots and lots of places; we've got it so goddamn good here). However, in the last year something really wonderful's happened—due in no small part to the increasing prevalence of social media—and a lot of us are actually out there supporting each other regardless of flavor. (How else could you explain Brendan Boogie, Tad McKitterick, and Duncan Wilder Johnson in the same band?)

All I'm saying is there are people—a lot of people—that give a passionate fuck about music in this town (not going to call it a scene, not going to call it a scene, not going to...) working harder than they need to to get it out there, and this article was pretty insulting. If you want to be that hipster caricature about it, then... I don't know... have fun crying to Justin Timberlake at night.

Bleah. I have to get out of here soon. Studio and whatnot.

Be good, and please quitcherbitchin.
Henry

Last night showed Jen some ideas I had for rearranging a couple of old songs we've been thinking of bringing back into the set. The between-albums limbo has a flavor all its own, and do enjoy it. You're not actively pushing any particular record, so you feel free to play whatever you damn well please. (Not that you can't do that anyway, but when there are time constraints guess which songs are getting cut from the set? I don't think there's anything on LYLO under 12 minutes.)

Speaking of that album (and this jogged memory theme running rampant lately), remembered something from those sessions. We were adding overdubs to Release and we kept telling Hugh about this untested idea we had for an organ during the verses just holding out a B♭. He was skeptical, but in the spirit of the whole album we tried it out anyway. It sounded hilarious, we bust out laughing, and never spoke of it again. In our heads we were going for a Hammond B3 sound. What we got was obnoxious Casio church organ.

Meeting up with Charles tonight. I forget why (murder?), but I suppose I'll find out.

Been watching a lot of the old Jeremy Brett/Sherlock Holmes series lately. More badass than I remember it. Holmes is kind of a fucked up dude who dabbles in cocaine. Dunno how I missed that in school. Bretty went a little insane over the role as well. He played Holmes for ten years.

Picked up a couple CDs this past weekend. Pablo Honey, which I surprisingly didn't have, and that first Macy Gray album. Laugh if you will, but I Try was one of the best songs of the 90s. Better than some of the shit coming out then, that's ferdamnsure.

Back in the studio this weekend, finally laying down strings. Should be exciting. Getting better at this string arranging shit with each record. If all goes as planned, should be a gorgeous result.

One would hope, anyway.

Henry's phone