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Pro Tools problems and solutions. | Setlist | Current Pedalboard 2024 (6th album done. On to 7.) 041224 Did a bit more editing on God's Horn and sent a V3 mix to Patrick. 041124 Bravely added a 40 measure bridge to God's Horn . It was terrifying and exhilarating. 040824 Danny and I got together and cobbled some chords together for a song. 040524 First mix back for God's Horn . This is going to be glorious. Started fooling around with some 9th chords. Tenatively titled Here Come the Ants. Scheduled some time with Danny to write a song ala Seven Little Eyes. 033124 Sent Patrick the session for Real Flower Pots song #6 - now named Storm Shelter #6 after adding some alt takes of bass, lyre and lap steel. Girl for Samson "12" and "sleepnovox" remixes available everywhere tomorrow. 032924 Added lyre, bass, cabassa, hi-hats, snare, lap steel and lyre to song #6 currently titled Shelter Jam #6. 032824 Added a xylophone, lyre, set of triangles and a pair of UFIP hi-hats to the arsenal today. I have fantasies about worming my 1970s blue sparkle Ludwigs back into my space. I don't think I've used them up here since I record the drums for juiceboxberries. 032624 JMLP session. 032524 Sent Patrick the session for Real Flower Pots song #10 - now named Look Who's Come To Call. That puts 3 of his that I fleshed out in the queue: God's Horn Holiday Look Who's Come To Call and he is in various stages of completion with 5 of mine. 032424 Getting after RFP #10. This is one Patrick knocked off in a day but was never moved enough to come up with a vocal melody. One of the advantages of not having much of a melodic range AND not being a perfectionist is that any collection of 3 to 5 notes is enough to inspire me to the mediocrity you've come to love and deserve. Added vocals, classical guitar and harmonica and sent him P. a mix before I write words and get better takes of things. 032324 Recording whistling is hard. Your lips go dry straight away. Such a neato and historically, under-utilized instrument though. Especially in "modern" music. 032224 Came up with lyrics in like 3 seconds for RFP #12. which is now Holiday. Sent a copy to my comrade for review. 032124 Added loads of hand percussion to RFP #12. Also added a lap steel and sampled a didgeridoo for some warped melodies. 032024 Sent P. my ideas for his Real Flower Pots demo DFAM-fun. 031924 The Mournful Petunias began sorting out The Last Moth, Open Sack and Swimmer's Shoulders for recording soon. We already have ready-to-mix versions of Merry Blaze, Laundry Day and Lethal Portions and Jerry is managing the production of Who is this Plumber? This would leave us with just Adorable Deplorable, Everybody Does It and Shut Up You Crazy Diamond to record and finish to have a 10 song album and finaly be shed of all of our COVID-era compositions. 031524 Started on another Real Flower Pots song. #12, I think. Trying to find an inspiring melody using an instrument that only has 4 note holes. 031424 I've written, recorded and released over a hundred songs the last 20 years with another 20 ready to start on or nearly ready to be mixed. That seems like a lot but it's just 6.75 songs a year. ...and for all of the Where are the lyrics people: Lyrics. 031324 Sent P. the God's Horn session. Came home from a GFS session with the famous Roland GP-100 that The Girls used exclusively on "12". 031224 God's Horn: Re-sang everything and started the process of trying to get better recorder parts. Tracked the bass recorder right before a Petunias practice. 031124 Sent Patrick a mix of God's Horn. 031024 Blind Cat Missing now on Spotify & Pandora. 030924 Blind Cat Missing now up on YouTube, Apple Music and Amazon. Still waiting on Spotify and Pandora. Started fiddling with vocals on Real Flower Pots Groove 3. Added cello, viola, recorders, bells, banjo and classical guitar. Bought a nice recorder set that included a soprano and bass for sugar on top later this week. Note to future self: research how to stop Pro Tools from incrementing the input channel assignment every time you create a new track. Note to future self: buy viola dope. 030824 Blind Cat Missing available everywhere tomorrow. Starting work today on Real Flower Pots stuff. Groove 3, for the record. 030724 Fiddled with some sampling using Structure. Fiddled with recording with Boom. Fiddled with recording the Sire. Fiddled with getting my cello up to code. Made a fiddle out of a two liter coke bottle and a dust pan. Got a pile of beautiful grooves from Patrick for Real Flower Pots. 030624 Real Flower Pots songs are officially in progress. My demo Ravioli is currently under construction and I'll be starting on something new today. 030524 Patrick sent me the mix of Irene Ironweed. Made a few revisions and then ran it by Chris Ruzich and Jerry Riccardi. Once I get the master Blind Cat Missing will go live on BandCamp and I'll submit everywere else later today. And I did. Had the joy of playing Blind Cat Missing to the Lonesome Petunias for the first time. I don't get to witness a lot of face to face first listens so this was very rewarding. 030224 Blind Cat Missing track order: Irene Ironweed Dingus Tsunami Lighthouse Eve I Can Walk 030124 Started setting up Blind Cat Missing for distribution. This will be the 3rd release in a row that will only be available electronically. No vinyl or CDs printed. Feels vulnerable. 022824 I've been struggling with the Blind Cat Missing artwork. I stumbled upon a wonderful photo yesterday and bullied it into a square this morning. 022724 First Petunias session in a few weeks. 022624 Irene Ironweed in Patrick's hands. 022524 Mr. Muzich slipped over early to do Irene bass parts. 022424 Sent Jerry Who is this Plumber? tracks. Scheduled Chris Ruzich for Monday night for Irene bass. 022224 Tsunami available now. 022124 Imported Jerry's drum tracks for Irene Ironwood and sent a mix to Chris Ruzich. Comped Dave's bass parts. Will get some better vocal and guitar takes and send the whole Plumber mess (9:54) to Jerry this weekend. Patrick indicated that he thinks Tsunami will be completed tomorrow. 022024 Dave coming over to track bass on Who Is This Plumber. Got drum tracks and finger snaps from Jerry for Irene. 021924 Added some melodic bits on a slightly over-driven guitar to Plumber to give it some more life. 021824 Another day working on Plumber. 021724 Worked on sorting out Plumber for much of the day. 021524 JMLP are gonig to do a "live" version of Who Is This Plumber? but I also want to do a studio take so I've been fleshing out my demo intro a proper song. Dave is comong over next week to track bass. 021324 Gave Chris Irene Ironweed for bass once I get drums back from Jerry. 020924 I Can Walk available now. First two responses: "Damn...an 8 minute long song. You feelin all right?" ...and: "How the hell did you make an 8 minute song without an extended guitar solo? Oh, I see - words and stuff." 020624 A wobbly effort until we did The Man Who Kills the Ants and the rarely played Glad to Pass On. Funny how a song or songs can light a fire. 020224 Thank you to Scott Stanton and KKFI for playing Failure to Rise. Every time somebody plays Failure to Rise on the radio an angel is disappointed by the film adaptation of their favorite book. Was poking around in the mountain of demos and found a sweet little instrumental I may try to squeeze onto Blind Cat Missing as credits music. This will likely push the completion date into late March or even early April. 020124 SAURO! now available on: Spotify Pandora Apple Amazon YouTube 012924 Pronounced sow-row. 012624 SAURO! the album is now availble for streaming and purchase on Bandcamp. Rest of the world soon. Onward to: Adorable Deplorable Everybody Does It Lethal Portions (close) The Last Moth Laundry Day (close) Merry Blaze (close) Open Sack Shut Up You Crazy Diamond Swimmer's Shoulders Who is this Plumber? 012524 Thank you Signal to Noise and KKFI for the spin. Every time somebody plays Dingus on the radio Thomas gets to eat some of his grandmother's angel food cake. Done with Tsunami. When Jerry is done with Irene Ironweed this little monster will be out of my hands and I can start nurturing a new monster. 012424 Still fiddling with Tsunami. Found a "demo" of Everybody Does It that was made from me singing over a live jam with the obligatory unrelated outro tacked on. I love it. Will sort out the words tomorrow and sing a proper take. 012324 Added a lyrics and credits display to the site. This will be useful when we are re-learning old songs. It also shows me how often I start lines with "So," and reference mothers. 012124 Ground away at Tsumani. Got a few keeper vocal takes, sorted out the outro and tidied up all of the tracks. This song along with Lighthouse Eve, Dingus, Irene Ironweed and I Can Walk will be released as an approximately 30 minute EP by Spring. It will be titled Blind Cat Missing. 011324 Sorted out the lyrics for Tsunami and recorded some good takes. Just need to have something sexy happen in the outro and I can get this to Patrick when he finishes I Can Walk. 011224 I try not to work under headphones on the day before and after live performance/rehearsal so did some Tsunami editing using the monitors. 011124 Dave brought spring rolls to practice. That did not make anyone sad. 011024 Going to get after Tsunami today. I need to shorten it, come up with an alternate melody and develop something sexy for the outro. 100924 Sang more takes of Irene Ironweed. 010424 Thank you, DJ Mason. I feel like every time a radio station plays Beat Box Caveat Thomas eats some wings. 010324 Sent Jerry Irene Ironweed. Resuming work on Tsunami with the first objective being replacing the temporary line "dick inside a donut and you see that's all it took" with something a bit more coffee table-friendly. 010224 No keyboard player with the sacred scrolls tonight so of course we went lawless. Re-learned Three Bells and took a couple of stabs at Sink Down. Had a chat about how to best resume recording the balance of the album we have rotting. Looks like six left that are waiting for flesh: Adorable Deplorable Everybody Does It Lethal Portions (close) The Last Moth Laundry Day (close) Merry Blaze (in Patrick's queue) Open Sack Shut Up You Crazy Diamond Swimmer's Shoulders Who is this Plumber? ...and for the record, here is what's has been finished: SAURO! Dolemite Ring of Stars Failure to Rise It's My Island No Limes 010124 Irene Ironweed, Tsunami and I Can Walk are now 2024 releases. 2023 (WHAT??? We're STILL rehearsing and recording 6th and 7th albums!) 122923 Thanks to KKFI's "The Real Deal" with Mike Lytle and Rick Dodderidge for sharing our music last night. I feel like everytime a radio station plays Reach Around an angel wishes it had its business back again. Irene Ironweed Angst Actually put all of the rock instruments on one bus and the disco on another so that I can A/B them. Once I am done with Irene it's off to Tsunami, which is only unfinished because I ran into the same struggles. 122623 One of those rehearsals where we dig up stuff we no longer play or have never played. We fooled around with Reach Around for a while. I think when I constructed that song I imagined it being like a song about a dance like The Mashed Potato or The Watusi. "Everybody's doing the Reach Around lalalalalala." 122423 Struggling with a groove. Whenever I meet people I ask them if they can sing. If they indicate that they can't because they have pitch issues I always tell them that if you can hear that your notes aren't lining up with what you're listening to then it is curable. I need to heed my own advice. 122323 Worked on the pianos and re-cut the guitars in Irene Ironweed. B6 to C#6 is what has been eluding me. Sent Terry Gann a mix of Am Again for pedal steel and whatever other bit of loveliness he wants to add to it. 122223 Thanks to everyone who tuned in to hear our show on KKFI. We're still fine-tuning how to get 5 instruments and 5 voices to sound right in that studio. Next time will be better from the start. Special thank you to Keith Washburn who relentlessly interfaced between us and listeners throughout the show (handing notes to Dave so that he could adjust things mid-song) so that we could tweak levels. That was beyond the call of duty. I am told that it was working pretty well by the 2nd hour. Another thank you to Mike Evans for suggesting songs for the setlist. See you somewhere soon! Recorded Music for Set-up It's Your Thing (Land Ho) Falstaff (juiceboxberries) White Girl (Gardenaire) Land Ho (Land Ho) Set 7 Little Eyes Ordinary Guy Dolemite Who is this Plumber? Little Something/It's My Island Sauro! The Cats of Summer Blue in the Veins No Limes/You Set it Off Ring of Stars Repeat nothingood Recorded Music for Tear Down Beat Box Caveat (The Green Piano) 122023 I don't know where I have credited some of the album cover photographers so I'm going to do it here: juiceboxberries - Walter Wade Her Bows - Walter Wade Gardenaire - Vernon Dale Stanton & Doris Jean Stanton. Land Ho - Walter Wade The Green Piano - Dave Scwiercinsky Sweet, Soft Gollum - (Kapoho, HI) Unknown William G. Cox's photographs were used for many of the single covers. 121923 Had a band fried-fish dinner and then sorted out Thursday night's setlits and logistics. 121823 Got slide parts from Danny for Irene Ironweed and mixed them in. 121723 Recorded final vocals for Irene Ironweed. Should be able to turn this over to Patrick and got back to finishing up Tsunami by Christmas. 121223 Sent Danny Irene Ironweed for some slide guitar. Still tweaking lyrics, drums, piano and other parts and learning how to sing it. Fine tuning our setlist for next Thursday on KKFI. 120923 While digging around in the seed bag I re-discovered Irene Ironweed and am committed to bullying it into a song after I am done with Tsunami. Re-cut guitars with a Nashville tuned acoustic. Wrote and sang words and harmonies. Recorded drums and piano. Fucker just needs some tidying up and it's ready for Patrick in 4 months when he's done with I Can Walk. 120823 Sent some partial songs to someone to develop for a collaborative project. Am Again Brand New Guitar Cherry Pox Put the Bins Out Quatro Ravioli Shrinky Sound Hold Supper Pie Teeth Filed Turkey (Chris Ruzich) 120723 Dingus available now. This little jig was considered for Girl for Samson's "sleepnovox" but we already had a nice pile of songs so it was abandoned. Started over from scratch a few years ago and got Patrick to grab a shovel and chip in and this is the result. Trivia: Thomas came up with the chord progression for the outro. Later Mike Tankersley learned that part but made the chords minor and we turned that into "Blue in the Veins" on "Gardenaire". I had never heard the word Dingus before when I was composing the song. I had found a striking picture of a custodian at a High School named Mr. Dingus and stored it away in the back of my skull cantaloupe. I think Nelson Muntz referred to someone as a dingus in a Simpsons episode after the fact. 120623 Working out acoustic, electric and pre-recorded sets for 12/21 on KKFI. 120123 Started over on drums and bass for Tsunami. Finally got it feeling better. It's scary deconstructing something with the hope that you will improve it, but maybe you won't. 112923 Talked a bit about what we are going to do on KKFI in a few weeks. Settled on a vague combination of our recorded music mixed with acoustic and electric sets of live music. Still hammering away on Tsunami. Recorded more drums and keyboards. Starting to subtract some parts. Still need words. 112823 Tsunami starting to feel better. Added some vintage synths and an intro. Also different approach to singing it. 112723 More bass takes for Tsunami. 112523 Took at stab at drums and bass for Let Her Run and Tsunami. 112423 Doing an hour set at Tom's tonight. Setlist: June (cha cha cha) The Man Who Kills the Ants SAURO! The Cats of Summer Seven Little Eyes Who is this Plumber? No Limes/You Set It Off Wrong Star or Little Something Had to raid my larger home pedalboard for the tuner and Spark for a little board for these mini shows. This way I can leave one at the JMLP practice space and the two at the Girl for Samson space. Decided to pop open Let Her Run to work on at the same time as Every Night. Took a shot at a couple of tracks of drums and implemented a piano part I worked up on the Fender Rhodes at practice while everybody was talking. 112323 Started workon Every Night, soon to be re-titled Tsunami. Cleaned up the mixes directory, which had songs from the new Girl for Samson album, the Lonesome Petunias, Sweet, Soft Gollum and the current Johnny Marie solo album. Did the same with some of the Pro Tools session folders. 112223 Sent Patrick "I Can Walk" (formerly known as "I Can Walk"). 112123 Danny's neice and nephew were at our practice and bounced on a ball (in time with the music) at my elblow for most of the evening. I tried to also jump in rhythm (during non-singing moments) as a show of solidarity to the delight of my heart and dismay of my knees. 111923 I said that and then put 6 more hours in on it including fixing annoyances and adding horns and wah-wah. 111823 Finished I Can Walk. 111723 Finally have the music sorted out for I Can Walk and now only need to compile some takes and write and sing some lyrics. Shooting for getting this 8 minute season of depression to Patrick on the 20th. 111523 One of those rehearsals where we are vulnerable to donig cowpunk and polka versions of the catalog. Also dug out a bunch of songs we never play including Reach Around, Sweet & Low and Beatbox Caveat. Also ran through some of the that is mired in recording limbo which includes Leathal Portions, Swimmer's Shoulders, Open Sack and Last Moth. In fact, let's just document what's left to record: Lethal Portions Laundry Day Lethal Portions Who is this Plumber? Open Sack The Last Moth Swimmer's Shoulders Everybody Does It Merry Blaze Merry Blaze is in Patrick's queue. Already recorded: No Limes Doelmite SAURO! Failure to Rise It's My Island Ring of Stars Doing an hour set next Friday at Tom's. 111423 Sweet, Soft Gollum is finding its way back to streaming platforms. Should be everywhere by the end of the week. Sweet, Soft Gollum on Spotify. Sweet, Soft Gollum on YouTube. Sweet, Soft Gollum on Amazon. Sweet, Soft Gollum on Apple Music. Sweet, Soft Gollum on YouTube Music. Sweet, Soft Gollum on Pandora. 101223 More drum work on I Can Walk. Coming together nicely. 101123 Re-submitted Sweet, Soft Gollum to streaming services. Worked on vocals and drums for I Can Walk. Doing an hour set at Tom's Bar & Grill on Friday at 9 PM. 101023 Made strides with I Can Walk. Have vocal melodies and harmonies down. Just need proper words, replace Simmons drums with acoustic and add some jizzy jazzy spices here and there. Patrick is working on Dingus so I should have this one ready to go by then. Heard back from the distributor. The issue, as I suspected, was with crediting the songs as Johnny Marie with Patrick Meagher and Johnny Marie with Jason Beers. Also discovered that Thomas Hill is going to suddenly start getting pennies a month for Rattle due to an oversight on my part. God bless him and his offspring. 110823 Distributor still hasn't sorted out the Sweet, Soft Gollum on Spotify issue. Meanwhile months go by and I'm still not getting my .0000004 cents. 110723 Short rehearsal and then ate a rack of ribs that Dave bought. Mark was in attendance. Getting beat up by I Can Walk. It's 7 minutes long with multiple time change markers. I want to remove the first section and whenever I do it throws the balance of the song in disarray. 110323 First Johnny Marie track from 2nd solo album Lighthouse Eve available for download and streaming. Patrick is mixing Dingus next. Dingus was a Girl for Samson song that never saw the light of day - mostly because of resistance from Thomas who was never fond of it. I think Allen drummed on this version. 110123 After working on Bobby we ran through some stuff from our old sets that we no longer do like That Doesn't Turn You On, Christian in July and Mother. I guess that's mostly stuff from The Green Piano. We still do You Set It Off and Seven Little Eyes. Lighthouse Eve is nearing completion. This will be the first song from the 2nd Johnny Marie solo album. For some reason Sweet, Soft Gollum didn't take at Spotify so it's being re-submitted by the distributor. 103123 No Limes available for download and streaming. 102923 I post this for my own amusement. I found a little noise that I liked and knew there was a specific song that I've had on the stove forever that would benefit from it. I couldn't remember the working title so I had to go through everything in my ideas folder (and brother I tells ya I have a lot of ideas) to try to unearth it. I found a lot of bits that could be finished for my next solo album during my search. That list is below, including the song that I was looking for which I found last. I actually listened to it during the search but I had tacked on an intro at some point that I didn't recognize. Cherry Click Like Every Night Everybody Does It Expression Petals Fat & Nappy (ideas) Gneecough I Can Walk Irene Ironweed Joint Let Her Run Old Clothes (ideas) Pox Quatro Shhhfrost Two for Tangles Turkey When the Money 102723 Did a 20 minute set at Tom's. The Man Who Kills the Ants, Who Is This Plumber?, 20,000 Days and Seven Little Eyes - possibly exhausting songs from our catalog with numbers in the title. 102523 Started work on covering Bobby. Just ran through all of the parts. Jesse hung out with us. He was a drummer with Dave and Jason Curteman just before JMLP was born. Had a good meeting with Jerry. Talked about reversing the way we are currently recording drums. 102023 Talking to some Lawrence bands about sharing bills there and here in the late winter early spring. 101823 Sent Patrick a couple of edits for No Limes. 101723 The beast looks confused and is swaying unsteadily. Will it recover? Will it fall? If it falls, where will it land? 101623 Got the first mix back for No Limes. Now circulating amongst the team members. Patrick was OK+ with the drums on Lighthouse Eve so upward and further upward and also onward if nothing bad happens. 101023 Met Reba and Paul at rehearsal. Paul sat in for a few classic Johnny Marie songs. 100923 Cleaned up Lighthouse Eve and am ready to make it Patrick's problem. 100823 Dear Johnny or whatever, Whenever the rhythm sounds fucky in your recordings mute the acoustic. It's always the acoustic. 100723 Recorded the final lead vocal takes for Lighthouse Eve. Will clean up and send to Patrick on Monday. Song 1/X for the next Johnny Marie solo ablum. 100323 Hammered the dents out of Swimmer's Shoulders. It's tough re-learning songs we haven't recorded yet because there's no reference point. A quality moment when Dave said that he thought I was singing "apropos" instead of "Boo Radley's toe". 100123 Got after Lighthouse Eve this morning. Experiemented with some different rhythms and added a new bass part. 093023 There are two tracks on Sweet, Soft Gollum that are credited as Johnny Marie with Someone - Patrick Meagher and Jason Beers specifically. I didn't realize that this would cause a wrinkle with digital distribution but it certainly has. Any track with a second artist in the credits gets shoved into the Various Artists category. Fortunately I fumbled the setup and had to resubmit everything resulting in Patrick and Jason's names appearing on what I consider lesser tracks. This means those songs show up correctly and the lesser songs disappear into Various Artists oblivion. 092523 Finally got around to buying the second Crystal Skulls album which immediately pays dividends when I hear a kick/snare combo that I need for something I'm working on. 092223 Didn't like the Rolands so am trying a Simmons kit with some upgraded heads/triggers and kick trigger. Finally got them set up and the latency sorted out so that I can starting trying to track toms, kick and snare with them. Starting on a tricky song which is ill-advised since I haven't lain wood to skin in quite a long time. 091923 Added Wrong Star and Long, Dry Walk to the set. Current setlist: Little Something Repeat Seven Little Eyes Who is this Plumber? Ordinary Guy Ask Ring of Stars Laundry Day No Limes/You Set It Off The Cats of Summer Dolemite Failure to Rise nothingood On It's My Island Sauro! Shut Up You Crazy Diamond 20,000 Days Capers Trashbag Launderette Wrong Star Adorable Deplorable The Man Who Kills the Ants Wrong Star Long, Dry Walk 091823 Took the Roland drums home from the studio. I think we used these to develop drum parts for most of Harriet. 091623 Re-working Lighthouse Eve. I think it's a good song but there is some bit of poison that's spoiling the taste. 090523 A short list of versions of The Man Who Kills the Ants. The Sad Petunias learned The Man Who Kills the Ants and relearned Adorable Deplorable. Current setlist: Little Something Repeat Seven Little Eyes Who is this Plumber? Ordinary Guy Ask Ring of Stars Laundry Day No Limes/You Set It Off The Cats of Summer Dolemite Failure to Rise nothingood On It's My Island Sauro! Shut Up You Crazy Diamond 20,000 Days Capers Trashbag Launderette Wrong Star Adorable Deplorable The Man Who Kills the Ants 090123 There are a few free download codes from last night's show still available here. If the code you have chosen has already been redeemed just grab the one below it. Albums include Sweet, Soft Gollum, The Green Piano, Land Ho & Gardenaire. 083123 Did an hour set on KKFI on Keith Washburn's show. Earlier in the day Barry Lee gave 20,000 Days a spin on Signal to Noise. What a great resource for local artists. Setlist Little Something Repeat Seven Little Eyes Who is this Plumber? Ordinary Guy Ring of Stars No Limes Dolemite Sauro! 083023 It's My Island should be out tomorrow. First new JMLP track since the end of August 2022. 082923 Last rehearsal before doing a live set at KKFI on Thursday. We timed a fistful of songs so that we can make educated estimations about what we can get away with playing. 082723 Set up to play outside but the rain wouldn't give us a break so we moved everything inside the chuch and set up again. Did Little Something, Repeat, Seven Little, Eyes, Who is this Plumber, Ordinary Guy, Ask, Ring of Stars, No Limes and The Cats of Summer. Shannon did a couple of Joni Mitchell songs with the band at the end. 082323 Did a few songs at Tom's Bar & Grill tonight. Played Little Something, Sauro!, Repeat, Seven Little Eyes, Ring of Stars and Who is this Plumber? Carl Cherrito sat in with us. 082223 Quality rehearsal. Added Land Ho, Wrong Star and Ask back to the list. Little Something Repeat Seven Little Eyes Who is this Plumber? Ordinary Guy Ask Ring of Stars Laundry Day No Limes/You Set It Off The Cats of Summer Dolemite Failure to Rise nothingood On It's My Island Sauro! Shut Up You Crazy Diamond 20,000 Days Capers Trashbag Launderette Wrong Star 081923 Doing a few acoustic versions of JMLP songs with Danny at the Brookside Farmers Market at 10 AM. Dave ended up coming and Shannon played a melodica so we nearly had a full band. Did Seven Little Eyes, Repeat, No Lines and Who Is This Plumber? Doing another short set next Wednesday before doing a two hour set in Olathe on Sunday and then a one hour live set on KKFI the following Thursday. 081723 Sent Patrick It's My Island. 081523 Sweet, Soft Gollum on YouTube. Sweet, Soft Gollum on Amazon. Sweet, Soft Gollum on Apple Music. Sweet, Soft Gollum on YouTube Music. Sweet, Soft Gollum on Pandora. Second birthday celebration rehearsal in a row so more pizza and more pies. Planning on doing a few JMLP songs with Danny at the Brookside Farmers Market the 19th. Will also do a couple of songs with a full band at Tom's Bar & Grill on the 23rd. Our last outing was 10/09/21 at Gaslight Gardens. 081123 Submitted Sweet, Soft Gollum for digital distribution after a revision to Oily Rainbows and Show Me Your New Contacts. Now working on new Girl for Samson and The Lonesome Petunias albums. 080923 Sweet, Soft Gollum now available on BandCamp. Should be available everywhere else in a few days. 080823 Excellent rehearsal as we try to build back up 2 hours or more of original music to perform at the end of the month. 080723 Off with the Ropes mixed and available for amusements. 080623 Sang some harmonies for Its My Island. 080523 Sang a bunch of lead vocal takes for Its My Island. 080223 Tracking listing for the album Sweet, Soft Gollum: Sweet, Soft Gollum Bobby Evaluate 29 with Patrick Meagher The Cats of Summer The Man Who Kills the Ants with Jason Beers Rattle Gulch The Blue One Kitchen Matches Show Me Your New Contacts Off with the Ropes Oily Rainbows 080123 Added more staples to the live setlist. Playing longer between breaks. 073123 Began working on finishing It's My Island. Need to add some more vocals and comp a bass part. Listened to a little of Lighthouse Eve to see what specifically is keeping me from finishing it. No answer. It's a decent song. 073023 Started the process of distributing the album. Sent two revisions to Patrick for Oily Rainbows and Show Me Your New Contacts. 072723 Got The Blue One back from Patrick. Ready for consuming! 072523 Ran through the set. I missed last week because I was sick and forgot about 30% of the chords to the songs. 072123 Got The Man Who Kills the Ants back from Patrick and it's wonderful. He's now mixing The Blue One. 071723 Playing a private event on the 8/27 and a live set on KKFI on 8/31. 071123 Having a longer must-do setlist is already paying dividends. We get through more material every session than we did in the past. I can tell because my arms are noodles and my voice destroyed the next day. 071023 Added flesh to the demo for Two for Tangle. 070723 Gulch available for streaming/purchase now. 070323 Lengthened the Must Do Weekly set to include: Who is this Plumber? Sauro! Seven Little Eyes No Limes/You Set It Off Ring of Stars Repeat It's My Island Laundry Day The Cats of Summer nothingood Capers On Shut Up You Crazy Diamond Failure to Rise This gets us almost two hours of live material. We're well rehearsed on staples like: Land Ho We Don't Do That Little Something Sultan Eyes Dolemite 20,000 Days Hats Off, Extraordinaire Billy Corgan's Cadillac NowHere Merry Blaze Gardenaire Maryland Mansion Ordinary Guy Trashbag Launderette Wrong Star which gets us into 3 hour territory. Songs you may have been familiar with when we were playing out regularly that we no longer know: That Doesn't Turn You On Christian in July Blue in the Veins The Green Piano Kitty Can The Kids are Alright One More Three Bells 062923 I recently found a thrift store that consistently produces the kind of yield that my friends in the UK are always sharing. Got a lovely pile of CDs today that included "The Shape of Jazz to Come" by Ornette Coleman which immediately got two full listens. On the other side of the rainbow I was left puzzled by all of the love that the Jesus & Mary Chain get for Darklands. 062823 Petunias rehearsal. Listened to Miles Davis' tribute to Jack Johnson on the way. Dave has found us a live poportunity the weekend of August 25/26. 062423 Listening to Barry White, Curtis Mayfield, Neutral Milk Hotel, Charles Earland, T. Rex, Joe Jackson, Philip Glass, Morrissey, Dream Syndicate, Tracy Chapman, This Mortal Coil and so on. 062123 Petunias rehearsal. 062023 Going to comp vocals in the cover I'm working on with Jason Beers and send it off to Patrick to sit in the queue behind Gulch. 061923 Got some fuzz guitars from Jason. Tracked a dozen more vocals. Recorded some cymbals. 061823 Got bass, keys and banjo from Jason. 061523 KKFI's Signal to Noise playing new Girl for Samson today. 061423 Practicing at Danny's again. The team members are starting to get itchy to go play somewhere. 061223 25 O'Clock is spinning Bobby on on June 24th and 26th. 100.9 on the FM dial if you're in Ontario. 061123 Being in the middle of finishing 3 albums seems like a great time to start working on a cover. Finally got it fleshed out with a scratch vocal to send to Jason Beers for some earthy Beeriness. 060623 Acoustic JMLP rehearsal. 060523 25 O’Clock is going to play Bobby on their June 24th show with a repeat broadcast on June 26th. 060323 Obsessing over Connie Converse and Thomas Hill. Committed to the artwork for The Blue One and Dingus. 060223 Kitchen Matches available today. Started working on recording a cover. 060123 Barry Lee played Bobby today on KKFI's Signal to Noise. Got the first mix of Kitchen Matches back from Patrick. Current status update: MIXED JMLP Sauro! Dolemite Failure to Rise Ring of Stars MIXED SOLO The Cats of Summer (solo) Show Me Your New Contacts (solo) Evaluate 29 (with Patrick Meagher) Pheromone Beanie (solo) Oily Rainbows (solo) Rattle (solo) Sweet, Soft Gollum (solo) Bobby (solo) Kitchen Matches (solo) Gulch (solo) The Man Who Kills the Ants (with Jason Beers) The Blue One (solo) BEING MIXED Dingus (collaboration) No Limes Merry Blaze Its My Island PROCESSING Lethal Portions Laundry Day Lighthouse Eve (solo) - vocals, bass TO DO JMLP Who is this Plumber? Shut Up You Crazy Diamond Open Sack Adorable Deplorable Swimmer's Shoulders The Last Moth June Everybody Does It The Salty Way TO DO JM I Can Walk (solo) Irene Ironweed (solo) Expression Petals (solo) Every Night (solo) Cherry (solo) Let Her Run (solo) 052823 Still listening to jazz, reggae, vintage afro funk and stuff from the 4AD catalog. I'm not smart enough to steal anything I'm listening to, but seeds are being scattered so ideas will pop up later and I will swear in a court of law that they are my very own precious. 052223 A very special Monday night session before a short break. Adding Swimmers Shoulders to the must-do list. Cats of Summer coming along nicely. 052023 A friend bought a statue for my gardens at an estate sale so I drove out to pick it up. She indicated that the sale was still going today and that everything was half price so I bopped over hoping to find some CDs (I'm especially interested in jazz right now) or yard tools. I poke around for 5 minutes and then walk into the living room where a guy has compiled a stack of 30-40 CDs, leaving about 8 in the stand. I started talking to him and discovered that THEY WERE ALL VINTAGE JAZZ AND HE WAS JUST BUYING THEM FOR THE CASES! Now, I can dig that as I have bought lots before just to cull the cases, but they were like holiday and novelty CDs - not Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Dave Brubeck and Charles Mingus. He graciously let me pick what I wanted from his pile, rejecting any offer of payment or any other compensation. Imagine that. 051823 Lovely review of Gollum: "Ethereal sound scapes put to a Eastern European waltz style beat . Good melodic singing, almost chilling but warm at the same time. Very European in approach. Good, even mixing. Overall a win." 051723 We had a guest (Mark) watching our rehearsal so everybody tried a little harder. Ironed out the major transition in Who is this Plumber? Spent some time on Windy, That Doesn't Turn You On, Laundry Day, Merry Blaze, Repeat, 20,000 Days, The Cats of Summer and Sweet & Low. Found a new bit for The Salt Trilogy. 051623 Finished The Blue One & Off with the Ropes and submitted them to the mixing queue. I thank the fat angry sky whale every day that I'm not a perfectionist. 051523 Sent Patrick Gulch. Going to try to finish The Blue One by the end of the week. 051423 Same some Gulch takes using the Kermie voice. 051123 Bobby is out today. I'm not sure I can do any better than this. Johnny Marie - Vocals, Keyboards, Guitars Chris Ruzich - Bass, Vocals Leon Kopilevich - Piano Jerry Riccardi - Drums Bill Ryan - Guitar Dave Storms - Percussion 051023 After getting the staples out of the way we went rooting around the catalog. Started working on The Cats of Summer. 050923 Recorded more vocal takes for Gulch and The Blue One. Listened to: Betty Davis - They Say I'm Different Lee Scratch Perry - Return of the Super Ape John Lennon - Plastic Ono Band 050723 Felt like I was lazily falling into some melodic patterns so sang some more takes of The Blue One and Gulch. 050623 Listened to: Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall Mingus - Ah Um Return to Forever - Light as a Feather Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera Dolly Parton - Jolene Dusty Springfield - Dusty in Memphis Soft Machine - Third and Fourth 050523 Listened to: Miles Davis - Sketches of Spain Steve Reich - Music for 18 Musicians Booker T & the MGs - Green Onions The Jam - Snap! Eno/Byrne - My Life in the Bush of Ghosts Eno - Another Green Planet 050323 Did our 5 song set and then ran through random selections from the archives, including: Windy Trash Bag Launderette The Salt Trilogy Parasol Gardenaire On Shut Up You Crazy Diamond 050223 Sent Chris Ruzich new reference files for Lighthouse Eve. 050123 Still trying to catch up on music I've overlooked. Recent purchases: Eno/Byrne - My Life in the Bush of Ghosts Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited Cavarn - In the Land of Grey & Pink The Byrds - The Notorious Byrd Brothers Big Star - Big Star Fleet Foxes - Shore Betty Davis - They Say I'm Different Dusty Springfield - Dusty in Memphis Kevin Ayers - Original Album Series Soft Machine - Fourth Lee Scratch Perry - Return of the Super Ape Dolly Parton - Jolene Miles Davis - Birth of The Cool Chick Corea - Light as a Feather Thelonious Monk Quartet at Carnegie Hall Charles Mingus - Mingus Ah Um John Lennon & the Plastic Ono Band - Plastic Ono Band Brian Eno - Here Come the Warm Jets Brian Eno - Another Green World Alice in Chains - Dirt Pulp - Different Class Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera Willie Nelson - Red Headed Stranger Suzanne Vega - Solitude Standing Jethro Tull - Living In The Past The Ramones - Rocket to Russia Derek & the Dominos - The Layla Sessions Liz Phair - Exile in Guyville Mcyoy Tyner with Stanley Clarke and Al Foster Stereolab - Sound-Dust and Dots & Loops Wire - Pink Flag Oasis - Definitely Maybe Amy Winehouse - Back to Black Nuggets II - Original Artifacts from the British Empire & Beyond 1964-1969 042023 Jerry sent me some backing vocals that he had done for Failure to Rise that had somehow escaped my attention when we finishing it, so the parts never made it to the recording. I'm going to see if I can do something fun with them, a kind of Failure to Rise Reprise. If. You. Will. I listended to a batch of the latest stuff and found myself wondering why everything had to have quirk. I remember Dave Gregory saying that he felt like sometimes Andy Partridge sabotaged what could have been commercially accessible songs by adding quirk. I wondered if the reason why songwriters (myself included) add quirk is so that you can't be compared to bands that have excelled at a specific genre. Criticism would be easier if you were comparing my compositions with just Miles Davis or Carly Simon or speed metal or modern country. There is a code. In pursuit of: Joe Meek & The Blue Men - I Hear A New World Betty Davis - They Say I'm Different Faust - The Faust Tapes Al Green - The Belle Album Herbie Hancock - Sextant The Homosexuals - The Homosexuals' Record Kevin Ayers And The Whole World - Shooting At The Moon Alvin Lucier - I Am Sitting In A Room The Modern Lovers - The Original Modern Lovers Hugh Hopper - 1984 The Human League - Being Boiled / Circus Of Death The Residents - Satisfaction Sun-Ra And His Astro Infinity Arkestra - Strange Strings 042023 Listening to: Dr. John: GRIS-gris (so good!) Prefab Sprout: Two Wheels Good Genesis: Foxtrot PJ Harvey: Rid of Me Pulp: Different Class 041923 Listened to Gardenaire (album) on the way to practice. It's a really good record. 041423 New song day: Sweet, Soft Gollum 041323 Listening to: Bob Dylan: John Wesley Harding Spin Sampler from 1996 Suzanne Vega - Nine Objects of Desire Parliament Funkadelic - compilation Was struck by the snare drum tuning, recording and playing on the 1996 stuff. It all sounds the same. Looked around the web for someone who shared my perspective and found an article about how the assy soundning drums were a reaction to the over processed drums from the 1980s. There was an art director at a marketing firm I worked at back in the day who dismissed Dylan as "king's new clothes". It's interesting where one looks for reward sin a scenario where rewards are few. Last night Jerry and Dave were proudly listing the other bands that come up when they play us on Spotify/Apple etc. Frank Zappa after Windy made Dave especially happy. 041223 Faithfully did our 5 song set before playing around with the discography the rest of the evening. Spent some time learning Windy. 040923 Got Kitchen Matches drum tracks back from Jerry. 040823 Had another go at bass parts for Lighthouse Eve. I always forget how inspiring new strings are. 040723 Listening to Tom Waits - Mule Varieties Billy Preston - Compilation Marvin Gaye - I Want You STP - Core Syd Barrett - The Madcap Laughs Fiona Apple - Tidal Tim Buckley - Happy Sad Stevie Wonder - Innervisions The Allman Brothers - Eat A Peach Ultra Bra - Vesireittejä on tap: Blur - Parklife Buffalo Tom - Sleepy Eyed, Let Me Come Over Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation Son Volt - Straightaways Flaming Lips - Hit The Pretenders - Learning to Crawl Tom Waits - Swordfishtrombones Brian Eno - Discreet Music The Libertines - Up The Bracket Kraftwerk - Trans Europe Express 033023 Danny, Dave and Jerry are on KKFI tonight talking about the 10,000 bands they are in and playing some selections from The Green Piano. 032923 Lighthouse Eve needs a proper bass part and Chris is tied up so time to put new strings on the P-bass and practice counting to 4. We missed an opportunity to do a live set tomorrow night because our rehearsals consist mostly of randomly picking stuff from the nearly 80 song catalog to either play, learn to play or re-learn to play - so we never really have anything prepared. We tried starting with a setlist 4 months ago but it got too unweildy. So, we decided last night to just pick 5 songs that we make sure we run through every week so that we have the guts of a list that we can get through and still have time to go exploring. We chose: Stinker Who is this Plumber? Seven Little Eyes Ring of Stars No Limes/You Set it Off The last song was mostly for You Set it Off because that song can be attached to any other song, which we intend to do. 032223 We missed a couple of weeks of rehearsal so we were pretty rough (lost my voice in like 30 minutes) and my freshly strung Jazzmaster wouldn't stay in tune so this session does not get a gold star. Patrick is currently pretty overwhelmed and we still have tons of songs that need to be mixed and mastered so we talked about some alternatives. Jerry played me a mix of his drums on Kitchen Matches. Marvelous! This was the last song that needed drums. Just need bass for Lighthouse Eve and some better vocal performances for the remaining songs and then I can send the balance to Patrick. 031823 Current input: Miles Davis - On The Corner Gene Clark - No Other Curtis Mayfield - Curtis Maria Muldaur - Maria Muldaur Tame Impala - InnerSpeaker Gilbert O'Sullivan - Himself Genesis - Nursery Cryme Marvin Gaye - Trouble Man Marvine Gaye - Let's Get It On Moby Grape - Listen My Friends Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska My workout generally ends (out of boredom) before the end of the first track on On The Corner. Really dig the Gene Clark album. It sounds like Pink Floyd in a country band. 031623 Sent the now-available Jerry Kitchen Matches. 031523 Got drum tracks from Jerry for The Blue One. 031123 Got drum tracks from Dave Storms for Lighthouse Eve. 030123 Spent the evening listening and playing along with Gardenaire and Land Ho. I usually don't listening to my stuff once it is finished so there were lots of fun surprises. 022823 Thomas loved Gardenaire and would often tell me that there wasn't a stinker in the bunch. I hate to admit it, because it was nearly three albums ago, but he is probably right. It is one of our most played albums. Also the album with the fewest tracks if you don't count juiceboxberries which streaming services consider an EP. So, with that in mind I have determined to not just release every recorded and mixed track for the solo album, just because they are recorded and mixed. I have 8-10 that I think are the best and that's what will end up together on the album. Look at me with something bordering on a conviction. 022623 Spending too much time on the lead vocal for Gulch. I have an associate who plays Paul in a Beatles tribute band we were talking about the songs that he does in a Kermit voice - see Get Back. So, not being afraid of small adventures I gave it a try. Results are intersting but man its hard to control your voice with your throat all knotted up. 022523 Current state: 100 recorded ideas, any single one worth developing into a good song. 100 songs to finish up and send off for mixing. 100 days left on the planet. 100 devices with recorded ideas, any single one worth developing into a good song in plastic bags destined for a landfill.. 022423 Finally got around to developing the Giallo guitar melody I originally heard in Spain. 022423 Still agonizing over the lead vocal for Gulch Took the sick Jazzmaster to Mathew for new jack and switch. 022223 Added a bit to The Salt Trilogy and came up with another little chord sequence. Ran through Plumber, It's My Island, Hats Off, Extraordinaire, The Last Moth, Parasol and Stinker. At the end my Jazzmaster conked out so off to Matt's it goes. Got a rough mix of Kitchen Matches back from Patrick and promptly sent it to Brad Buckner for drums. Listened to In Rainbows for the 1st time. Over the weekend I listened to Boz Scaggs' Silk Degrees and Gerry Rafferty's City to City for the 1st time. I did not film my reaction for our YouTube channel. 022123 Still tracking vocals on Gulch. 021923 Sang more takes of Gulch. Patrick tends to mix my vocals higher that I do so I hear nuances in his early mixes that I missed when tracking. Trying to listen to isolated vocals before sending now. "You don't know what pain is!"- Buffalo Bill. 021823 Got Gulch cleaned up. Just want to sing one more take tomorrow before handing it off to Patrick. He is currently sexing up Kitchen Matches for Drums by Brad. 021723 When I get a notion, a series of chords or a sound that I think are interesting, I will dash off a recording and save it for a rainy day. I have to make up a name when I save it so I quickly come up with something topical or nonsensical that may change when the idea is developed or I may build the words around it if it is inspiring. I have a folder with maybe 30-40 of these bits just waiting to be planted and watered. When I decided to make a solo album I knew it would be comprised of songs that might grow from these seeds, songs that I had mostly tracked but not finished and brand new ideas. Sweet, Soft Gollum was one of these idea songs. I did not keep the original title. The original idea was just a rhythmic classical guitar and a dreamy slide guitar part. I was knocked out when I heard it again a year or so after getting down the idea. Not because it was amazing, it just did not sound like something I would typically come up with. It was more sparse and feely. It was felt foreign and everytime I heard it I was certain I had stolen it from somewhere. Yesterday I listened to it a dozen times as I was cleaning it up to go to Patrick for mixing. I sent it off and then a few hours later had an overwhelming deisre to listen to John Barry's Follow Follow from the film Follow Me!/The Public Eye. I was in the middle of watching a another movie when the notion struck me and planned to go dig it up as soon as we were finished. 20 minutes later it started to dawn on me that there was a similar feel between Follow Follow and Sweet, Soft Gollum, especially if you strip SSG down to the essential bits. Not the melody or instrumentation, just the vibe. This is why the demo sounded so familiar to me. I was really moved by how this revelation came to me so organically and it absolutely justifies my current obsession with listening to as much unfamiliar music as possible because at some point some bit of somebody else's magic will wriggle free and become mine. PS I finally figured out that the similarity is some wobbly noise Barry used and my slide part. They serve the same purpose. Follow Follow Tidied up Bobby and sent it to Patrick. 021623 Sweet, Soft Gollum sent to Patrick. 021523 Dave played us some stuff that he had recorded in the past. Also listened to my solo releases thus far. Had a good rehearsal running through Corky Finds Something, Who is this Plumber?, 20,000 Days, We Don't Do That, Mars, Repeat, Now Here and Tambourine. 021423 Rattle now available for streaming/download. Allen Johnston - drums Daniel Button - electric piano Dave Scwiercinsky - bass 021223 Got tracks from Jerry for Bobby, Gulch, Sweet, Soft Gollum and Off with the Ropes. The Blue One is just around the corner. 021123 Chris Ruzich generally records his bass parts first and then the song gets submitted to a drummer. He's always wanted to reverse the process so he is going to track his part when Dave Storms is done. Resuming getting Kitchen Matches ready for Brad Buckner before the end of the month. Listened to Arcade Fire's Funeral, The Who Sell Out and a bunch of Belle & Sebastian. 020923 The power was out for 8 hours but I recently bought a portable DiscMan style portable CD player that runs on batteries so I listened to Frank Zappa's Hot Rats in the cold. 020823 Sent Dave Storms Lighthouse Eve. 020623 Added some vocals and brass to Lighthouse Eve. Imported Dave's new bass part into It's My Island. 020523 Imported Danny's jazzy guitar bits into Lighthouse Eve. 020423 Listened to Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and enjoyed it very much. 020323 I've been listening to the first album by Yes. It would annoy me when sometimes people with limited context would compare our live stuff to them. After finally listening to them I figured out that the comparisions weren't because of how we sound or how we play, it's just because the songs are often long with a lot of changes. This also seems to (to people unfamiliar with the songs) like we are just jamming rather than following a structure. Being called a "jam bad" is also hurtful but not entirely without truth Grateful to not be dead 020123 Listening to the first Stone Roses album and digging it.. 012723 Masterpieces from the Indie Void has included two Johnny Marie & the Lonesome Petunias song in their list of 100 unknown masterpieces: Seven Little Eyes and Reach Around, both from The Green Piano . Listened to the Stone Roses self-titled debut for the first time. Really good stuff. 012523 Petunias rehearsal. Stuck to the stuff likely to appear on a setlist. Listened to CSNY's Deja Vu, Harry Nilsson's Son of Schmilsson, One More for the Road by Jackson Browne and the Incredible String Band's Changing Horses. 012323 I'm going to try to like Jackson Browne by listening to some of his most renowned work. I owe him that much. Still fleshing with Lighthouse Eve. 012223 I am fully on board with Love's Forever Changes now. So tasty. 012123 Added acoustic guitars to Lighthouse Eve. 012023 When tweaking lyrics that were gifted by spirits are you taking the ball and running with it or are you defacing a miracle? 011823 I've been getting Lighthouse Eve lyrics in the middle of the night all week, which is the preferred method. Re-cut some piano parts, re-sang some vocal parts and sent a mix to Chris for basso consideration and to Danny for jazzo guitaro garnishes. Iffy practice highlighted by rum and chocloate beer. 011423 Fleshed out Lighthouse Eve and came up with a fistful of lyrics. Then to Ruzich. Then to Riccardi. Then to Meagher. 011323 Pheromone Beanie available for streaming/download/ignoring. Started work on Lighthouse Eve which I've been worrying for a week or two. 011023 How did I live this long without anybody telling me about The Monks? Where is the payoff for maintaining human relationships? 010923 Got the first mix of Oily Rainbows back from Patrick. Marvelous. 010423 Wandered through the pile of songs. Came up with an alternate ending for Corky Finds Something. 010123 Gave Traffic's Mr. Fantasy a listen yesterday. I've listened to Barleycorn, Low Spark etc. and I think this is the most interesting album of the lot. Very nice. Also listened to the FemBots' Small Town Murder Scene and Moody Blues' Days of Future Passed but this was the highlight. Happy birthday, Harold McPherson. Harold provided the lovely tappa tappa on Nellie Ordinary. Received a Happy New Year .gif via text from Thomas. 2022 (STILL rehearsing and recording 6th and 7th albums!) 122922 Listened to Family's Music in a Doll's House. Loved it except for the singing. I find that folk-influenced warbling off-putting. Paul Rothschild told the Doors that if they wanted their music to not sound dated in future they should avoid gimmicks like wah-wah pedals. Singers should have received the same advice. I think British bands (mostly blues-influenced) were less inclined, hence the lasting presence of Kinks, Stones, Who, Zep, Fabbies, Stones etc. Love's Andmoreagain sung straight? Mmm hmm! More please! 122822 Randomly ransacked our discography for 4 hours. A personal favorite was a reggae version of White Girl. Had a good chat with Jerry about our process of developing drum tracks for my solo and GFS stuff. 122622 Sang some more takes for Gulch. 122522 I discovered the YouTube channel Yesterday's Papers about a week ago. One of my favorite features, besides the reading of vintage reviews of psychedelic singles from various British music publications from 1967-1968, is a kind of celebrity review bit from Melody Maker, called Blind Date, where a pop star of the day (Lennon, McCartney, Jagger, Zappa, Donovan, Hendrix - you get the picture) listens to singles from the British top 40 and comments on their quality and speculates how they might do in the charts. The reviews are actually very insightful and of course extremely entertaining. I've also discovered and purchased music from bands I either didn't know about or that warranted a deeper dive. Recommend. 122422 Got Gulch drum tracks from Jerry. Merry Christmas to me. 122222 Thank you KKFI for the Gardenaire play. Fit right in with Scott Hrabko & The Rabbits. 122122 Short, aimless holiday practice. Did work on sorting out live versions of Corky Finds Something and Who is This Plumber? 122022 Listened to Bobby Jameson's (Chris Lucey) Songs of Protest & Anti-Protest. Got some fun greatest hits collections: John Mayall The Bee Gees (early) Donovan The Small Faces Humble Pie The Hollies (early) Cream The Troggs Eric Burdon 121722 Listened to The Move's Shazam for the first time. Good stuff. Will buy more. Listened to Van Morrison's Astral Weeks and I absolutely don't get it. All of the vocal coloring he does is repetitious and off-putting. The whole thing feels like one long miserable song. I don't see this being one of those albums that I listen to 6 times and then a light comes on. There is no electricity. 121422 Practiced deep cuts. Corky Finds Something, White Girl, Gardenaire, The Wall and Rattle. Even took a half-hearted stab at Windy. 121312 Sent Pheromone Beanie to Patrick. 120722 The Dukes of Stratosphere stuff is the best of 1960s British psychedelic music despite being born in the 1980s. I think it's even the best of XTC. I was already aware of many of the influences of the Dukes but decided to tidy up my resume and listen to the Pretty Things' S.F. Sorrow and Ogdens Nut Gone Flake by Small Faces. Lots of fun and loads of trip factor (Laid awake last night trying to think of how I could get a microphone to my piano to run through a wah-wah pedal.) but the thing that surprised me was hearing how this (or Small Faces in general) likely influenced the Sex Pistols. You can hear it in that vocal delivery on Lazy Sunday. BTW, I have a staunch policy on talky bits in songs. The King, The Doors and oddly the Stranglers are frequent violators. Ian Dury and Patti Smith get Get out of Jail Free cards. Kevin McDermott gets one for sweetly whispering "It's been a grand day." 120522 Listening to Love's Forever Changes. This one was compelling to me because mortals don't know who or what it is and the music elite rate it with a billion yellow stars. I've had three listens and am having a fourth today. The fourth listen is like required reading. I wouldn't feel dead inside if I never heard it again. I've been wrong about great music before so due diligence etc. Liking it more after listens 4 and 5. 120422 Listening to Trout Mask Replica. This speaks to me, brothers and sisters. Not the spoken word stuff, not the horn battles and not the singing - though there are always some fun lines on Beefheart records. It's those trademark grooves. It's the rhythm and not the blues. Like a fever brained Don Quixote in a suit of crows unsteady in a glass saddle on a powerful three-legged stallion dragging four empty Igloo brand coolers - red - down a gravel road. Like a wounded troll crashing blindly through the forest squashing chainsawing lumberjacks until it bleeds out at the foot of a mountain. I swoon every time. I think I came about him the best way - AFTER organically discovering a lot of the artists that he has influenced. Like gateway drugs. I bumbled upon him in the '80s when he was doing stuff from Doc at the Radar Station and I had already cut my teeth on The Residents/Snakefinger, Alternative TV, The Birthday Party etc. I don't think I would have been up for his stuff when it was being released during the Beatles heyday. Sent Patrick a mix of Pheromone Beanie to see how he felt about not using a full drum kit for the song. He and his team felt like the hand percussion could carry the tune. 120322 Ruzi-Q tracked bass and some harmonies for Pheromone Beanie. We also pulled up Turkey (something we started on a few years ago) for consideration. 113022 Boisterous rehearsal. 112822 Added sitar and more cymbals to Pheromone Beanie. 112722 More vocal and classical guitar takes for Pheromone Beanie. Added a ride cymba, snare druml and some back-of-the-guitar conga parts. Sent a copy to Chris Ruzich. By the way, I referred to him as Ruzi-Q in my correspondence. Obviously I was quite pleased. 112322 Listening to Hunky Dory made me want to write a song on the piano. Came up with a fistful of chord chanes yesterday and recorded them today with some guitar parts. Pheromone Beanie. 112122 Just back from a road trip. Took some albums that I either hadn't heard or required a deeper dive. Dug everything but the Peanut Butter Conspiracy. Hunky Dory made me want to write some songs on the piano. The Peanut Butter Conspiracy - It's Spreading Garden State - Soundtrack Duke Ellington - Money Jungle David Bowie - Hunky Dory Shakti - with John McLaughlin Steely Dan - Pretzel Logic Martin Sewell/Andy Partidge - The Greatest Living Englishman Recently purcased for the next trip: The Monkees - Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd., Headquarters Incredible String Band - Changing Horses, Wee Tam and the Big Huge, The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter Lindisfarne - Nicely Out of Tune, Fog on the Tyne Family - Music In A Dolls House Fembots - Mucho Cuidado, Calling Out, Small Town Murder Scene The Move - Shazam, Looking On Procol Harum - Best of Procol Harum Pink Floyd - Meddle, Delicate Sounds of Thunder Various Artists - Insane Times: 25 British Psychedelic Artyfacts Astral Weeks - Van Morrison Bee Gees - Best of the Bee Gees Traffic - Traffic, Mr. Fantasy Joy of a Toy - Kevin Ayers Love - Forever Changes, Da Capo Faces - A Nod is as Good as a Wink to a Blind Horse Small Faces - Ogdens Nut Gone Flake, 10 Hits Humble Pie - Best of Humble Pie Eric Burdon - Best of Eric Burdon Fleetwood Mac - Tusk Alvvays - Blue Rev Miles Davis - Bitches Brew The Shins - Oh, Inverted World The Hollies - The Hollies Greatest Hits Public Image Ltd. - Second Edition Wire - Chairs Missing Donovan - Donovan's Greatest Hits Pooh Sticks - Million Seller Captain Beefheart - Trout Mask Replica The Tom Tom Club - The Tom Tom Club Tres Hombres - ZZ Top Who's Next - The Who Hounds of Love - Kate Bush The Troggs - The Best of The Troggs John Mayall - Silver Tones: The Best of John Mayall & The Blues Breakers 111622 Tidied up Dingus and sent the session to Patrick. 2ND full band rehearsal. Added a few more songs from the discography. 111522 Talked to Patrick about making Dingus another collaboration and he agreed. Sang more vocal takes, Need to comp them, re-cut the bass, or at least provide an alternate take, and comp the piano parts. 111422 Beginning the process of re-working Dingus. Tried some less barky vocals. Used the old Boss GT-6 to add some swirly modulation and some heavy riffs. Tried some different drum beats. 110922 Back to building a live set. This process is difficult for me as I quickly forget chord changes without repetition and brother I tells ya we haven't run through these songs in over a year. I'll pick them all up again soon enough and then only forget them in a live setting. 110822 Evaluate 29 (Johnny Marie with Patrick Meagher) available for streaming. 110722 Got the first mix of Evaluate 29 back from Patrick. Decided to add a verse. 110622 Recorded the basic track for Shame. 110522 When we finished recording drums for everything we intended to record we dashed off recordings of a couple of under-rehearsed songs just to capture them - The Salt Trilogy and June. These are good candidates for the set list so that we can develop them further. Danny sent me June last night to start sorting out. Sent The Blue One to Chris Richards for trumpeting. 110422 Sent The Blue One to Jerry. Bought another Mel9 because I want one on my live board since I use it so much in our recordings but I don't want to lose the one on my home board because I use it so much in our recordings. 110322 Chris Ruzich popped over to record some bass for The Blue One. Off to Jerry tomorrow. 110222 Had a State of the Union meeting and determined that we would go back to recording at my space and use Danny's space for rehearsing for future performances. Ran through an hour's worth of JMLP stuff. 110122 Started on Dingus and ran out of gas just listening to it. May have to start fresh with it. I first introduced this song to Girl for Samson in September of 2004. We worked it up but never got a recording that we were happy with so it's one of THOSE songs. Not sure why I keep it on the table since I could churn out two new songs a month if pressed. 102722 Show Me Your New Contacts now available for streaming, downloading or just looking at. Sent Patrick the session for Evaluate 29 for a collaborative effort. Again, this was built from a snatch of Laundry Day. 102522 Got the first mix of Show Me Your New Contacts back from Patrick. Finally replaced the foam in my Sony MDR-V6 headphones. Current status update: MIXED Stinker Dolemite Failure to Rise Ring of Stars The Cats of Summer (solo) Show Me Your New Contacts (solo) Evaluate 29 (collaboration) Pheromone Beanie (solo) Oily Rainbows (solo) Rattle (solo) Sweet, Soft Gollum (solo) Bobby (solo) Kitchen Matches (solo) BEING MIXED Dingus (collaboration) No Limes Merry Blaze Gulch (solo) The Blue One (solo) Off with the Ropes (solo) PROCESSING Lethal Portions Laundry Day Its My Island - bass Lighthouse Eve (solo) - vocals, bass TO DO JMLP Who is this Plumber? Shut Up You Crazy Diamond Open Sack Adorable Deplorable Swimmer's Shoulders The Last Moth June Everybody Does It The Salty Way TO DO JM I Can Walk (solo) Irene Ironweed (solo) Expression Petals (solo) Every Night (solo) Cherry (solo) Let Her Run (solo) 101622 Got after Sweet, Soft Gollum first thing in the morning. Tried a few vocal takes not using my head voice exclusively. My 5 AM voice was not up to my sad code so will try again later in the day. Added a low harmony idea to the chorus of Evaluate 29. 101522 Guts are knotted from suddenly realizing I could have found a way to rhyme "feng shui" with "kung fu sway". I need to drink some 7Up. Auditioned a non-galloping bass part for Laundry Day from Laundry Dave. Feels better. 101322 Sent Chris Richards Off with the Ropes and Rattle for trumpeting consideration. Fiddled a bit with Evaluate 29. 101122 More IMI vocal takes. 101022 Sang more takes of It's My Island. Still tweaking some of the lines. 100722 Fooled around with some melody ideas for Evaluate 29. 100622 Saw Fanny play at the RecordBar last night. Their cover of The Beatles' Hey Bulldog is a joy. I thanked June for including it in their short set and she laughed and said, on the charming side of cockily, "You liked that one, eh?" Also met the lovely Chris Richards so Johnny Marie songs meet trumpet parts! Fleshed out Evaluate 29 a bit. There is a percussive bass part Dave does in Laundry Day that I knew would make a glorious loop. Grabbed a chunk of Jerry's drums and chickaboom! - a foundation for a song. 100522 Off to see Fanny play at the RecordBar. I had to come up with words and the rest of the melody for the chourus (just the chourus, mind you) for It's My Island and the weight of it was like needing to go to a hardware store to address a mysterious plumbing issue. Finally got it done and feel that it is good. 100422 Saw a screening of the Fanny documentary. Why didn't David Bowie give them some good songs if he loved them so goddamned much? That would have changed everything for them. 100322 I have a U-shaped pedal board setup that I've been dying to intergrate with the DAW but because it has nearly 30 pedals on it I can't get it into the small space I have to work with. Finally figured out a way around the space issue and now get a nice, noiseless signal in. Took some more stabs at It's My Island. Still working on the differences between how pedal settings sound with the studio monitors vs how they sound on a track. 100222 Tried re-cutting some of the guitar tracks in It's My Island with the Decimator and it seems to work a little better than your run-of-the-mill noise gate. 100122 Worked on It's My Island a bit. Bought a Decimator to help with the pickup noise. 093022 Took a few stabs at the intro for It's My Island with the Tele but with two computers near by it's entirely too noisy. Have to sort this out. 092922 Sent The Blue One to Chris Ruzich for bass and to Leon for pianio. Determined to finish Rattle today and send it to Patrick. And I did. 092822 Coming up with new things to write about is challenging. Some topics already covered: The delights of having sex in the afternoon Not liking Mondays Not being satisfied There are 8 days in 1 week Purple Rain Europe being free of radios and so on Recorded cowbell and tambourine for Lethal Portions. 092522 Made new reference mixes with fresh bass parts for Jerry to work with. 092422 The Cats of Summer is now available for consumption. Chris Ruzich popped over and recorded bass for SS Gollum, Off with the Ropes and Gulch. 092322 Got the first mix of The Cats of Summer back from Patrick. Juicy work as always. Still poking around the new stuff for places where I need better takes of things - especially vocally. 091722 Added tambourine and more vocal takes to Sweet, Soft Gollum. Danny got a Fender Rhodes from the beloved Dave Estes so I asked him to re-cut his EP parts on Rattle with it. Did I ever tell you the thing about Dave Estes being at a Porps show in the 1980s? 091622 Got piano parts from Leon for Gulch and Sweet, Soft Gollum. Didn't get Rattle touched up in time to get it to Patrick today so will work on it this weekend and send to him on Monday. 091522 First get-together last night in a couple of months. We listened to Laundry Day and Lethal Portions to see what else needed to happen to them before handing them off for mixing. Recorded some backing vocals for Laundry Day. I looked at the set list and it appears that we only have 7 more songs to finish once LD and LP are handed off: Everybody Does It Open Sack The Last Moth Who is this Plumber? Adorable Deplorable Shut Up You Crazy Diamond Swimmer's Shoulders 091422 I think I have Rattle beaten into submission. Will listen a few more days then submit to Patrick on Friday. 091022 Still cleaning up Rattle. Should have it ready to go next week. Allen Johnston on drums, Dave Swiercinsky on bass and Danny Button on keys. 090922 Sang more takes of Rattle. Listened to Laundry Day and Lethal Portions and made notes for our session on Wednesday. 090822 Of course someone posted a link to God Save the Queen today and it was a glorious listen. I could totally hear Thom Yorke singing this. 090722 Tried re-recording some of the guitars in Rattle and Off with the Ropes using different setups. 090622 Considering what to start on next. Listened to Rattle, The Blue One and It's My Island - all very neato. I Think Rattle is closest to being finished so will wrap that one up. Tidied up Rattle a bit and sung a few more takes. This will go on the solo album as will The Blue One. It's My Island features all of the Lonesome Petunias so it will go on the next JMLP album. 090522 Had another go at vocals and guitars for Off with the Ropes. 090322 Mac is now Off with the Ropes. Sent a copy to Mr. Music for bass consideration. 090222 Reggae ended up working nicely. Move the keyboard chords over to where the snare would be and come up with some pussmepullya washboard parts on the guitar. Any daylight inspiration is forced - based on history and experience. During the sleepless and soggy night the real stuff comes, and sadly I'm almost always awake and ready for it. Today Mac will transition form rock ballad to dance song to reggae. Reggae is actually a shorter hop from the source than disco. 090122 Mac is starting to annoy me. The groove is too much like Isn't it a Pity? Experimenting with how much I have to change to make it dancy. 083122 Should have Mac ready to give to Chris, Leon and Jerry this coming weekend. 082922 Ring of Stars now available on BandCamp. 082822 Sang more Laundry Day takes. Getting closer to lyrics for Mac. Added a bridge and a scratch melody for it. 082522 Resuming construction of Mac today for the solo collection. Added a bass and a percussion idea. Made up some dummy words that I kind of like. This one is going to fall qickly if I don't dick with it too much. 082422 Got the first revision of Ring of Stars back from Patrick. Gosh damned close! 082222 Fooled around with the percussive outro on Bobby and dig it. Sang some more takes of Sweet, Soft Gollum. I have to sing in a falsetto because of where the melody sits and I discovered that is sounds better coming from the chest/guts vs the neck and shoulders. Sent a mix to Jerry,. Need to tidy up Oily Rainbows and get it to Patrick. And I did. 082122 Imported Dave Storms' percussion bits into the outro of Bobby and added and subtracted sounds. Will either keep or build another song around it. 081922 Picking the next thing to start on. Listened to Cherry and Irene Ironweed but was moved by Sweet, Soft Gollum. 081822 Sent Jerry Gulch and Bobby. Imported Leon's piano parts for Bobby. Imported Jerry's drums for Oily Rainbows. This guy always hears what I'm hearing. 081722 Sorted out Gultch and sent a copy to Chris Ruzich for bass prep and to Leon for piano. Got piano parts from Leon for Kynd of in My Mynd - now Bobby. Received a pass of drums from Dave Storms to let me know where he was going with the song. Dave sent me a fresh bass track for Lethal Portions. Jerry Riccardi sent Oily Rainbows tracks so will get Gulch ready for him. 081622 Still struggling with a bridge for Gulch. There is a point sometimes when creating cheap pop songs that you have to decide that something isn't working and scrap it. It's difficult deciding to pound your shitty looking flower pot back into a lump of clay and start over after worrying over it for days and thinking that you saw glimpses of something good. This occurred to me immediately after I had already uploaded the previous paragraph. The value of aborting something you've spent time on is that now you understand what won't work for the song. That is helpful. Upon further reflection, once you determine that red isn't the right color you can improve your return to the drawing board by reflecting on WHY red doesn't work. After all that preaching I came up with a delightful bridge. 081422 Worked on bridge and lyrics for Gulch. Chris Ruzich recorded bass and vocals for Bobby. 081322 Got some sweet acoustic guitar parts from Bill Ryan, engineered by Dave Storms. 081222 Worked more on getting Gulch sorted out. Close on the arrangement. Came up with some temporary words to help with phrasing consistency. 081122 I think I can knock off Gulch this weekend. And I mean knock it lovingly, tenderly. Just need words and add a verse/chorus repeat. I have some great musicians putting fresh paint and curtains on Bobby. I could potentially get it to Patrick less than 3 weeks after making it up. 080922 Listened to a half dozen hastily recorded demos and found some good stuff. When Bobby is done I'll start on Irene Ironweed and Gulch if I can't get my wheels on the ground with I Can Walk. 080822 Sent Bobby (I'm already sick of this working title) off to Dave Storms for drums and Bill Ryan for whatever he feels like doing to it. 080722 Bobby was built on a 4 chord thing using really odd open chords. How do I justify calling them odd? When I add the fingering to chord ID sites they return "Why are you doing that?" I built a bunch of stuff on top of these mystery chords, muted them and then tried to add proper guitar chords on top. That was a bit of an exercise as the vocal melody required altering the chords as the song advanced. Part of the process when you're a gigilo. 080422 Got bass parts from Dave for Lethal Portions and Laundry Day. Sent Patrick Show Me Your New Contacts. 080322 Got drum tracks from Jerry for Show Me Your New Contacts and The Cats of Summer. The Cats of Summer now in Patrick's capable and loving hands. 080222 Came up with proper words for Bobby. 080122 Sent Leon Bobby for some sexy keyboards. 073122 Created Kynd of in My Mynd (now Bobby) rather than work on I Can Walk. 073022 Adding guitar and fresh vocals to Lethal Portions. Talking to some more drummers for my solo stuff and Girl for Samson. 072922 Still tidying up the arrangement for I Can Walk. 072822 More struggles with sliding meter markers but finally got a good scratch track for I Can Walk down. 072722 Spent more time trying to flesh out I Can Walk in Pro Tools. It bounces back and forth from 3/4 to 4/4 so getting the markers right is making me crazy. Got close so tomorrow I'll tweak it to make sure all of the intervals and rests are the right duration before laying down a proper scratch guitar. 072622 Wrote some words for the bridge of Show Me Your New Contacts and sang some takes. Tried a different vocal approach on Kitchen Matches. Got all of John's guitar parts mixed in and sent a copy to Chris Ruzich for direction. Talked to Patrick about doing a pre-mix of Kitchen Matches before giving it to Brad. He agreed and it is now in his hands. Getting close to artwork for Merry Blaze, Ring of Stars and No Limes. 072522 Cleaned up Merry Blaze and handed it off to Patrick. Failure to Rise is done. 072422 Sang more Merry Blaze takes. This one should go to Patrick tomorrow if I get the piano parts today. Imported John McConnell's guitar parts into Kitchen Matches. Bumbled upon an idea for the artwork for Failure to Rise. The old pile-the-junk- drawer-contents-on-the-table- and-start-removing-things- until-you-are-left-with-a-can- opener-and-a-bright-red- lighter technique. 072322 Tried doing the galloping rhythm on Laundry Day. Managed to squeeze off two takes before switching to a more straight-ahead approach. Sent mixes to Dave for some at-home tracking. Current status: MIXED Stinker Dolemite Failure to Rise Ring of Stars The Cats of Summer (solo) BEING MIXED Show Me Your New Contacts (solo) Rattle (solo) Oily Rainbows (solo) No Limes Merry Blaze Kitchen Matches (solo) PROCESSING Lethal Portions Laundry Day Gulch (solo) Bobby (solo) Sweet, Soft Gollum (solo) Off with the Ropes (solo) The Blue One (solo) Its My Island TO DO JMLP Who is this Plumber? Shut Up You Crazy Diamond Open Sack Adorable Deplorable Swimmer's Shoulders The Last Moth June Everybody Does It The Salty Way TO DO JM I Can Walk (solo) Irene Ironweed (solo) Expression Petals (solo) Every Night (solo) Cherry (solo) Let Her Run (solo) Dingus (solo) 072222 Ring of Stars tidied up and sent to Patrick. Replaced some of the Jazzmaster parts with a Tele. Got the first mix of Failure to Rise back. Mercy. 072122 Had to sort out a misaligned synth issue in SAURO! Got it lined up and uploaded. Prepped No Limes and sent it to Patrick. Hoping to send him Ring of Stars in the next few days. 072022 SAURO! now available for streaming and purchase on BandCamp. Recorded bass for Ring of Stars and bass and backing vocals for No Limes. 071922 Tried to re-cut the guitar melody for Laudry Day and failed. Got enough for Danny to have a reference. Note to Wednesdayself: No Limes is 140 BPM and Ring of Stars is 130.. 071822 Got SAURO! (formerly Stinker) back from Patrick. It is quite jaunty. Going to see if I can get No Limes close to ready to ship. Should just need bass after I add some more vocal takes. Did some work on the Kitchen Matches arrangement. 071622 Removed some of the splashes from Show Me Your New Contacts and sent to Jerry. 071522 Recorded guide vocals for Lethal Portions and Laundry Day. 071422 Added guitars and some vocals to Merry Blaze. Cut another ending for Ring of Stars with the Tele. 071322 Two Petunias with birthdays today. Sent John McConnell Kitchen Matches for some guitar ideas. Sang a scratch lead vocal for Merry Blaze so that we can work on it tonight. Added Nashville tuned acoustics and the guitar outro part to Ring of Stars. Have a jacked drum track that I need to sort out while waiting on Dave's bass part. Recorded bass, backing vocals and organ for Merry Blaze. Jerry indicated that he thought he could track drums for The Cats of Summer this weekend. 071222 Comped Danny's Ring of Stars guitar parts. Learned a hard lesson about dragging bits of an interleaved stereo track onto a mono track if there is another mono audio track below. The hard lesson is that Pro Tools will put one channel where you desire and the other on the tack below it - which in this case was a tom track. 071022 Sorted out the ROS vocals so they are less wincesome. Shannon tracked a few keyboard parts. I think I'm going to be getting some guitar parts from Daniel shortly which will put a fresh bass part between Patrick having the song and not having the song. 070922 Steve Robinson sent me a track from his new album and it was lovely. It was also deflating because he has a radio-ready voice and I'm right in the middle of trying to croak my way through a 7 minute dopus. I can only do what I can do. I can love and admire someone else's work. It doesn't have anything to do with my work unless it inspires me. 070822 Sang more takes of Ring of Stars. Working on lyrics for Kitchen Matches so that I can get this to Brad. Came up with 3 good bits for KM and one that's so goofy and alliterative that it's either a must-use or I should delete any reference to it and re-format my hard drive. Also added more guitars because guitars are good. As Danny Button says: "Let the guitars do the talking." 070722 Married the Ring of Stars live parts with the best of the demo parts. Need to sing a new lead vocal. I may have scored another drummer for the live project courtesy of Chris Ruzich. We'll see if the new guy truly appreciates what thankless means. Worked a bit on the arrangement for Kitchen Matches. Sang more lead vocal takes for Ring of Stars. 070622 Recorded backing vocals for Ring of Stars. 070522 Got vocal tracks from Jerry for Failure to Rise. Promptly prepped the session and sent it to Patrick. 070322 Stinker will be released as Sauro. It's just the right thing to do. 063022 Dolemite available on 7/1/22 062922 We had a few listens to Dolemite and then ran through the catalog for the rest of the evening: Sweet & Low, Capers Land Ho Beat Box Caveat Parasol Dingus, Who Is This Plumber?, Open Sack We Don't Do That Little Something On Ordinary Guy Swimmer's Shoulders Dolemite, Gardenaire Billy Corgan's Cadillac Seven Little Eyes. Next week we'll finish up Ring of Stars. Got the first mix of Dolemite back from P. He's so good. 062622 Andy Gill and Hugh Cornwell spoke to me as guitarists. Andy for his jagged attacks and Hugh for his flat delivery and lovely, jarring note choices. 062522 Shannon tracked some more vocals for Failure to Rise. 062422 Danny added some classical guitar takes to Failure to Rise. Jerry is going to do some of the ooos and ahhhs at home so that I can get this to Patrick by Tuesday. 062322 Added guitars and vocals to Failure to Rise. Came up with some more backing vocal bits so will try to coax Jerry and Shannon to replace some of my parts. I really dislike hearing a singer also doing all of the backing parts. Love Elvis but I never liked hearing him donig his own ooos and ahhhs. His voice is too distinct. Marvin Gaye and Paul McCartney can do that shit all they want. 062222 Band dinner at our one of our regular venues rerouted because of Health Department violations. Found an alternate source and then tracked drums, bass and backing vocals for Failure to Rise. Should give it to Patrick on Tuesday. 062122 Fooled around some more with the outro of Kitchen Matches and sent a copy to Chris. 062022 Oily Rainbows now in Jerry Riccardi's capable and flexible hands. Chris Ruzich recorded a couple of bass takes for Oily Rainbows. We also listened to Kitchen Matches and played through I Can Walk. Tried some Muffy guitar melodies during the Kitchen Matches outro. 061822 Sent Patrick Strinker. 39 active tracks and that includes two drum takes. Transposed the 5 instruments in the B section from my demo of Who's That Plumber? into our live session that is longer and at a different tempo. Added a mellotron vibraphone to Show Me Your New Contacts. 061522 Recorded bass and backing vocals for Merry Blaze. 061422 Finally sent Patrick Dolemite. 35 tracks. Will start prepping Stinker next. 061322 Fiddled with Kitchen Matches a bit. Need an instrumental or vocal melody for the C section. I need to finish I Can Walk so that the people around me are spared the endless searching through the chord sequences. 060822 Recorded drums for Everybody Does It. Now we move on to culling best takes of the songs and then overdubbing. Current recorded to partially recorded song list: Merry Blaze Stinker Dolemite Ring of Stars Who is this Plumber? Lethal Portions Laundry Day Shut Up You Crazy Diamond Open Sack Adorable Deplorable Its My Island Rattle Dingus No Limes Failure to Rise Swimmer's Shoulders The Last Moth June Everybody Does It 060522 Sent Show Me Your New Contacts to Leon for Keyboard Konsideration. 060422 Sent Jerry Show Me Your New Contacts and The Cats of Summer. Chris Ruzich tracked parts for The Cats of Summer, Show Me Your New Contacts and took a couple of swings at Oily Rainbows. 060322 Whacked the Show Me Your New Contacts section out of the I Can Walk monstrosity and now I have a 4 minute ditty Chris can bass up tomorrow. 060122 Took some earnest stabs at recording June. Next week we'll do Everbody Does It and then move on to step 2. 052522 I try, awkwardly and painfully try, to avoid the crowd, avoid trends, and yet there sits an Altoids case velcro'd to my pedalboard. A pedalboard purse. Scheduled Chris Ruzich for Oily and Cats. We recorded some takes of Failure to Rise. Had some issues so will rinse and repeat next week. 052322 I don't think that I've ever used the word "difficult" organically. 052222 Added a new section to I Can Walk since I'm having trouble with it. 052122 I can't work out all of the time changes in I Can Walk and now I wish I was a little bit dead. 051822 Recorded more live takes of Swimmer's Shoulders and The Last Moth. 051522 Sang some more takes for The Cats of Summer and roughed out another arrangement for I Can Walk. 051222 Recorded drums for Swimmer's Shoulders and worked out The Last Moth for next week. I think that will just leave Failure to Rise to do. 051022 Back from a visit with John McConnell. Had great fun dicking with his guitars and boards and several song bits were born. Immediately bought a Line 6 M5 and a TC Electronics Spark upon my return. 042722 Recorded drums for Adorable Deplorable. I was amazed to discover that we just have a 2-3 left before we can actually start tracking other instruments. 042422 I saw an ad on a music forum - a mother begging for a studio opportunity for her daughter. She ended the plea with "TIA." Type "Thanks in advance." you lazy leech. 042122 Recorded some more variations for I Can Walk. I want to finish sketching this one by early May. 042022 Got off a decent version of Open Sack. 420 Day was brutalized and left lifeless near the old quarry. Got piano tracks from Leon for The Cats of Summer. This is our first collaboration since Porps in the 1980s. 041622 Made myself clean up the 13 pedal board by properly routing all of the power cables underneath. Looks snazzy. My neighbors have a male and a female dog. The male dog isn't long for this world. In order to ease its suffering they have been giving it cannibas butter. This has dramatically improved its quality of life. I went outside this morning and the male was lying lifeless on the ground while the female was grinding her groin mercilessly on his head. It was very disturbing. I wasn't sure if it was a demonstration of mourning for his passing or a celebration dance. I struggled to think of what to tell the neighbors. "Your dog is dead and getting skull- fucked." I went inside and hugged all of my cats, lamenting the day I will be faced with their passing. I went back outside an hour later the dog was sitting happily on the deck. He hadn't died. He was just passed out from the edibles. 041522 Found a neat sound. I have a Mono Synth pedal that I've just never been able to justify the space on a board for. I put it back on and set the effect very low so that when I play chords it makes wonderful random glitchy noises. Replacing my Canyon delay with a Memory Man Deluxe. 041422 Must have a Mercury7 and a Rainbow Machine. Must. 041322 Recorded live versions of Shut Up You Stupid Diamond and Merry Blaze. Rehearsed Open Sack for next week. 041022 Added another long section to I Can Walk. 040722 Record the layout for I Can Walk because I need another unfinished 9 minute song on my to-do list. 040622 Got a couple of good live takes of Laundry Day. I think this means we have live drums with Jerry Riccardi for: Stinker Dolemite Ring of Stars Who is this Plumber? Lethal Portions Laundry Day Shut Up You Crazy Diamond Open Sack Adorable Deplorable ...and tracks from Allen for: Its My Island Rattle Dingus No Limes ...and that leaves: Failure to Rise Swimmer's Shoulders The Last Moth ...and still needs some work: The Salty Way Spain Everybody Does It ....still to be done. (updated 4/27/22) 040422 The Walrus Audio Slö is now my official over-used pedal. Big. Dark. Oily. 040322 Sent Chris Ruzich The Cats of Summer. For my records - songs for consideration for "solo" album thus far: Gulch Pox Oily Rainbows The Cats of Summer Stealing Books The Salty Way Kitchen Matches Chris and I worked on something last year that I can't find. Time to wring some value out of the journals. ...and the journals pay dividends. The song is Kitchen Matches. 040222 Finally getting my voice back, such as it is, after a severe month-long sinus infection. Tidied up Oily Rainbows and sent Leon a version of The Cats of Summer. 033022 Recorded a live version of Lethal Portion and got Laundry Day ready for next week. 032622 The Lord Dr. Fennel gave me lyrics for Cats of Summer, rendering Cats of Summer not suitable as a title. 032522 Recorded the guts of The Cats of Summer for the solo album. Talked to Leon Kopelivich about adding some piano to some of the songs. 032322 Finished recording the 2nd half of Who is this Plumber? Talked about starting on Lethal Portions next week. 031622 We had a go at recording Who is this Plumber? It's made up of 5 sections with varying tempos and time signatures so we decided to approach it one section at a time. Got mired in section 3. 031322 I've been struggling to find meaningful ways to employ my Syntax Error pedal. Found two neat spots in oilyrainbows. Before this I was using the DM12 as a MIDI controller for guide drums for one bit and as a synth for another. Discovered tapping out MIDI drum bits while the synth is recording on an audio track. Inspired a nice romp for an outro. 031222 Sent what I had so far for Oily Rainbows, now to be referred to as oilyrainbows, for drums and bass. Sauced up a riff section by using the Tele instead of the Jazzmaster. 031122 I love that thing where the lyric you heard is better than the lyric they used. I found one of these tidbits in Vietnamerica and will be employing it in the intro of Oily Rainbows. 031022 Week-long sore throat now in the lungs so the voice is Barry White through a fuzz pedal, Will catch up finishing up Oily Rainbows in about a week. 030822 Have Oily Rainbows arranged. Just need to tidy up the vocals before sending to Chris Ruzich and Jerry. Got a note from Danny indicating that he's got the live set up in our space now going directly to Pro Tools. We should really start churning out music now. 030222 We're inching towards a system for recording live. Had a go at Ring of Stars with my wobbly guide track. Everybody was a little cranky but a listen to the results afterwards was healing. I have loads of songs that need to be recorded so I'm going to start putting them out by myself while the Petunias get caught up with our to-do pile. 022622 Finished getting stuff out of our previous space. Sooooo many keyboard stands. 022322 Had a run at recording live bass, guitar and keyboards. 022222 Sent Danny some of the guitar parts for Ring of Stars to marry with Jerry's drum bits from last week. Going to try to record the remaining instruments live together. 021822 Same more takes for Ring of Stars. 021622 Recorded some live takes of Ring of Stars, mostly to harvest some lively drum tracks. 021122 Girl for Samson's Old into Young is now up on Bandcamp. Available everywhere else on Monday. My contributions for this album where originally intended for juiceboxberries. 020622 Danny and Dave made some progress on Danny's studio. Our first rehearsal with everybody using headphones. 020522 Finally came up with words for Ring of Stars. We've been performming that one for about 2 years with 6 mintues of gibberish. 012522 I want to use the word dynamite in the Dolemite lyrics. Perhaps "Dolemite, big disco dynamite". 012422 Bumped the Ring of Stars tempo up to 130. 012222 Set the Ring of Stars demo to Dave and Jerry for rhymic concerns. Of course it's agonizingly slow compared to the version we've been doing live. 011922 An away game as our current host is on holiday. 011222 The day the man who killed the ants came by. East-West Pipeline. 011122 Sent Danny the framework for the Salt trilogy. 110921 Sketched out The Salt Trilogy - three chunks of songs that we have been fooling with at rehearsals. Having fun tweaking a ZOOM G1 Four that I got for a hundred clams or dollars or whatever. 010622 Had a dream that I was chatting with Andy Partridge and just through saying things out loud to another human (in my head) I felt shame for not being more aggressive with getting these albums finished. I hearby resolve. 010122 Learning new songs at the same rate that we're forgetting old ones. Current rehearsal setlist: Everybody Does It It's An Open Sack Laundry Day Lethal Portions The Last Moth The Salt Trilogy Who Is This Plumber? Songs that we played live for the last 2 years and now have likely have forgotten, and still haven't recorded: Adorable Deplorable Dingus Dolemite Failure to Rise It's My Island Let Her Run Merry Blaze No Limes Rattle Ring of Stars Shut Up You Crazy Diamond Stinker Swimmer's Shoulders The Blue One 2021 (recording 6th album/playing out again?) 122821 Came up with the rest of the words for Laundry Day - formerly Ladle & Savor. 122521 Recorded Ladle & Savor and came up with some melodies. 121921 Had a kind of holiday party. Introduced melody/lyrics to Switchblad Sisters. 120121 Another night of arranging, rehearsing and jamming. Three new seeds for me to start on and not finish. 112821 Got together and recorded backing vocals and keyboards for Dolemite. Fiddled with new stuff afterwards. 112721 Sang some more Dolemite takes. 112221 Pizza practice. Added Sushi (Lethal Portions) to our practice routine. Plan to finish up Dolemite and get it to Patrick this weekend. 111721 Still just rehearsing the newest stuff. Did a little set review at the end. Jerry always wants to play Rattle and Billy Corgan's Cadillac. 111121 Added some simple melodies to Sushi. 111021 It seems like every rehearsal produces the guts to a new song. Dave brought sushi so what do you think the working title is? 110421 Imported a bit of Everybody Does It into my workstation and played with melodies and keyboard parts. 110321 We accidentally came up with a Cramps-sounding tune currently titled Everybody Does It. 100321 Still fleshing out and refining new stuff. We managed to play The Last Moth all the way through. A section and a few chords away from finishing what is currently a new instrumental. 102021 Our first time with The Last Moth. Worked on the other new songs and talked about strategies for getting the recording process rolling. Also talked more about adding a hand percussionist but decided not to fiddle with the vibe we have right now. 101621 I re-worked The Last Moth without the original drums and think I have something. 101521 Hung out with Michael for a few hours. 100921 One of the best things about having a few bands play before us is meeting new people. Loved the cats in Flash Floods. Sweet boys who live and love music. Sevrin was a delight as always. You need to scramble out and catch his set the next time he performs. The sets were halted occasionally by power outages which became increasingly frequent by the end. We've ony played in Lawrence twice but both times people were attentive and enthusiastic. At some of the other venues we have played takes an hour for the crowd to get over the disappointment that we aren't a blues or classic rock band before we can win them over. 100621 Came up with a couple of bits last night that will turn into something. Session-78 and Session-79. 092321 Married Who is this Plumber and The Pig in the Sky in Pro Tools. Tempo/meter change and all! 092221 Married Who is this Plumber and The Pig in the Sky for the live set. 092121 Had some bass/rhythm ideas for Pig that I recorded. 091521 Introduced Who is this Plumber? and The Pig in the Sky and nearly got them all sorted out. Also fleshed out a thing we've been fooling with at practices. 091421 Changed the tempo for The Pig in the Sky to 150 and tacked Somebody's Intro onto the end ala Adorable Deplorable. 091021 Doing another KKFI interview in late September. These guys do SO much for Kansas City artists. 090521 Dashed out to our new rehearsal space to set up. 090321 Got away with one! Came close to having our third cancelation at Colonial Gardens but the rain stopped long enough for Scott Jelinek to do his set and for us to knock off an hour and a half before it started again. Had a great time and made new friends. 083121 Fleshed out The Pig in the Sky. 082821 Had a lot of fun playing with Sevrin and Major Matt Mason. Very inspiring sets. Thank you to everyone who came out. 082621 Thanks to KKFI's Keith Washburn for spinning Mars and Seven Little Eyes. 082521 Our show tonight at Colonial Gardens is postponed until September becase of the heat. We have rescheduled for Friday, September 3rd with Scott Jelinek. 082321 Had an acoustic practice in my livingroom with the full band. Sorted out stuff for upcoming shows and the future. 082021 Backed up the 25 songs and chunks of songs using the Save Copy As because for some reason my current setup is putting all of the audio files from all of the sessions in one Audio folder. 080921 Fully intended to complete our live calendar for 2021. This includes 2 outdoor gigs. 080721 I've not been a fan of my Boss SY1 and it's been demoted to a rarely-used board. Then I got the notiion to put it in the effects loop of the superego+. Bliss. 072721 Picked up COVID-19 from the Belton DMV last week so the bill for Friday's show will be covered by the Mystics and The Splatter Pattern. 072021 Only 1/2 of Distant Cousins (Jill Westra) will be joining us on the 25th. 071721 Got the album database caught up with some of the new stuff. Fiddled with Mac including re-singing the full song and adding some alt parts. 071621 Sevrin Eldred will be opening the show on August 28th at Mike Kelly's Westsider. 071521 I've recorded chunks of 4 songs (Mac, Mr. Cooper, Sweet, Soft Gollum, Irene Ironweed) over the last week. It's a drag. I'm talking to a few people about co-writing on some of the songs just to spread the burden around. 071421 People are always like "mrjohnny, mrjohny, what's on your magificent pedalboard?" and I'm all "Hi, I don't usually go for this sort of thing but here they are in this order:" Soul Preacher Soul Food Attack Decay Tape Reverse Synth9 Mel9 B9 Ravish Sitar Superego+ Cathedral Oceans11 320 Looper Quilter Phantom Block "but mrjohnny, mrjohnny, what about your other board?" and I'm all like curt and put off and shit and flatly spit: Joyo American Twinote Fuzz Boss SY1 Mono Synth Mod Modulator Hall of Fame Earthquaker Afterneath 071321 Thank you to everybody that made the trip to Blue Springs to hang out on a Tuesday night. Thanks so much to Jill and Kelly for a fun set and to Chris Ruzich for sitting in on some songs. We'll do it again in August. We talked a bit before DC's set about setting up our rehearsal space for recording in the Autumn and start churning out some albums. See you at 6:00 tonight when Distant Cousins take the stage. Two Forlorn Petunias have birthdays on this date. I shan't tell you who. 070921 Recorded an interview with Barry Lee at KKFI in advance of the July 30th show with The Jubilee Mystics and Splatter Pattern at the Westsider. I always have fun talking music with Barry. 070721 Grim rehearsal, which is good news before a show. Highlights: Chris Ruzich swung by to run through Glad to Pass On and Mars - the first time he and I have strapped on instruments together - and Dave's absurdly percocious nephew LJ hung out with us. 070621 July 9th show at Harley's Hideaway has been cancelled due to a scheduling conflict. We have never cancelled on a venue before for any reason. 062921 Distant Cousins added to the 7/13 show at Colonial Gardens. Flash Floods added to Gaslight Gardens bill in October. 062621 Sevrin Eldred added to the Gaslight Gardens bill in October. 062421 We've cancelled the show tonight due to inclement weather. Will reschedule for July. Likely July 13th. Josh Loper will be joining us at Harley's on the 9th. Scrambling the outfit to LC's on 18th to do a fistful of songs. Skated through Dolemite, Adorable Deplorable and Repeat. 062321 Jazzy Jazz will be sitting in on a few songs tomorrow night at Colonial Gardens. 062221 Added Distant Cousins (J. Kelly Dougherty & Jill Westra) to the bill at Colonial Gardens on August 25th. 062021 Fleshed out Gulch. I absolutely do not need any more starts to songs or even whole songs. I have to stop at some point and start managing the growing pile of unfinished material. 061621 Tried the new Ring of Stars bit at rehearsal and it seems to work fine. We came up with some mods that I'll have to go back and apply to the demo. 061321 Working on lengthening the outro of Ring of Stars. 061221 I have an Electro Harmonix-Synth9 and a Boss SY-1 on my pedalboard because sometimes I am more useful replicating synth sounds from the recordings live than proper guitar sounds. . I just haven't been able to find a useful sound on the SY-1. At least not useful enough to justify the rectangle it takes up on the board so I am picking up an Electro-Harmonix Mono Synth. This will be a useful upgrade for the presets alone. The SY-1 and Synth9 don't have presets so I have to line settings up before each song, which is not optimal. 061121 One of my favorite things about being in **stupid rock bands has always been bringing in a demo of a new stupid song and watching it come to life as the musicians sort it out. It never gets old. It's like planting flower seeds and watching the plants burst above ground minutes later. I still clearly remember the thrill of first introducing my early stuff to players in bedrooms, living rooms and basements across the metro. Nervously showing everyone the chords to my stupid song, timidly humming the stupid vocal melody, steeling myself for the negative reaction/criticism that never came - even when it probably should have! I was (and still am) so fortunate to be in situations where everyone accepted my stupid songs and made them better. Thank you for that. ** I'm annoyed by much and sub-genres absolutely qualify. If the snare hits on two and four then it's likely a stupid rock/pop song. The Eagles, The Sex Pistols, Bruno Mars, Marilyn Mansion, Herman's Hermits, Artic Monkeys, Marvin Gaye, Bobby Goldsboro, Blur, ABBA are all stupid rock/pop bands. I like stupid rock/pop music, but if you're trying to put together a stupid new band, don't list a bunch of stupid sub-genres in your ads. Why limit yourself and your music by only auditioning people that wear cuffed jeans or are only influenced by 3 stupid artists from 1994? 061021 Android "Download Not Allowed" when trying to save an MP3 attachment to my phone. Strugged with this for an hour. Found nothing on the internet. Turns out I had to have WiFi connected to successfully save an MP3 from an e-mail to my phone. I guess that's a Verizon thing to save bandwidth? 060921 Having an all acoustic session this evening. Weird at first but was rolling nicely by the end. I think we'll still go mostly electric for most venues but pull out the acoustic lineup for the Westsider since sound is an issue there. 060821 Both Jerry Riccardi and Allen Johnston replaced my drum parts on the new Girl for Samson album. Patrick played thee tracks for me last night - Cigarette (Allen), Dust (Jerry) and Present Always (Jerry). 060321 I don't want to be that band that is painfully loud. I really don't. I am committed to making playing at the best volume for each venue a priority. 060221 Added another date at Colonial Gardens. Band had our first live run at Merry Blaze. Feels good. 053121 Tidied up Merry Blaze for Allen to drum to and to use for the band to rehearse to so that we can get it into rotation because every new song I compose is possibly the greatest song ever written and must be poured into ears as soon as possible. 053021 We had a great time last night. Thanks again to Josh Loper and The Underdogs for sharing their music and to all the people that showed up. Wonderful to play to a chunk of people again! A couple of notes about future dates. The 7/31 show with The Splatter Pattern and The Jubilee Mystics has been moved to 7/30. We've added August 28th at The Westsider with Major Matt Mason and Josh Loper. BTW, I noticed that we are likely to hit our 50th live performance some time this year or early next. That feels noteworthy. 052921 Playing at Mike Kelly's Westsider in Westport tonight with The Underdogs and Josh Loper. Show starts at 7 PM. Cover is $5. 052821 Woke up in the middle of the night and came up with all of the words for Merry Blaze. Hope to show it to the band and have it ready for the June 24th gig at Colonial Gardens. 052521 1978-1979: The Jam cover David Watts, The Pretenders cover "Stop Your Sobbing" and Van Halen do "You Really Got Me". 052321 Finished Who Is This Plumber? Just need to replace temp parts with permies. 052121 Obsessing over Who Is This Plumber?, forsaking all others. 052021 Added another section to Who Is This Plumber? I actually anguished over the chord progression and it feels really nice. Talking to some other bands about some multi-band billings this Summer/Autumn. 051921 Rehearsed and worked what Saturdays were open for future gigs. 051721 Headed back Lawrence this Autumn. Gaslight Gardens on October 9th. Decided to work on Kitchen Matches and before opening the session found Who Is This Plumber. Last week I found Cherry. More chunks of songs cluttering my to do list. 051321 Adding Josh Loper to the May 29th show. The Splatter Pattern and The Jubilee Mystics will kick off the evening of July 31st. 051221 Beautiful night working on music and eating great food with Joelle and Mike. 051021 Set Allen Johnston a demo of Merry Blaze to add drums to. Danny sent me some piano riffing. 050921 Lengthened Merry Blaze. Got more Dolemite bass takes from Dave. 050721 Roughed our a version of Merry Blaze to send to Danny. 050521 Roughed out a version of Somebody's Intro to send to Danny. Shannon charted it along with Industrial Debris. 050421 Working on a date at Harley's. 050321 Tried a different approach to some of the vocal lines in Adorable Deplorabe. Recorded the guts of Somebody's Intro. 050221 Settled on The Underdogs for support for 5/29. 042921 Getting closer to having multiple bands for the next two Westsider shows. 042821 Great rehearsal. Lots of ironing out troubling bits. 042421 Pre-set up music - The Sparks "Kimono My House" and the rarities from The Kinks' "The Village Green Preservation Society". 042321 Sad Ballroom Rock in a Major Key 042221 A venue is requesting a band photo. Just about everything associated with band-business/promotion is regrettable to me. The only posed band photo I think I could stomach would be taken underwater or perhaps an overhead shot of the band in different checkout lines, mixed with other people at a store. Or maybe eating tacos. Or perhaps brooding in an alley with graffiti with our unplugged instruments. The drummer would hold his sticks. How come the singer never holds an unplugged mic in those kind of shots? 042121 Scheduled a show for us at Colonial Gardens in June. They have a beautiful outdoor stage. The date is 6/24 from 6-9 PM. It costs $10 to reserve a table. 042021 Painful start to our last rehearsal before going back to the Westsider on Saturday, but we got in sync after an hour. Decided to postpone introducing live versions of Boyfriend and Glad to Pass On until May. Sent some designs to a proper graphic design artist for t-shirts etc. 041921 Fooled with the Pox arrangement rather than finishing the 20 other songs in the basket. Essentially there are two kinds of set lists - fixed and loose. A fixed set list is like a playlist that you follow in order. Consideration has been given beforehand to which songs sound good together and everybody in the band knows what's coming up next. A loose set list is delivered by feel. You refer to the collection of songs at the conclusion of every tune and determine what would work best based on how the band is doing and how people are responding. I find this method more desirable. The downside is that if you don't quickly come up with a song there can be awkward lulls in-between numbers because the musicians need time to adjust their settings to prepare for the song. I generally try to come up with the next title during the last 45 seconds of the current tune. The panic should be visible even from the back of a small, dark bar. 041821 Recorded the framework for Pox and sent a copy to Danny. 041421 Spent a good chunk of the session sorting out Boyfrind and Glad To Pass On. Also introduced some ideas for Swimmer's Shoulders, including lengthening the last section. 041321 So many bland recommendations lately. David Bowie's Heroes, The Beach Boys' Sunflower & Roxy Music's Avalon. After that dull trio I bought The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society 3 CD set. I'd rather listen to slight variations of good songs then mediocre new songs. Also going to go after Scott Walker, The Isley Brothers and Prefab Sprout next. 040921 The June date at The Westsider has been moved to July 31st. 040721 Started on Boyfriend and Glad to Pass On from Land Ho! 040521 Started shipping copies of The Green Piano. 040321 Going birding this morning and taking Leonard Cohen's "Songs of Love and Hate", Beta Band's "Heroes to Zeros" and Laura Nyro's "Eli & the Thirteenth Confession". Loved Beta Band and Robyn. Found Nyro and Cohen a litte dated and corny. 040121 Listening to the New Pornographers and The Shins. 033121 Worked on new songs. Worked on stuff we know but don't practice very often (Sweet & Low, Beat Box Caveat, The Green Piano, Rattle etc.), tunes from the new album and songs from older albums like Boyfriend and Glad to Pass On. The Green Piano CDs are here. Danny sending me Dolemite parts. Listened to the Las album. I thought it was quite good. Bought Beach Boys "Sunflower" & "Surf's Up". Also bought Isley Brothers "3 + 3". 033021 A few times Saturday I would hear Carl, Jerry and Dave in a nice groove and just stop and let it run. What a luxury. Bought some of Scott Walker's work today. That's a long overdue listen. Today I'm listing to Bitches Brew by Miles Davis and Closer by Joy Division. 032921 Listening to Suzanne Vega and Shonen Knife. Had a little march fall into my lap. Going to fuss with it a bit instead of finishing the 16 songs that are sagging on the kitchen counter. 032721 Fun night. We did 40 originals, playing from 7 to 9:30 and then 10:15 to 11:00. Made some friends, sold some CDs. Had some volume issues that we finally sorted out by just using our monitors and shutting off the mains. Gave little eyeglass thingies to all of the eyeglass wearing members of the organization. 032621 My little eyeglass thingies are awesome! 032521 Ordered an important stage accessory that will be here before Saturday - a variety pack of bits of silicone to prevent glasses from sliding down your nose when you are engaged in the act of rocking too much. 032421 Last rehearsal before Saturday. Focused on new stuff and classics we haven't played in a while. 032321 Got a bag for the Yamaha MO6 to replace the coffin. 032021 See you next Saturday night in Westport. 031921 Listened to Television's "Adventure" for the first time. I wish I had a fresh take but my first impression matches most reviews. Coming up - The Las, The Pogues, Suzanne Vega, Snow Patrol, Shonen Knife, Franz Ferdinand, The New Pornographers and PJ Harvey. 031721 We're doing that thing where we are trying to run through everything in the set in advance of our Westsider appearance while still learning new stuff. If you are planning on coming make sure to bring roses and rotton tomatoes. That way you can make a game time decision. Listening to the Raveonettes, PJ Harvey, Joni Mitchell and just now getting to Television's "Adventure." 031421 Chris Ruzich swung by to add some bass to Kitchen Matches. He also recorded some piano and bass for a song he showed me a year or so ago. 031321 Re-sang some bits of Adorable Deplorable. 031221 Green Piano CDs are being manufactured. 031021 First time running through the Adorable Deplorable/ Area 51 merge. Getting it figured out. Collected funds for starting production on physical CDs for The Green Piano. 030821 Did some more maintenance on Adorable Deplorable. It's now 10 minutes long but could easily be 12-15 live if we don't play it like a Ramones song. 030721 Set up The Green Piano with DiscMakers for CDs. Will pull the trigger at the end of the week. 030521 Finished building the grander Adorable Deplorable. 9 minutes exactly. This weekend I need to sort out The Green Piano artwork and get a CD order started. 030421 Decided last night to have Adorable Deplorable go right into Area 51, making the whole mess Adorable Deplorable and a significant editing chore today for your humble narrator since they are different tempos. Listened to Pretty Things' S.F. Sorrow and disc one of Todd Rundgren's Something/Anything? 030321 Productive rehearsal. DJ STP made some beautiful pasta. Talked again about making CDs for The Green Piano. I just need to tidy up the artwork and submit the order. 030221 Confirmed again with Patrick that we are going to give him one song at a time for mixing and mastering. Listened to Stereolab's Emperor Tomato Ketchup. 022421 Picked up Hunky Dory, Ziggy and Aladdin Sane because I'm only familiar with the "hits". Charted out some backing vocal parts with Shannon for Area 51, Adorable Deplorables and Simmers Shoulders. 022321 Still gorging on other people's music rather than working on my own. Recent titles: The Kinks: Aurthur Monade: Monstre Cosmic Steely Dan: Pretzel Logic Neil Young: After the Gold Rush 10,000 Maniacs: In My Tribe Jane Siberry: The Walking The Byrds: Fifth Dimension Gentle Giant: Octopus U2: War Nick Lowe: Dig My Mood Edith Piaf: Compilation 021621 Enjoying Soft Machine's double album "Third" "Here on the BBC We're free to play almost as long and as loud As the foreign language classes and the John Cage interview... And the jazz groups and the orchestras on Radio 3" 021521 Listening to Monade, Helio Sequence, Gentle Giant and Matthew Sweet. Gentle Giant is dangerously close to listening to Yes. 021221 Sweet & Low on KKFI. 021021 Did some editing on Every Night, Failure to Rise, Area 51 and Adorable Deplorable in advance of tonight's rehearsal. 020921 I have at least 16 songs with 1 or more parts including chords and a melody. Maybe 10 of them are only partially completed and it's overwhelming managing where I'm at with them, especially since I keep making up new stuff. SO, I created a spreadsheet with the deets for each song and uploaded it to Dropbox so that we can monitor our progress for each song. 020821 More notes to self. Arranged, Lyrics, Drums, Bass, Vocals. x=To Do Adorable Deplorable Axxxx Area 51 ALxxx Dingus ALAxx Dolemite ALJDV Every Night xxxxx Failure to Rise xxxxx It's My Island AxJxx Kitchen Matches xxxxx Let Her Run xxxxx No Limes ALAxV Rattle AxAxx Ring of Stars AxJxx Shut Up You Crazy Diamond AxJxx Stinker ALJDV Swimmer's Shoulders ALAxx The Blue One AxJxx When the Money xxxxx 020421 Talked to Dave about some performance opportunities this summer. Tweaked the melody in Adorable Deplorable and re-learned how to play Let Her Run, not knowing that Dave, Danny and Jerry worked on it last night. 020321 Confirmed upcoming dates at Mike Kelly's Westsider. Dave, Danny and Jerry had a rehearsal at Danny's. Worked on Let Her Run. 012820 Listening to some artists that I am not that familiar with: The Sundays, Monade, Peanut Butter Conspiracy, King Crimson. I'm also exploring catalogs of artists that I know like Flaming Lips, Radiohead, The Kinks Gentle Giant, The Moody Blues and Stereolab. 012721 Down a team member which made the session awkward but we powered through and got some stuff done. 012621 I've been listening to a lot of music to get out of my head for a bit. Some of the stuff I've been consuming is so good that it's deflating. This happens to me occasionally and I have to remind myself that I'm not them and they aren't me. No harm in being motiviated by quality work, but no point in being knocked off course by it. 012021 Still splitting rehearsals between learning new stuff and keeping fresh on the older material so that we can play live for 3 hours again. 011321 Good rehearsal with a full band. Added Adorable Deplorable to the setlist. Still spending half of the sessions working on new material. 011221 Worked up a new section for Swimmer's Shoulders. Fleshed out Adorable Deplorable. 010821 Sent a rough arrangement for Area 51 to the team. 010621 Productive rehearsal. Still working out all of the new stuff, intergrating Carl and toying with lighting. 010521 Finally got a new Johnny Marie t-ship design up in the Merch shop. 010121 Still futzing with a section of music in Swimmer's Shoulders. Also need to import a little jammy thing we did from last rehearsal that seemed promising. 2020 (recording The Green Piano/6th album/Covid cancellations) 123120 Love you, Allen. 123020 Worked on new stuff and fiddled with the cans and slide projector. The new songs are coming along beautifully. 122820 Worked out a vocal melody to help transition to the last section of Swimmer's Shoulders. Image projector came so began the process of figuring out how to exploit it. Optimistically scheduling some spring dates and will cancel or honor based on the the state of the pandemic. 3/27/21 4/24/21 5/29/21 6/26/21 122320 I have an ending in mind for Swimmer's Shoulders that has been keeping me awake at night. I'm going to flesh it out today and send it to Danny. Lights came and everything works. For future me - here is the current list of songs for the next album and who will be administering drums. Dingus (Allen) Kitchen Matches (Allen) No Limes (Allen) Rattle (Allen) Shut Up You Crazy Diamond (Allen) Swimmer's Shoulders (Allen) The Blue One (Jerry) Dolemite (Jerry) It's My Island (Jerry) Ring of Stars (Jerry) Stinker (Jerry) 122120 Saw a tease for the Let It Be re-do and was knocked out by the green-red-green spot pattern on the walls in the studio. I want to replicate that in our rehearsal space for future live videos. Had a dream we were working on a schlock rock song that had the line "the 7th frame of the Super Bowl." 122020 Thanks to "Release Radar" & "On Repeat" for including Johnny Marie & the Lonesome Petunias songs in their playlists. Every ear is a triumph. 121620 Rehearsal with full band. Spent the first hour or so working on new stuff. Introduced Swimmer's Shoulders. When we're able to play out again the people that were regulars before the pandemic will hear a full set of new-to-them songs. One of those nights were words and ideas kept coming to me and I bothered to document them as they arrived. Finished off most of Swimmer's Shoulders and will introduce tonight so that we can work up a live version. 121420 Spent the morning finishing the Swimmer's Shoulders demo. Sent it to Danny for fleshing. 121120 Massaged Ring of Stars to reflect changes we discussed at last rehearsal. 120920 Ran through all of the new stuff. Implemented my idea of making Shut Up You Crazy Diamond a tango. 120820 Fooled around with some of Danny's ideas for the outro of Let Her Run and added a vocal idea. 120220 Spirited practice. Ran through a lot of the new stuff like Stinker, The Blue One, Ring of Stars, Shut Up You Crazy Diamond, Rattle, It's My Island, No Limes, Dolemite and some new additions like Sweet & Low, Beat Box Caveat and Juno Contacto. Renamed No We Her to Shut Up You Crazy Diamond and the first Shut Up You Crazy Diamond to No We Here. It will all make sense when you No We Hear them. 120120 Nearly 1,000 listens at BandCamp since the start of November. That's the result of the band and friends of the band sharing the weekly releases on their social media platforms. 113020 Shannon charted the piano parts for No We Her. 112820 Recorded the guts to Shut Up You Crazy Diamond and now want to swap names with No We Her since No We Her strikes me as more Shut Up You Crazy Diamond than Shut Up You Crazy Diamond does. 112520 Need to cement the foundation of No We Her so that I can introduce it tonight. And I did. 112420 Still fooling around with the arrangement of No We Her. 112320 Lengthened the intro to No We Her. Did another Moog solo take and tried a different bass line. 112220 Got the JohnnyMarie.com thing straightened out. It was supposed to bounce to JohnnyMarie.net and never did, unbeknownst to your humble narrator. Put the singles from The Green Piano up on SoundCloud. 112120 Thank you to Barry Lee at KKFI for giving Sweet & Low a spin on his show Signal to Noise tonight. 111920 Confirmed with team members that we aren't playing out again until the city's Covid Restrictions have been lifted. Hoping for March or April. 111620 KKFI's Signal to Noise will be playing another selection from The Green Piano Friday night. 111420 Added vocal ideas to No We Her. 111320 Pushed Reach Around off of the boat. Sketched out No We Her. 110620 The Green Piano is now available everywhere. Thanks to Barry Lee for opening Signal to Noise with Reach Around. 110520 I let Mars out today. I had planed to release it tomorrow but want to get it out ahead of the conclusion of the US Presidential election. 110420 First full practice with percussionist Carl Cherrito. It was wonderful. 110320 Shannon charted Dave Estes' keyboard parts for One More and worked on Danny's piano part at the end of Hats Off, Extraordinaire. 103020 Seven Little Eyes from The Green Piano out today. 102920 KKFI's program Signal to Noise will be playing something from The Green Piano at the start of their show on 11/6/20 at 9 PM Central. Picked up my water-soaked Strat from Matt. 102820 Album release party with nearly all of the contributors. Made a joyful noise after an amazing dinner. 102620 Digital distribution under way. I'm going to run out of highlights soon and have to resume working on the next album. 102520 Met at Danny's and played a bit before The Big Game. Had another go at halftime. Ran through Ring of Stars and Rattle. 102420 Played for 3 hours at The Westsider with Allen Johnston and Jerry Riccardi switching between hand percussion and drums. Carl Cherrito sat in on a few songs. Thanks to everybody that came out and made the night special. 102320 Made Mother available to the world today. Had multiple dinners with Allen & Joelle. 102220 2nd rehearsal with both Allen and Jerry. I've coaxed Danny into setting up a keyboard so that he can play some of his wonderful recorded parts live. When we last played in Colorado, John McConnell came up with a Time Is On My Side-feeling solo for Mother that I dug. He recorded a few takes but as the song got more stringy we decided not to use it. Last night we were casually playing the song at rehearsal and I, for some reason, started simulating John's bit and Danny, who had never heard it before, excitedly exclaimed "What's that???" The song is due to release tomorrow. Winstead's tater tots on the way back to Allen's lodging. Drinking is bad. 102120 Danny and I are picking up some percussion gear from John Bara's shop today and then having a full rehearsal tonight with Allen and Jerry. 102020 Listened to The Green Piano this AM after a few days of not. First rehearsal with Allen Johnston tonight for the 2-drummer show at The Westsider on Saturday night. Ran through his set and had time left over to do a set with Danny. 101820 Thank you for the plays, downloads and feedback for Sweet & Low. Got the artwork ready for the next 2 singles that will be released on 10/24 and 10/30. We are going to do some recording before Allen heads back to San Diego Sunday. I originally thought we could do something from the 6th album but then it occurred to me that it would be fun to record live versions of That Doesn't Turn You On and You Set It Off to release later to reinvigorate interest in The Green Piano. 101720 Digital distribution for The Green Piano launched for 11/6/20. 101620 The Green Piano has been mastered and the first single is up exclusively on BandCamp. 101520 Revisions reviewed, approved and now we are in mastering mode. 101420 Got revisions back from Patrick. You need to use this guy to mix and master your work. We worked on new stuff and old stuff that we'll be doing on the 24th that doesn't get included in the set very often. Sent Patrick a few more revisions. 101320 Spent a lot of the day sexing up our BandCamp page. I hope that if you follow us anywhere, you'll follow us there. There are so many opportunities for sales, free downloads, single releases etc. 101120 Sent Patrick my first wave of revisions. 101020 We're back at Repeal 18th on Friday, November 20th for a full show. Listening to Patrick's amazing work on The Green Piano and making notes for some revisions. 100920 Got The Green Piano mixes back from Patrick. So beautiful. 100720 Trying to learn new stuff while keeping the stuff we don't do very often (Wake for Wanderers, Parasol, White Girl) fresh. Talked more about a full time percussionist (depending on venue/ stage size) and plan to try out someone specific we have in mind for a month's worth of rehearsals to see if it will work out. 100620 Going to do some acoustic sets with a full band in November. Will post dates later this week. 100320 Sent Allen and Dave a reference track for Every Night so that we can record some live drums and bass after our show at the Westsider on the 24th. 100120 Had an amazing time playing at Repeal 18th. The whole experience with Mary, her staff and the crowd was very nurturing. God bless any club owner that takes care of bands that only do original material. Can't wait to come back! Thanks also to Carl for turning us onto the gig and for sitting in with us. We really enjoyed it. 093020 Everything is loaded up for tomorrow. I love our haunts but I'm very please to go play in a different part of the city. 092920 Patrick is working on You Set It Off, 12 of 12. 092820 Dong a full night at Repeal 18th in North Kansas City on 10/1/20. 092720 Added more songs from the first 4 albums to our BandCamp page. 092620 Working on words today. Also decided that at the October 24th show it would be fun to do whole albums in sequence. I don't know if we would do the albums in order. Sent Jerry Ring Of Stars (Got One) and The Blue One to start developing parts for. 092520 Decided to rename Got One to Ring Of Stars (Got One). 092420 Starting to convert the gibberish lyrics in the 5th albums to purposeful gibberish. 092320 Getting good responses from the percussionist ads. Danny sent me guitar parts for Stinker and Dolemite. Spent the whole rehearsal learning The Blue One, Got One (gotta change that title) and Rattle. 092120 Trying an Electro Harmonix Big Muff for the fuzz solo in Dolemite. Also picked CUVAVE an Twinote PI pedals to try because the Big Muff is so noisy. Still collecting responses from the hand percussionist ad: 5-piece band asually looking (we're in no hurry) for someone to play hand percussion on recordings and live performances of original music. We rehearse once a week and perform once or twice a month. Prefer someone whose tastes and approach are left of center - more Radiohead than Grateful Dead, more Elvis Costello than Elvis Presley, more Captain Beefheart than Captain & Tennile, more Patti Smith than Patti Smythe. Ability to move around to other instruments and sing would be amazing. Way more interested in character and reliability than talent. Pay is shit - generally 1/6th of the door. 092020 Thanks to everyone who came out last night. We had a blast playing for you. Added e-flyers to our gigography. 091720 Talked to Chris Ruzich about how to get a bass part from him for a song for the 6th album during the pandemic. Sent him demos for Every Night, Failure to Rise, Kitchen Matches and Got One for consideration. Patrick wrote to say that he was missing some guitar tracks from The Green Piano, betraying that he was now working on The Green Piano. Did a Save Copy In to capture all of the audio tracks and uploaded to DropBox. 091620 Put feelers out for a hand percussionist again. Last rehearsal before Gaslight Gardens. It's pretty amazing to have 50 songs rehearsed that we can pick from. I plan to have more for the 10/24 Westsider appearance. 091520 Patrick is at That Doesn't Turn You on. He recorded some trumpet parts today. I brought up mixing the next album as I get done with the songs and he agreed that it would be less overwhelming. Recorded some vocal melodies for When the Money and uploaded a new version of Kitchen Matches with new vocal takes. 091420 Uploaded When the Money and Kitchen Matches with a vocal idea. Got guitar harmony tracks from Danny for Dolemite. 090720 Went on a short road trip today and took a few of the mixes from the 6th album to contemplate. Was dismayed to discover that the MIDI EP in Rattle was suddenly off by several measures. Checked my backups and they are the same way. 090320 Joelle's birthday so pizza and cake. Michael came by, perhaps for the first time since the pandemic. 090120 More runs at the Dolemite solos. The fuzz dies after 10 minutes and then works intermittently after that so super annoying. I need to learn the solos using some different pedals and then when I have it down quickly record it with the homemade boxes. 083120 We are confirmed for Gaslight Gardens for September 19th. Tell you Ma. Danny loaned me some fuzz pedals that his friend Leonard made. I tried them for the Dolemite solos and love them. Imported the last takes of Stinker and Dolemite from last night in to the sessions. 083020 Off to try to get a live recording of Stinker. Got bass and drums for Stinker and Dolemite. It took about 6 hours to get everything set up, partially because Danny put fresh heads on everything. Looking at rescheduling at Gaslight Gardens on September 19th. 082920 Worked on re-arranging Red & Brown/Dolemite. 082720 The Gaslight Gardens show double booked the 12th so we are going to reschedule for another Saturday in September. Will update the calendar in a few days. 082620 I know that Patrick is mixing the album in alphabetical order. I casually mentioned One More in our last Girl for Samson session and he was familiar with it so I knew he was at least that far into the album. I brought up Reach Around last night and again I got a "Hit!" Here's what left after Reach Around: Seven Little Eyes Sweet & Low That Doesn't Turn You On The Green Piano You Set It Off 081920 Mostly worked on new stuff. Introduced The Blue One, Rattle and Got One. We also played a lot of stuff from Land Ho that we don't do live like Boyfriend, Bon Voyage and Is This Your Thing? Shannon added a TC Electronics HOF 2 reverb to her keyboard rig just for the shimmer effect in an effort to more accurately represent Dave Estes' recorded parts. Decided to go ahead and do a small run of CDs for The Green Piano. Will still do digital distribution. 081720 Sorted out Got One enough to post it on Drop Box for my mates to hear. Had another song fall out of my bottom that I named Expression Petals. This summer has been good to me. Bought a SuperEgo+ so my pedalboards are now in disarray. 081520 Finally linked up some bits for Got One. Added some more vocal takes to Swimmer's Shoulders. 081420 Showed Shannon the keyboard parts for The Blue One and Rattle. 081220 Scheduled October 24th with the Westsider. 081120 Joelle made a beautiful dinner to celebrate the August birthdays in the group. Worked some new or not-often-visted songs like It's My Island, Parasol, Repeat and Wake for Wanderers. Going to start work on Rattle and The Blue One next week. 080920 Thank you to everyone who came out last night for our 32nd performance. We had a great time playing for you. 080720 Waiving the cover for tomorrow's show at the Westsider. Buy hamburgers and beer! 073120 Patrick did something very special with Mother today. I mention this for future self to reference. 073020 Came up with a 3rd section for The Blue One. 072920 Spent a few hours tidying up things we don't play very often. Talked about putting all of the albums on the hard drive on the PA so that we can learn the proper arrangements. Also debated whether to put The Green Piano out on CD or not. 072820 Talked to Patrick a bit about his progress with the album. He spent a month on Hats Off, Extraordinaire and is now working (in alphabetical order) on Mars. 072720 I just saw an upcoming event share on Facebook where one of the bands cheered something to the effect of "Let's pack this place!" with the hashtag fcovid. I understand if you are the act you would want to play to a full house. I also appreciate what a full house might mean to any club likely struggling right now. I do question the science behind the hashtag, though I share its sentiment. Self-promotion in the new age (from MySpace to now) has been a painful thing to watch - not excluding myself. One of my favorite scenes in the film Rivers Edge depicts the media interviewing high school students about the death of their classmate and one lad, after boasting about being friends with the victim, hastily adds "I play guitar." 072620 Got a nice bass part from Dave for Rattle. 072420 Got drums from Allen for Rattle. 072320 When we scheduled our August 8th appearance at the Westsider it was intended to be a CD release party for our fifth album "The Green Piano" with Allen Johnston sitting in and Girl for Samson doing a short opening set during a pandemic recovery period. Now, none of these things are true ("The Green Piano" now set for a September release, Allen and Girl for Samson staying home while the plague continues to dully grind away) except that we're still going to play a full evening and do it as safely as possible. Masky smooches. Sent Danny a mix of Red & Brown that approximates last night's arrangement. 072220 We were short a bass player so we spent the evening reviewing stuff that we haven't done in a while. Also worked up Red & Brown. 072020 The Wine Crawl on 8/1 has been cancelled. Scribbled down bits for The Blue One. 071820 Had fun playing an hour set at The Roxy last night. Introduced a few new tunes from the 6th album and did lots of songs from The Green Piano. Thank you to everybody who came out. You sounded like a hundred people! 071620 Allen sent me drum tracks for Rattle and some ideas for Failure to Rise. I haven't had a haircut since late January. Be prepared to laugh at me with a mask on if you come to see us at the Roxy on Friday. 071320 John McConnell and Chris Ruzich both have birthdays today. Got drum tracks for Rattle from Allen. 071120 Fooled with Failure to Rise and sent the session folder to Danny to fiddle with. Hey Danny, no fucking fiddle! I mean, unless that's what you're hearing. 071020 Recorded some ideas and called ti Failure to Rise. I think I got the water too hot and it killed the yeast. 070820 Still doing 5 hour rehearsals like we have a bunch of safe, uncancelled gigs coming up. 070120 Another spirited rehearsal. 4th since the shut down. We're probably spending too much time learning new stuff when there is so much material from the other 5 albums to learn but it's kind of invigorating. 063020 Was hoping to get The Green Piano back from Patrick in August but it's looking more like the Autumn now. 062620 Dear future me: when the Mackie isn't getting output press the FW 1-2 button. Just do it. You'll be delighted with the results. Filing this under troubleshooting the Mackie/ONYX. 062520 Fun rehearsal. Very loose. 062420 Sent Allen reference tracks with more lead in time for Terry for You Set It Off and That Doesn't Turn You On. Also sent him some different mixes of Rattle to drum to. 062320 Terry recorded some horn takes for You Set It Off at Allen's studio. 062120 Checked in with Terry about horn parts. 062020 Gaslight Gardens in Lawrence in September. 061720 2nd rehearsal since the pandemic. We've a lot of rust to sand off. Trying to get No Lines, The Green Piano, One More and It's My Island ready for live. Trying to keep the sheets clean and the pillows fluffed. We may have a guest for the Westsider show in August. Hint: It's the same guest that we have everytime we play at the Westsider! Talked to Terry and he plans to get me horn parts this weekend. 061520 Sent Danny a rough demo of Let Her Run. 061320 Allen sent two more Sweet & Low takes. Playing at the Roxy on July 17th. 061020 Our first rehearsal since the pandemic. Rusty but you can still see some shine. Introduced a few of the songs from the 6th album. Discovered that my Deluxe Strat case was full of water. Not sure how it happened but it was most assuredly a boo hoo moment. 060920 NOW Patrick has the whole album in his hands. The power flashed on and off tonight and for a second I was panicked about perhaps having a session corrupted before I remembered that everything is somewhere else. 060820 The last vocal takes for The Green Piano. 060620 Tried some first-thing-in-the-morning vocal takes for The Green Piano. 060520 Received The Green Piano drum tracks from Jerry. As I prepare to audition them I discover that the project for the song does not exist. After a frantic search I found an older version that was missing recent vocal takes. Recorded a few new tracks. Will record more tomorrow and have another shot at the backing vocals. 060420 So now it looks like: The Green Piano ============ Beat Box Caveat Christian in July Hats Off, Extraordinaire Mars Mother One More That Doesn't Turn You On The Green Piano Seven Little Eyes Reach Around Sweet & Low You Set It Off Sixth Album ========= Dingus Stinker It's My Island Red & Brown No Limes Rattle Every Night Dingus has been getting shoved to the next album since Her Bows. 060320 Girl for Samson won't be playing with us at the next Westsider show. Recorded a sketch of Red & Brown and sent it to Danny 060220 Got another Seven Little Eyes take from Jerry. Should have The Green Piano take in a few days. Added everything to the hard drive for Patrick and am ready to move on to the next album. Handed the drive to Patrick. Still have a chance at getting some horn parts from Terry Powers. 060120 Got drum tracks from Jerry last night. Still need The Green Piano from him and maybe another take or two of Sweet & Low from Allen before passing this off to Patrick. 053020 Woke up and immediately after attending to the 3 maidens I tracked several husky vocals on You Set It Off. Danny sent me some harmony ideas for Seven Little Eyes that I incorporated. 052920 Back to thinking Mars and Reach Around should be on this album. Sang new lead and backing vocal takes on Seven Little Eyes. Had another go at an acoustic all the way through with the RODE on the bridge and an SM57 on the neck. Allen thinks he can get horns this weekend for That Doesn't Turn You On and You Set It Off. Jerry is promising the balance of his drum tracks by Sunday. I plan to hand everything over to Patrick on Monday night when have our first Covid-era GFS session. 052820 Sang more lead vocal takes for Mother and Seven Little Eyes. Sang more harmonies for Hats Off, Extraordinaire and That Doesn't Turn You On. I initially used guitar organs on No Limes. Added a proper keyboard organ today. 052720 Sang more takes of Hats Off, Extraordinaire and added more solo variations to One More. 052620 Got drum tracks from Allen for Sweet & Low and No Limes. Added more guitars to That Doesn't Turn You On. 052420 Sang new takes of Hats Off, Extraordinaire and The Green Piano. Need to do harmonies for both and work out the transition from the B to C part in Hats Off. 052320 Got bass parts from Dave for Sweet & Low, Stinker, The Green Piano and Christian in July. 051820 Thanks to WFMU's Nick The Bard for giving Capers a spin. 051620 Met with our host to discuss our June resumption of rehearsals. Sent Danny a sketch of No Limes. 051320 Danny and I are still working on new stuff while waiting on bass and drum parts for a few songs on The Green Piano. For my own records: The Green Piano ============ Beat Box Caveat Sweet & Low Mother You Set It Off That Doesn't Turn You On The Green Piano Seven Little Eyes Christian in July Hats Off, Extraordinaire Mars One More Reach Around Sixth Album ========= Dingus Stinker It's My Island Every Night Rattle No Limes 051020 Trying to get some of my phone ideas into Pro Tools for future songs while still making some progress on The Green Piano. Fleshed out Rattle and sent it to Danny for some love. 050920 Got some bass parts from Dave for Hats Off, Extraordinaire and keyboard tracks from Dave Estes for One More. 050820 The May 16th show at the Westsider is postponed. 050420 I think The Benton County Wine Crawl has been re-scheduled for August 1st. 043020 Got final tracks from Allen for Dingus and It's My Island. 042620 Had some overnight ideas for Every Night that I implemented upon waking. Songs are made up of a series of problems that have to be solved. It's that kind of shit that keeps me awake at night. Got guitar parts from Danny for Every Night and some drum takes for It's My Island from Allen to audition. 042520 Got bass tracks from Dave for It's My Island and One More. 042420 Danny sent some more ideas for the solo in It's My Island. Twin slide attack! Uploaded a mix of Every Night for Danny to futz with. 042320 Danny came up with a nice transition for It's My Island. I came up with a temporary bass part. Recorded another song rather than finishing what I have. Every Night. 042220 Got new tracks from Allen for That Doesn't Turn You On. Perfect! Danny is working on sexing up the transitions in It's My Island. 042020 When taking a break from recording The Green Piano I like to fiddle with my pedal board. It mostly consists of Electro-Harmonix stuff because I dig them. They are made in the USA and they will repair any pedal and ship it back for $25. It's not loaded with boosts and distortions. In fact, while looking at reveiws for the Boss SY-1 I was delighted to see a demo that included the sub-title "No guitar solos or blues licks." Here's my current chain: Electro Harmonix Soul Food Electro Harmonix Soul Preacher Boss SY-1 Electro Harmonix Mel9 Electro Harmonix B9 Electro Harmonix Canyon Electro Harmonix Mod11 Electro Harmonix Oceans 11 Electro Harmonix Cathedral Electro Harmonix HumDebugger Pedals that have spent some time on the board and then were demoted, ususally because there is limitied space (so no under- performers) or they one were one trick ponies: Electro Harmonix Ravish Sitar Electro Harmonix Small Stone Electro Harmonix Key9 Electro Harmonix Big Muff Pi Electro Harmonix Silencer Electro Harmonix Analogizer Electro Harmonix LPB1 Loads of Mooer, Joyo and Donner stuff There, we talked gear. 041920 Got Danny's Hat's Off parts and they really sex up the song. 041820 Finished cleaning up all fo the songs for The Green Piano and what we have for the 6th album. Added a few more parts to Hats Off, Extraordinaire and requested some more parts from Danny. This song is nearly 9 minutes long. That's right, I told you that the song is nearly 9 minutes long. 041520 Cleaned up The Green Piano, Christian in July and One More for Patrick. 041420 Sketched out Sound Hold. 041120 Added some bass ideas to Christian in July. Thinking that The Green Piano might be a 9 song record and the rest will go on the 6th album. The Green Piano ============ Beat Box Caveat Sweet & Low Mother You Set It Off That Doesn't Turn You On The Green Piano Seven Little Eyes Christian in July Hats Off, Extraordinaire Sixth Album ========= Mars Dingus Stinker One More Reach Around It's My Island 040920 Recorded more rhythm guitar tracks for Christian in July. Having a hard time getting it to feel and sound right. I did switch from sitting the RODE NT1-A in front of the amp to draping a SM47 in front of the speaker with reasonable results. 040820 Sang a half-dozen takes of Christian in July. Imported some nice piano parts for The Green Piano from Danny. 040720 We have a couple of shows coming up in early May. If the distancing order is lifted on 4/24 this will give us one week to rehearse after having not rehearsed for I don't know how long. Tricky stuff. 040420 Lengthened the end of The Green Piano and added guitars and organ. Shannon sang harmonies on Beat Box Caveat, Sweet & Low, It's My Island and Seven Little Eyes. Danny is recording some more piano takes for The Green Piano. Jerry has one GFS song to finish before he helps finish up the drums on this album. 040120 Added more guitar bits to That Doesn't Turn You On and It's My Island. 033120 Sang more takes of That Doesn't Turn You On. Comped them and the takes I did yesterday of Seven Little Eyes. 033020 Sang more takes of Seven Little Eyes after finishing the lyrics last night. Got bass takes for One More from Dave. 032920 Got drums for Beat Box Caveat so that one is ready to ship. 032820 Got bass part from Dave for Beat Box Caveat and guitar bits from Danny for It's My Island. 032520 Everybody, including Allen, working on The Green Piano tonight. I spent time writing words for It's My Island and straightening out one of those freaky Pro Tools issues that caused a timing issue in the song. 032420 Still tidying up sessions for Patrick. Added a jazzy C section to It's My Island and came up with a scratch vocal melody to play with. 032220 Kansas City has instituted a ban prohibiting non-essential social activities effective for 30 days. That finishes off our April performance schedule. The Benton County Wine Crawl has been postponed until September. Cleaned up a bunch of sessions for Patrick this weekend. 032120 Starting to think about cutting down the length of this album and getting it out. It feels like the more recent songs have nothing to do with the original topic. Uploaded new versions of just about everything so that Dave can cut some tracks from home. Added some new guitar and bass parts to It's My Island. 032020 Still grinding away. What else can I do? Sent Danny a demo of It's My Island to play with. Recorded more vocal takes for You Set It Off. 031820 Life During Wartime: Day 57 Sang more takes for Mother and got Reach Around ready to hand off. (That bit of word play was purely organic and magic.) Sang more ideas for It's My Island. 031720 Worked on getting Mother and YSIO ready for Patrick. Tracked some more guitar parts. 031620 Kansas City has instituted a ban on all gatherings of 50 people or more for the next 8 weeks due to the Covid-19 outbreak. This will most likely wipe out our schedule until August. On the upside, there will be nothing preventing us from finishing The Green Piano unless it ends up requiring toilet paper. 031520 Thanks to the audience at Christine's Firehouse last night for surviving the transition from cover band to Johnny Marie & the Lonesome Petunias back to cover band. We got through it together. This was our 30th appearance together. 031420 Doing a little pop-up set tonight in North Kansas City. Danny has another gig so we'll be doing vanilla versions of some of the songs. On the upside, for the first time it will be socially acceptable to wipe off the microphone before using it. I've waited a lifetime for this day. 031220 Playing on Saturday, April 18th at 7 PM at the Roxy. 031120 We've decided not to tavel to San Diego so our next shows will be in April. 030820 Got some guitar parts from Danny for the temporarily-titled "One More" 030720 Sent horn info to John Legge and Terry Powers in San Diego for You Set It Off and That Doesn't Turn You On. Dave on his way over to track some bass parts. I want to be done with this album and start writing about something other than You Know What. Ended up tracking bass parts for You Set It Off, That Doesn't Turn You On, Reach Around and Mother. 030520 Booked 8/8/20 at the Westsider for an album release party for The Green Piano. Edited One More to reflect the changes we've made at rehearsals. For our drummers - here are the songs that Allen has finished and that Jerry needs to track: Allen Hats Off, Extraordinaire Christian in July You Set It Off Reach Around Beat Box Caveat Mars Mother Jerry Stinker Seven Little Eyes Intro Dingus Sweet & Low The Green Piano 030420 The Green Piano and the other new songs coming along nicely. 022620 Taught the new Hats Off bit to the Sad Petunias and it came off better than I had hoped. We also worked on The Green Piano, Glad to Pass On and Juno Contacto. Joelle and Michael made loads of food for Fat Tuesday. 022520 Came up with a 46 second intro to Hats Off, Extraordinare. We've married White Girl to the end of the song live, making the whole pile of music about a third of a set in length. 022420 Posted Now Here from the 2/2/20 Westsider performance on our YouTube channel. 022320 Band breakfast. Swung by a thrift store afterwards to see if I could find a vintage piece of luggage to house my unweildy pedalboard. Found an American Tourister that fits it perfectly for 75 cents. 022220 Uploaded a full version of Stinker from the Westsider on YouTube. 022120 Sent Allen reference files for Stinker and Seven Little Eyes and horn files for You Set It Off and That Doesn't Turn You On. 022020 Dave wants to run everybody into the PA in the future so that we can do a better job blending music and vocals SO, I bought a Quilter Phantom Block Interface. Might be handy for San Diego too. 021920 Supporting the Groove Pilots and this year at the 2020 Benton County Wine Stroll in Warsaw, Missouri. 021620 Saturday, April 4th marks 2 years since our first live performance at McGuire's Tavern. I think we should commemorate it with another show somewhere. 021320 Re-staged our rehearsal space, took a few stabs at Glad to Pass On and then squirted off to have a few drinks at the Piano Room during their open mic hosted by our friend Karen McCorkindale Baum. 021220 Cris Walkinshaw died today. Cris was the drummer in Porps. He was a true artist behind those Gretsch drums and a marvelous lyricist. Love to you. 020820 What a wonderful night at the Westsider. A small venue stuffed with very enthusiastic and musically savy listeners. A dream scenario for a musician. Click here for a brief bit of video. 020620 Sharing a bill at the Westsider on 5/16/20 with Ghost Tapes from Denver, CO. 020520 Last rehearsal before Saturday night. Very productive. Continued the dangerous habit of seeking out hamburgers at 11:30 PM. 020320 Another run through the set. As you know, we will be using two drummers at our appearance at the Westsider. The non- drumming drummer will be playing hand percussion. It does wonderful things to the songs and has renewed my interest in looking for someone to do it full time. 020220 Watched the Super Bowl at Danny's with rehearsals before and after the game. 020120 Andy Gill's machete hacks have unconsciously become instinctual for me. 013020 Croaked my way through a refresher set. Excited to introduce some of the new/old stuff on Saturday. 012820 Incapacitated by some virus. Dr. Brown brought over soup. 012420 Aborted the drum session until after the Westider gig. Just couldn't get the QSC to monitor Pro Tools. We recorded drums for Gardenaire using the ONYX and 4 microphones! SM57 above the snare, SM57 above the rack toms, PG52 on the kick and a near the floor tom and ride cymbal, acting as an overhead. Thought I had thoroughly test the QSC with Pro Tools but I found a monitoring issue that cost me two hours of futzing before giving up. Waiting on a response from Patrick before going to Plan B. Michael gave me some ideas for fonts and font colors for the album artwork so I got started on the layout in Illustrator. Patrick's plan for drum recording setup for future self. We're using Dave's QSC TouchMix-30 Pro as an interface. OH - 2 Audio-Technica AT4040s Kick - Shure PG52 Snare - Shure SM57 Tom 1 - Shure SM57 Tom 2 - Shure SM57 Floor Tom - Shure SM57 Room Mic - RODE NT1-A Hi-Hat - Shure Beta 58 Bottom Snare - Electro-Voice ND96 012320 Made some edits to Seven Little Eyes and Green Piano per suggestions made by team members last night. Spending the rest of the day getting my space set up to record drums. Finally got a conversation going with someone at MusicTribe. Of course they asked if I had reset the keyboard. I brought it home from the studio and of course now the issue is mostly gone. No noise in the LR out, just in the headphones. I recorded the noise for them, per their request, and reset the keyboard. Of course it had no impact on the issue. 012220 Confirmed doing a night at Gaslight Gardens on 05/02. Focused on new stuff and got a lot done tonight. We can now confindently add Wake for Wanderers, Hats Off, Extraordinaire, White Girl, Nellie Ordinary, Blister Beetle and Seven Little Eyes to the set. I don't think Green Piano is going to be done in time for the 8th. 011720 I sold my Juno 106 in 2017 to help finance Her Bows. There wasn't a live version of the band at the time so I figured I could get good synth sounds out of software. As the live band became a thing I bought a Behrigner DeepMind 12 to replace the Roland and a Korg X50 for some basic piano sounds. In less than a year I have had 3 issues with the DM12, two that required a ticket. The keyboard has a 3 year warranty. It can take weeks for Music Tribe! to respond to the claim - despite indicating that someone will respond in 24 hours - so I figure once I send it off for repair it will be gone a long time. So, I bought a Yamaha MO6 hoping that it will have a decent piano and enough classic synth sounds to replace the often-out-of- commision DeepMind12. It's also appealing to consider replacing lugging two keyboards and a two tier stand with a single board and stand. MO6 has arrived and it seems like it is going to do the trick, though the piano doesn't seem dramatically better than the X50. 011620 Have Jerry and Patrick scheduled to track drums for the long-overdue Girl for Samson album and the balance of the current JMLP album. 011520 Long, raucous rehearsal. Having a difficult time getting in as many new songs as I would like before the next performance. 011320 Got a Yamaha MO6 to replace the Korg X50. Getting some nibbles from Lawrence venues. 011220 Just got a message from Danny confirming that he'll be availble for Artist of the Week at Navajo Live! in San Diego. Still hoping to take more Kansas City Sad Petunias with me! Figured out how to get the White Girl intro saved onto the looper for live performance. 011020 Bumped the tempo of Green Piano up from 116 to 124. 010820 Excellent rehearsal. Finally have Sultan Eyes worked up like the recording. Seven Little Eyes is nearly done. Several other new ones and old new ones are a week or so away. Contacted a bunch of Lawrence venues about weekend opportunities this spring. 010620 Sang some Green Piano takes. Still have some words to sort out for Seven Little Eyes. 010420 Determined to finish all lyrics today and come up with a set list for the Westsider. And I did. Who's a good boy? 010320 Shannon has started to re-do her parts and charts so that we get closer to sounding like the album arrangements. 010220 The DM12 is making a noise. Still under warranty but don't want to be without it until after the Westsider on the 8th. Going to put a limiter on it and then ship it off via Priority Mail the day after the show. 2019 (recording The Green Piano/growing live and recording lineup) 113119 I want to start getting our feet wet in Lawrence venues. Looking to share the stage on 2-3 band bills. Last night Dave had an idea about the music leading up to the bridge in Seven Little Eyes. Danny agreed and added an ammendment that I edited this morning and uploaded. Made myself write words for Green Piano. 113019 Long practice in Danny's studio - which includes a proper bar and sinister but effective sound room. Still working on new things and sorting out some old stuff. Took the Korg X50 to Wilburwerkes Audio. Not powering up correctly, screen blank. 112919 Changed the Christmas Ornaments to Green Piano. 122819 Went to Mesobi to see Chris Ruzich play with New Common Ground. Such a rock. 122519 Spending Christmas digging out a space in the studio to set up and record Jerry for the balance of the Girl for Samson and Johnny Marie material. If Jerry happens on this post before I can break it to him, I would remind him that we recorded all of Allen's parts for Gardenaire and chunks of Land Ho (I think) here. 122318 Introduced Green Piano to the Forlorn Petunias. Shannon's Korg X50 bit the dust so need to find another affordable digital piano option. May go Yamaha CP50. We are Artist of the Week at Navajo Live on 3/19/20. Also doing a private party on 3/21/20 while we're in San Diego. 122219 Handed off charts to Erik. Ran through Green Piano keyboard parts with Shannon. 122119 Printed horn charts for Erik. Printed the parts that Dave Estes submitted for Mother and You Set It Off for Shannon. 122019 Erik Hulse is going to contribute horn parts for That Doesn't Turn You On and You Set If Off! Fooled with Green Piano all day. 121819 Focusing on some fresh material tonight - Seven Little Eyes, Whte Girl, Wake for Wanderers, Nellie Ordinary and Hats Off Extraordinaire. Still fleshing out Green Piano. 121619 New bit fell out of my bottom. Initially titled Christmas Ornaments in honor of the dozen Northern Cardinals that dot the Rose of Sharon that borders my backyard gardens. Ultimately titled Green Piano. Imported Dave's MIDI for You Set It Off and Mother. Really lovely stuff! 121419 Had breakfast with Shannon and Danny before doing some tracking. Recorded guitar parts for Seven Little Eyes, That Doesn't Turn You On and You Set It Off. Sent Allen a That Doesn't Turn You On refrence mix to drum to. Listening to a Dave Estes solor for Mother and then printing out charts for Shannon for Seven Little Eyes. With the Davey's gig out of the way we are now looking at 6 blissful weeks of adding new songs to our set and refreshing some material that we used to do. It will be great fun to be able to throw a out a lot of surprises in future shows. 121319 Confirmed a full show at Mike Kelly's Westsider with Allen Johnston & Jerry Riccardi on Saturday, February 8th, 2020. The recorded version of That Doesn't Turn You On is still different than the live version so I spent some time today prepping the recording for more drum takes. Lengthened the "set feet prove to be wrong" section and added the repeat of the carnival bridge to the end. Danny will come over tomorrow and add his bits. 121219 Thank you to all of our friends who bothered on a Thursday night. We are so grateful for you. Got a backup J. Mascis Jazzmaster just in time for tonight's show. 121119 BBC Sound Effects 120919 At this point we are starting the show at Davey's on Thursday and playing for a little over an hour. Picked up keyboard tracks from Dave Estes for You Set It Off. Beautiful stuff. 120819 The lineup for this Thursday is in flux. Will post updates here and on social media. 120419 Good rehearsal. Worked on a potential set for Davey's but also fooled around with some old and new stuff like Her Bows, Seven Little Eyes and Hats Off, Extraordinaire. Celebrated Michael's upcoming birthday and Joelle, as usual, made something awesome to eat. Got some keyboard parts from Dave Estes for You Set It Off. 120319 Taking the stage around 8:30 PM at Davey's Uptown Rambler Club on 12/12/19. Tickets are $7. 120119 Seven Little Eyes: made minor adjustments to the arrangement and tracked more vocals, bass and acoustic guitar. Made up a melody for the bridge. 113019 Danny came over and we added some guitar tracks to Stinker/Love. Also added classical guitar, acoustic and keyboards to Seven Little Eyes. Dave Estes came by to get the album on a thumbnail drive so that he can add some keyboard parts. 112919 OK, I back to making an album in earnest now. Finshed making the Stinker arrangement match the live version. Imported drums for Mother, Christian in July and Hats Off, Extraordinaire. Shannon recorded her Moog solo in Mother and sang her live parts in Christian and That Doesn't Turn You On. Ran into an issue with Mother. I sing the "Can of fruit..." line differently live than on the recording so I must choose! 112819 Manged to smash Love onto the end of Stinker. For this, I am thankful. 112319 Today is a come-to-jeebus day for me. I created two loose instrumentals (Stinker & Love) that we have developed in rehearsals. Developed differently than the recordings. Today I need to create a single session that agrees with our live template (including tempo changes) and includes as many of the good parts already recorded as I can. Fortunately there isn't much of this kind of editing left to do before I punt this album into hyperspace. Ugh! Recording music with a computer is stupid! In Pro Tools, delete an unwanted tempo marker by left clicking on it and dragging it off of the screen. You'll see the cursor turn into a trash can. Now off to relearn how to remove partial measures from the start of the song. Notes from Patrick about how to merge two sessoins with different tempos in Pro Tools: Joining two sessions with different tempos can be challenging, that's where the track warp feature becomes a burden. The best way to do it is, for the session you'll be importing from, turn off "ticks" on all the tracks, including MIDI, and set them to samples. Then open the session you're importing to and open the "import session data" dialogue. Import the tracks from the other session (the one you set to samples), move them where you want them on the timeline, making sure the start point for the new track is on the grid. Then add the new tempo at the start of the new track and then set everything back to "ticks." 112219 Got the balance of the drum tracks that Allen and I recorded in San Diego. 112019 Practice without Shannon. We sorted out all of the bits in Stinker and Love, the two instrumentals on this album. Took a stab at Nellie Ordinary with Danny singing. Sounded great! Joelle and Michael made a beautiful soup. 111319 First rehearsal as a 6 piece. Dave Estes is now playing keyboards, guitar and hand percussion. Some more movement on the December 12th thing. 111019 Thanks to Tim Kelly and our friends in the Groove Pilots for inviting us up for a couple of numbers at Jake's Place. It was exactly one year ago to the day that we shared the stage at Mike Kelly's Westsider. Pictures from the peformance are on Instagram and Facebook. 110919 Going with Jerry and Shannon to see the Groove Pilots tonight. Going to visit with Dave Estes beforehand to talk about becoming the 6th Forlorn Petunia. Dave plays keyboards, guitar and percussion. I've started to feel like there aren't enough good songs to complete this album. This is probably partially because the material has been laying around so long. I'm used to spitting out albums without the extra 6 months of reflection and trudging activity. One of the things bothering me is having two instrumentals. Today, while lengthening Stinker, I'm going to add Love on at the end. That should make for a peppy little musical journey. 110619 Practice without Shannon. Dave Estes sat in on keyboards for a few songs. Jerry dragged a microphone over to his kit for the first time. I need to: Add lengthened parts to the end of Stinker. Extend F# in That Doesn't Turn You On Chorus. Speed up Mars. 110319 Danny and I roughed out a song with the banjo and guitar. 110219 Rehearsal with Danny, Brian, Allen, Shannon and I. Did our set at 6:30. Shannon and Danny sat in on some songs with Dogfish Bark. 110119 Finished tracking drums for Hats Off. Jerry will do the balance of the record. 103119 Recorded drums for Christian in July, Hats Off, Extraordinaire and Mother. 103019 Got drum takes for You Set It Off and started on Christian in July. 102819 Another practice with Brian Marshall. 102719 First practice with bassist Brian Marshall. 102319 Danny Button will join us in San Diego for the show on the 2nd with Dogfish Bark. 102219 I have drum takes from Allen for: Beatbox Caveat Christian in July Mars Reach Around That Doesn't Turn You On You Set It Off Still to do: Hats Off, Extraordinaire Mother Sweet & Low Stinker Dingus Love ...and for Girl for Samson: Bossa Breeders Dust Fountain of Youth Miss Majesty Puff Adders Still to do: Cigarette Hiding a Slave The Wall Little Shootin' Elvis Present Always Old Into Young 102019 Shannon learned the keyboard parts for Wake for Wanderers. This one is on the list for the California set. We'll sort out Her Bows when we get back. 101919 First outing with Jerry Riccardi on drums and our last Brookside Farmers Market appearance. 101719 Doing a short set opening for Dogfish Bark on 11/2/19 at BNS Brewing & Distilling Company in Santee, CA. Allen Johnston on drums and Brian Marshall on bass. 101619 Fun rehearsal. Dave Estes and Victoria hung out with us. Joelle made us an amazing snack at the end. I'm used to shouting out the starting tempos to songs - a practice that is danger as Jerry insists on us following the time on the records. 101219 Added more guitars to Hats Off, Extraordinaire. Added more backing vocals to Christian in July. Relearned the 2 chords and 12 words for Her Bows. Shannon will be doing all of the heavy lifting on this one when we do it live. 101119 Recorded lurchy guitar parts for Christian in July with the Telecaster and Jazzmaster. Probably needs another pass of drums now. 100919 Second session, but first full practice with Jerry. 100519 Spent the morning auditioning submissions from Danny and John. 100419 More Brookside Farmers Market pictures featuring the classic lineup on our Facebook page. These were taken by our friend Dave Estes. 100319 First session with Jerry Riccardi. 093019 Loaded Danny's electric piano and guitar parts for a bunch of songs. 092819 Brookside Farmers Market performance pictures from this morning. Highlights: generator dying midway through the set and a vendor (to our delight) tipping us with fresh garlic cloves. The whole pile of us (including Jerry Riccardi, Joelle St. Pierre and Dave Estes) scrambled off to Chelly's Cafe afterwards where, as usual, we marveled over Gabby's ability to take a huge order without writing anything down and always getting it right! Thanks to the lovely Cara Mace for working the camera. #brookside #chellyscafe #waldo #kansascity #farmersmarket Rain should be finished by 9 AM this morning so we're still planning on playing an acoustic set at the Brookside Farmers Market starting around 10. 092519 Thank you Heinz Rodgers, Michael Myers, Sue Murphy-Andrus, Chris Ruzich and Company, Jerry Riccardi, Angela Litner and Richie, Lea, Laura Clark for coming out on a Wednesday to hang with us. Thanks also to Peaty Bog Water for a fun set. 092119 Had a great time running through our discography at the Englewood Tavern. All of the boys in Switchblade Johnny were super sweet. 091319 Doing a short Johnny Marie & the Lonesome Petunias set with Shannon Swift and John McConnell on 09/21 at the Englewood Tavern (4386 South Broadway, Englewood, CO 80113) in support of Switchblade Johnny. 091119 Our last practice with Bryan carrying the load on percussoin. 091019 Finished lyrics for Hats Off, Extraordinaire and sang a half dozen takes. 090919 Danny uploaded misc. tracks for Christian in July. 090619 New live lineup coming in October. More on that once legal is done with all of the paperwork. 090419 Ran through a prepared 1 1/2 hour set with some more of the new material. Joelle served us delicious crabs and cake. No, not crabcakes. 090319 Imported drum tracks for Reach Around, Beat Box Caveat, Christin in July and Hats Off, Extraordinare. 090219 Tomorrow I plan to start importing drum tracks and getting things sorted out so that I can start tracking bass parts. 090119 Made some click track adjustments for Stinker for Allen. 083019 So, the tempo (120) of Christian in July has been bothering me but I have been loathe to begin the process of re-recording all of the tracks. Decided to give Elastic Audio a try, since all of the parts are still in demo form. Set everything to ticks, guitars to Polyphonic and vocals to Monophonic. Wresltled with removing a marker that was fouling the starting point and eventually won. Changed the tempo to 130 and the results are flawless. What a horrible and glorious time to be alive. Took my strat to be set up. I also, I'm a little embarrassed to say, had Matt swap out the white pickguard for a red torti. The guitar is black. McConnell already scolded me with a picture of Clapton playing a black and white strat. I just had to have some way of separating myself from Slowhand. Hamhand plays a strat with a red pickguard. 082919 Bryanless session but we carried on. Worked on new stuff - Christian in July, Stinker, Parasol, We Don't Do That, Juno Contacto and Blister Beetle. DJ STP's birthday so booze and cake were consumed. Played the Jazzmaster most of the night and loved it. Played the new Telecaster at the end and dug it too. Great time to be me. Except for my wretched tennis elbow. 082619 Re-recorded the C section ` of Hats Off, Extraordinaire and re-cut the guitars in stinker to be more aggressive. 082419 Got drum tracks for Beat Box Caveat, Christian in July and Hats Off, Extraordinaire from Allen. Already planning our next live show with him at The Westsider. Maybe in December. 082319 We tend to do up-tempo, fiercer versions of our recorded songs live. I think at some point I need to actually record the songs that way. I may try to record Christian in July live and see if we can capture more of the edge. Went to see Broken Arrows with Majors & Generals at The Brick. 082219 Cleaned up Poison and renamed it Hats Off, Extraordinare. Sent versions to Joe to replace my wooden piano playing. 082119 Futzed with Stinker and tweaked and re-sang bits of Christian in July. 082019 I am desperately in love with the Jazzmaster. Songs just keep plopping out of my bottom. Can't wait to pair it up with the Fender Excelsior. 081919 Thank you for the recent burst of merchandise sales. Have more designs coming soon. Trying a new guy for guitar set-ups. Took the new Telecaster to him today. 081819 Danny must have his studio tweaked to his satisfaction because I've started to receive tracks again! 081719 Jazzmaster came today. Flipping' love it. 081619 Tried the new Telecaster at practice. It sounded great but it wouldn't stay in tune and the intonation is dreadful. Will get it set up soon. We focused mostly on new songs. We even played around with White Girl. 081519 Doing a 9-10 PM at the Roxy on 9/25. 081419 Have had to pass up some opportunities for shows because of scheduling conflicts. This is not all bad because we are trying to add a fresh set of old and new music. It takes a little while to sort out new additions, even when they are ours. 081319 Bought a J Mascis Jazzmaster and an American Performer Telecaster. Added 16 measures to That Doesn't Turn You On after the first chorus for some additional guitar work. 081219 Shannon learned Chritian in July (working title). 081019 Got a nasty tendon strain from doubling our practice days while using Bryan's low-slung Telecaster. 080919 I think it would be fun to do some sets with the songs in chronological order, including track sequences. It would also be an opportunity to whore each album as the set progressed. Taught Shannon more bits from Juno Contacto and the primary part on We Don't Do That. 080819 Had a good session adding new songs to the set list. Also celebrated our multiple August birthdays with pizza and such. Forgot to add We Don't Do That to the list. Will add that next week. Getting Allen click tracks for Christian in July, Love, Mother and Poison. 080719 Printed keyboard charts for Juno Contacto for Shannon. 080519 Sent out Christian in July demo to everybody. Also plan to add Juno Contacto, Blister Beetle, White Girl, Nellie Orginary, Dingus and clean up Parasol. The goal is to be able to present the people that come to see us regularly with more variety and to easily entertain for 3 hours. 080419 I've been posting some of your pictures from the performance at Mike Kelly's Westsider on our Facebook and Instagram pages. Now we're going to focus on working up another big pile of songs to add to the live set so that we can entertain comfortably for 3 hours. 080319 What an amazing crowd last night! You made the night really special. 080219 See you tonight! 080119 Last rehearsal with Allen. He got a little surprise when the lovely Mel flew in from San Diego unannounced for the show tomorrow. Bryan brought his Tele for me to use again and I nearly made it to the end of the set before breaking a string. 072919 Third rehearsal with Allen. Things are coming together enought that we can now see smaller issues that need to be ironed out. Worked up the proper ending for Repeat and added Three Bells to the set again. I asked Bryan to loan me his Tele again for the last rehearsal and performance. Again, I have too much ham in my indelicate fists. 072819 Allen wanrts to do Three Bells Friday. And so we will. 072619 Second rehearsal with Allen tonight, minus Danny. Bryan brought me his Clasic Vibe 1950s Tele to try. I am a hard, ham-fisted player and easily bang and wrench Strats out of tune. The Tele worked great, I didn't really need to tune it the whole 4 hour session. Will pick one up in the Autumn. Allen and I ran to John Bara's shop to look at drums. John graciously loaned him a 1960s set of Ludwigs, hardware and cymbals. Allen has been working with Mark "Buzz" Collins, a long-time, seasoned Kansas City sound engineer, on getting our sound tweaked for the show on the 2nd. Found a bit of missing code that was fouling the CD Sales link. All better! Woefully behind finishing this album. May I offer future me this to-do list for motivation? Beat Box Caveat Bass and more drum takes. Dingus Bass, guitars and drums. Love Needs to be played live for a bit with the current arrangement to see if anything magic happens. Mars Add some backing vocals. Mother Add bass and drums. Recut all existing parts. Poison Needs a cohesive arrangement and lyrics. Reach Around Bass and backing vocals. Sweet and Low Oi. Vocals, bass and drums. That Doesn't Turn You On Vocals and bass. You Set it Off Vocals and bass. Christian Arrangement. Lyrics. Parts. 072319 First rehearsal with Allen Johnston on drums. Glorius. 072119 More t-shirts, hoodies and other apparel added to our merchandise page. 072019 Thank you so much to everybody that came out to the Brookside Farmers' Market this morning. We dig seeing people wriggle while they shop. Special love to Mama Tu's Farm for always making sure we go home with a big pile of beautiful vegetables. Marvelous seeing new faces and ecstatic to see our San Diego-based drummer and his beautiful companion surprise us with an early appearance! He'll be rehearsing with us for two weeks and then playing with us at the Mike Kelly's Westsider on Friday, August 2nd. 071819 Last rehearsal before an acoustic set at the Farmers Market tomorrow. Next week we'll start rehearsing with Allen Johnston for the Westsider show. Added more designs to our apparel partner. 071719 Got an Oceans 11 to get me by until my Cathedral is repaired. I'm going to have a difficult time kicking the 11 out of bed when the Cathedral comes back. Sounds great and has lots of gimmicks for your nincompoopy narrator. 071619 OK, I'm going with these guys for our merchandise. You can buy t-shirts, sweatshirts, coffee mugs etc. with a wide variety of logos, colors and styles. 071519 Head back from Electro Harmnoix. Dig: I send them the pedal and $25 - they repair it and return it. Gosh dang that's a helluva policy! Friends are asking about t-shirts so I'm determined to find a print-on-demand service that will also ship the merchandise and give me a page and a link rather than making me set up a page on Shopify or Etsy. I might have found it. 071419 Keyboard is done! Will post name and contact of repair person once I get it back and test it. He couldn't repair the Cathedral so I sent a message to Electro Harmonix. 071319 Took the Korg X50 and Cathedral reverb to a person who does repairs in Parkville. Got a larger folding cart for the guitar and keyboard cases. Should be able to get them from the vehicle to the stage in one trip now. 071219 A series of power reboots trashed my Electro Harmonix Cathedral so I picked up an Oceans 11 to get me by. 071119 Trying to coordinate some extra rehearsal time with everybody when Allen is here in a few weeks. 071019 Starting work on the 5th album again after a long break. What an amazing turn out last night. That was such a thrill for us. Special thanks to Emilee, Rachel, Kevin, John, Patty, Peg, Mike, Wanda, Terry, Mike, Joelle, Victoria and Cara for your regular attendance. It's no fun without you. 070919 Hope to see you tonight at The Roxy. I will post our start time on Facebook and Instagram. Our next scheduled appearances are a full acoustic set at the Brookside Farmers Market and a full set at Mike Kelly's Westsider. 070719 Thank you again to The Landing Bistro & Lounge for hosting us and our friends The Groove Pilots last night. We had a great time and the food was amazing! 070519 Added another verse worth of music to Mother. Made Shannon make photocopies of her charts. Dave's wounded paw feeling much better. Ordered a set of files for cleaning up the bridges on my guitars. Also bought extra bridges because I'm certain to foul the first two that I attempt to repair. 070419 We're finding out our starting time on the 9th at 6 PM. I will share here and Facebook as soon as possible. 070319 Got together to smooth out the bumps on the new stuff before our appearances on Saturday and Tuesday. Dave has a dinged wrist and took it easy tonight. 062919 Shannon and I worked on the piano solo in Now Here and layed the groundwork for re-introducing White Girl from Gardenaire. 062819 Still struggling to get timely, if any, replies from Behringer Customer Service for my issue with the DeepMind 12. keyboard. Again, good instrument, very poor support. 062719 My strategy for tonight is to polish up the new or rarely visited stuff to see what we can include in our 2 hour set in Warsaw. Then next week we'll run through everything. Broke the E string on my Strat while play Mars for the 3rd time. Will find a local luthier to get it set up before the 6th. 062519 Having a difficult time with Behringer Customer Service. Love the keyboard, but the support leaves much to be desired. Fortunately the DeepMind 12 is functioning again. 062419 Back at the Roxy on July 9th for the final round. 062319 Thank you to everybody that came out to see us at the Roxy. Listened to drum takes for Beatbox Caveat and sent off feedback. 062219 Scheduling snafu at the farmers market but we sorted it out and just did one set. Thank you to our friends who stopped by to say hi and a special hug for the vendor that gave us loads of amazing produce. We all had lunch at Chelley's Cafe afterwards - a casually observed post-farmers market performance tradition. First time for Danny. 061919 Danyless session. Solidified some of the new songs and worked on some stuff we haven't played in a while. Was dismayed to discover that the first F & G keys are glitchy on Shannon's DeepMind 12. I am not in love with the notion of packing it up, sending it off, and not having access to it for a couple of months while they repair it. I love how it sounds but Behringer's customer service is horrible. 061319 Energetic session. Stephanie and Joelle hung out with us on our first annual Bloody Mary Night. 060819 Got a note from Dave wanting to add Blue in the Veins and Now Here to the setlist. Printing off charts for the piano player as we speak. 060719 We're going to play with The Groove Pilots at the Dam Experience Fireworks event in Warsaw, MO. They will be shooting fireworks off of the Truman Dam! 060619 Good rehearsal. New stuff coming together nicely. 060519 Confirmed that Allen is here from 07/24 to 08/04. 060119 Shannon and I worked through some of the new stuff. Decided to knock the A section to Posion from D down to C for a variety of reasons. 053119 Bought a second Monoprice 15 Watt, 1x12 Tube Amplifier with Celestion Speaker & Spring Reverb. 053019 Petunias practice. Working in more stuff from the new album. 052919 Arranging Reach Around and Poison today. 052819 Got the Korg X50. Piano sound is OK. Will go with it until I find something better in the same weight and price class. 052719 Worked on arranging Poison. 052519 Tried some different guitar parts throughout Poison. 052419 Had a party for Shannon at Craig's pad. Joelle, as usual, prepared an amazing dinner. Bryan brought his mandolin and Danny his guitar and we had a Beatles sing-along. 052319 Learn New Stuff Night. Ran through Poison, Mother, Love, Dingus, You Set It Off and Beat Box Caveat. 052219 Bought a Squier Classic Vibe 1957-style Stratocaster for broken string scenarioes. 051819 Made it through the first set before the rain made it impossible to play anymore. The tent provided us with some shelter but some pretty hearty streams were running across the stage and down the stairs in front. Lovely moment when a little girl ran up to put a couple of dollars in the tip jar and emptied the water out of it first. 051719 Got a Korg X50 to give us better options for piano and organ sounds. Still intend to use the DM12 for pads. 051619 Last practice before doing 2 hours at the Brookside Farmers Market on Saturday. 051319 The isolated power supply and Hum-Debugger did the trick! I'm library-quiet now. 051219 Shannon learned the keyboard parts for Little Something, 20,000 Days, On and Billy Corgan's Cadillac. 051119 Bought an Asmuse Isolated Power Supply 8 Isolated DC Output for 9V / 12V / 18V Guitar Pedal Power Supply with Isolated Short Circuit and Over Current Protection to help with my noise issues. 050919 I had some noise issues with my guitar and pedalboard (I use 8 Electro Harmnoix effects) last night that were frustrating. Did some troubleshooting today. I isolated the noise issue to the Mel9 and Sitar. They were being chained on a standard 9V 100mA power supply. I tried using the Electro Harmonix 9.6 200mA supplies (one for each) and they seemed to be quieter. The problem is that those mofos are HUGE and I can only get 2 on a power strip. I tried chaining them all with an Electro Harmnonix 9.6 200mA adapter and the Canyon freaks out, but works fine chained to a standard adapter. I bought a Electro Harmonix Hum Debugger Noise Cancelling Pedal for the noisy Strat pickup issue, which means another giant power supply. I also ordered some 3-way chain cables to see if I can power smaller number of pedals with a single EH adapter instead of greedily going for 8. Suddenly the acoustic guitars breaking strings all the time doesn't seem like such a big deal. Not the first time Dylan mislead me. 050819 Recorded the piano bit from yesterday and experimented with some melodies. Petunias practice. 050719 Bumbled on a little piano bit that I like. 042919 Have some confirmed dates coming up and lots of almosts, maybes and possibles bubbling in the pot. 042819 Thank you again to The Groove Pilots for sharing their stage and gear with us yesterday. The people were great. Warsaw, especially the view from the stage, was lovely. We had a wonderful time I must acknowledge the young man who, when choosing a CD from our catalog, had the courage to go with the first album rather than the last. Salute! 042419 Re-sang harmonies on Mother and fleshed out Love to include the riffy bit. You'll see what I'm talking about. 042119 Pulled the trigger on a Monoprice 15 Watt, 1x12 Tube Amplifier with Celestion Speaker & Spring Reverb. Bought a Tung-Sol 12AX7 for the V1 slot. Was told to try a JJ as a substitute if the Tung-Sol is too bright. I wanted to try something lighter to drag around instead of the Fender Excelsior or the Blues, Jr. 042019 Got a piano part for Dingus from Danny. Still talking over artwork and album title with Michael. I think we have our cover image. Meeting tomorrow. 041919 A beloved team member burdened with having to learn our live set has created a playlist on Spotify: Johnny Marie Live Set List 041819 Worked on the Benton County Wine Stroll set. Introduced and did a couple of runs at Mother. Danny and I worked on merging a couple of frisky bits into something. 041719 Had a long chat with Allen. He's submitting drums from half the US away for two recording projects that I'm in and we need this calls occasionally to keep organized. I'm so fortunate to have him participating on both albums! 041519 Back from vacation. Recorded some vocals for Mother. Michael came by and we spent some time talking about artwork. 041419 Got a lovely review of Land Ho from a songwriter I greatly admire. 040519 Thanks to Sounds of Springfield for playing "Land Ho." Tune in next Friday for another Johnny Marie & the Lonesome Petunias track. 033119 Got an EHX Synth9 yesterday. Tried the Mini Mood on the intro to Mother and was satisfied with the results. 032919 Thanks to Sounds of Springfield for playing "Blister Beetle." 032819 Tune in to Sounds of Springfield on Friday March 29th from 2 PM to 4 PM to hear tracks from local artists, including something from our last album "Land Ho". Good rehearsal. Got through the two sets and the third set of new stuff. Ran through Beat Box Caveat. Highlight: I sweated a single stream of sweat while playing "Reach Around." Simple, elegant. 032519 Came up with a melody for Mother. Changed a few chords so re-recorded it and uploaded to the Demos folder for my teammates (Bryan) to listen to. 032419 Played Michael everything I have for this album so far: Dingus Mars That Doesn't Turn You On Sweet & Low Beat Box Caveat Mother You Set It Off Reach Around Talked about artwork. Got first wave of piano parts for Dingus from Danny. 032319 Sent a version of Dingus sans piano for Danny to play with. Had a nice hunk of a song fall out of my bottom while fooling around with the Cathedral reverb. Shannon and I ran through it a few times. 032219 Scheduled time with Michael to listen to what we have for the 5th album so far and to discuss artwork. Got my Electro-Harmonix Cathedral reverb pedal. Love it. 032119 Got together and worked on stuff from Land Ho and the new album. Introduced Dingus. Talked to Danny about the all-or- nothing issue I'm having with the JBL EON 515s. They are too quiet at LINE setting and too noisy and wild at the MIC setting. Danny reccommended gonig with the LINE setting and maxing out the mixer. 032019 Thank you to Tim and Ben Parson at WERU radio in Bangor, ME for giving "Capers" a spin. 031719 Got drum takes from Allen for You Set It Off. 031619 Paris showed me how to print MIDI scores from Facebook earlier this week so I was able to give Shannon proper piano parts for Land Ho and Push Past. 031419 Full rehearsal at our original space. Focusing on stuff from Land Ho (Parasol and Nellie Ordinay) and new material. Talked about doing a short set at the Benton County Wine Stroll which our friends the Groove Pilots are headlining. 031319 Borderline racist blog entry from 3 years ago: The lord done bless me with another chile. World, meet and ignore "Juno Impacto". So much easier to write new songs than to finish existing songs. I only reposted it because I like the "World, meet and ignore..." line. 030919 Ran through some of the songs in the set with Danny and Shannon. 030819 Used a an Electro-Voice ND96 at Danny's last night and I loved it. Bought one post haste. It will be interesting to side-by-side it with the Beta 58a. 030219 Talked to Dave about using both an upright and traditional bass going forward. The upright is so dark and beautiful but the traditional bass really sets fire to the more aggressive stuff. Sent click-track versions of Beat Box Caveat, You Set It Off and Sweet & Low for Allen. Reach Around has a Pro Tools issue that my Lord and Savior Patrick Meagher will eventually gently guide me to resolution. From P: Sounds like you added an extra tempo marker. Make sure the tempo ruler is showing (edit window/ tempo ruler) and then delete the offending maker. Or, you can drag the tempo ruler down and it will show you the tempo automation written. You can select it all and delete it. Loaded a Classic Synth Sysex set on the DM12. So long bank H. You can join the original bank G in hell. 030119 Bought a Ravish Sitar to replace the one Dave loaned me. I use it on Sweet & Low. 022819 Practice at Danny's. 022519 Preparing to add Parasol to the live set. Getting close to introducing Mars and Beat Box Caveat. 022419 Used Midi-OX to add some new presets to the DM12. 022319 Shannon and I working through the presets on the DM12 to find sounds that approximate the recorded material. We've added keboards to a dozen songs so far, including 4 from the upcoming album. 022219 Got the DM12. Sounds wonderful. Having problems with the saving to favorites option so already have a customer service request pending. 021619 Thank you Mark Manning for sharing Capers from Land Ho on the Wednesday MidDay Medley Bandcamp page. Mark is well known in the Kansas City area for turning people on to local talent. 021519 Patrick Meagher has a beautiful new album out. Patrick is my bandmate in Girl for Samson, and mixmaster and co-producer of 3 of 4 Johnny Marie albums, You can read about it on my Facebook page and at GirlForSamson.com Bought a Behringer DeepMind 12 True Analog Polyphonic Synthesizer to use for live performance. 021419 Re-staged our rehearsal space and ran though a big chunk of the sets. Worked a little on You Set It Off and That Doesn't Turn You On. 021319 Worked on Reach Around most of the day. 021119 Re-recorded scratch drums for Beat Box Caveat and Sweet & Low. Sorted out an arrangement for Reach Around. 020819 Playing at Mike Kelly's Westsider on 08/02/19 with Allen Johnston on drums. Got drum tracks for That Doesn't Turn You On from Allen. Got the first piano parts from Joe Salvato for That Doesn't Turn You On. Thrilling to have keyboard parts from a real player verses my one hand/ three finger style of playing. 020719 Have a venue confirmed for one of the performances with Allen Johnston in late July and early August. Working through a few more details before sharing. Worked on keyboard bits with Shannon for That Doesn't Turn You On and You Set It Off. Brookside Farmers Market appearances confirmed. Wrestled with a groove for Beat Box Caveat. 020619 Sent You Set It Off and That Doesn't Turn You On to the team to familiarize them with the arrangements. 020519 Thanks to our friends for braving the lousy weather to add some life to our two sets at the Roxy Bar. It really meant a lot to us. Pictures of the show on Instagram. Hope to be back soon. Still on target to play for two hours tonight at The Roxy, despite the percipitation. Still starting at 7 PM,. 020419 Teeth Filed is now Reach-Around. 020319 Chris Ruzich came by to add bass and vocals to Mars. Such a lovely man and player. 020119 Setting something up in late July/early August with Allen Johnston on drums. 013119 Romped through the set. First session with Shannon on keyboards. See you on the 5th. 013019 Added several tremolo guitars to You Set It Off. Sent slide parts to Danny for Repeat. Worked up bits for Land Ho, Capers, Repeat and Gardenaire for Shannon on the microKorg. 012819 Worked on Teeth Filed all day. 012719 Sent Chris Ruzich Mars. Sent Danny isolated guitar tracks from Capers, nothingood, Ordinary Guy, Billy Corgan's Cadillac, 20,000 Days and On for live stuff. 012619 Good session with all five players. I broke an A string, dashed off 25% of a fingernail and got a large blister on the inside of my forearm. Sent Joe Salvato some mixes of That Doesn't Turn You On for piano parts. Shannon added harmonies to You Set It Off. I added some reference drums to That Doesn't Turn You On. 012419 Another full rehearsal with Danny. He brought keyboards and a guitar processor to bring some of the hooks and melodies from the recordings to life. Bryan brought a new shaker that he created. The shaker was new, but not the phenomenon. 012319 Spent most of the day finishing up You Set It Off. Only needs bass, drums and a better vocal take. Even though I am generally no longer the drummer or the bass player I still like to come up with parts when I am building a song so that I have a clearer vision of how it might move. Some times I play the drum parts and then use the Steven Slate Sampler to compensate for all of the non-engineering set-up I performed. Here's the only reason I mention this - I can never find the plug-in, and when I do, I forget to blog about it to help future me. It lives in Dynamics and is called Trigger2. 012219 We have a schedule conflict for the new Midwest Fashion Awards date. 012119 Worked on You Set It Off. Lengthened the solo section and lengthened the solo. 012019 Ran out to FM Music to talk to Herb & Faron about carrying our last 2 albums and perhaps doing a show. 011819 Worked all day on You Set It Off. I wasn't happy with how my Big Muff records so my friend Dave talked me into trying a cheapo Vintage Tube Overdrive. I liked how it sounded but it didn't have the sustain the Big Muff does. Ended up using Muffy in a potentially throw-away guitar solo. 011719 First full practice with Danny Button. Danny brings guitar, keyboards and vocals to the table. We plan to present the new 5 piece lineup at The Roxy Bar in February. We are now decidedly less Violent Femmesy. 011519 Playing at the Roxy on February 5th. Will have the Brookside Farmers Market schedule in a few weeks. 011419 Contemplated daring to repeat a verse three times in That Doesn't Turn You On. Determined to struggle through a new verse today. I don't like bullying lyrics. Later: wrote and recorded new lines. 011319 Had a little bit tumble out of my bottom last night. Futzed with it some more today. Currently named You're Untitled. (You Set It Off). 011219 Why can't I remember the name "Fender Excelsior?" I always want to refer to it as "Fender Excalibur." Did some more work tidying up the 4 mostly- completedly songs. 011119 Pulled up Quatro ` and sang some reference melodies. Quatro was a dummy title I made up because I thought this was the 4th album. It's the 5th. So yup, it's a dummy title. 011019 Sweet & Low Added more guitars Added more vocal takes of chorus. Started paring back instruments. Beatbox Caveat Added more guitars Came up with a 2nd verse and sang it Added tamby Tightened up the mix Recording a Big Muff sucks. Big Muff. 010919 Thomas Montgomery, my long-time friend and contributor on nearly all of the Johnny Marie albums, has died. Thomas was a brilliant musician. A true artist. He worked for several years at Mad Hatter Studios in Los Angeloes after going to school in Florida. He came back to Kansas City when his mother became ill. Thomas played in The Waldinis, Mongol Beach Party, Grumpy and Girl for Samson. 010819 You can now buy Johnny Marie & the Lonesome Petunias CDs at some local Kansas City record shops: FM Music Vintage Sounds Mills Record Company Starting the search for another backup singer. 010719 Sorting out the 2019 schedule for Johnny Marie & the Lonesome Petunias at the Brookside Farmers Market. The KC Midwest "Peoples Choice" Fashion Awards has been moved to April 13th at the Scottish Rite Temple. 010619 I don't understand the first thing about markers in Pro Tools. I do know that sometimes there is an unknown marker at the start of a section that I want to work on and I am unable to put the major marker (red or blue arrow) over it. I've since learned that holding down the Ctrl button will place the arrow over the mystery marker. Pro Tools seems to be randomly or automatically creating groups. Haven't licked that one yet. Did some more tweaks to the first four songs. I want to use the Electro-Harmonix Big Muff driving the Electric Mistriss flanger on a few things tomorrow. 010519 Finished the lyrics and sang new takes for all 4 of the current songs. Received more Mars drum takes from Allen. 010419 Got two takes from Allen for Mars. Imported them and datadada, song! Added some better vocals and harmonies to Sweet & Low. Also added an intro wash with the Ravish Sitar. Used the String Ray to replace the synth bass in Mars. 010119 An incredibly well-timed kind word from my friend Brannon. 2018 (recording Land Ho/live performances/adding new players) 123118 More Pro Tools Insertion Follows Playback nightmares. The option is right below the little pencil icon. If enabled, your recording point isn't where you set it but rather where you last pressed stop. Maddening. Link Timeline & Edit is also evil. It's right under the little hand icon. 123018 Sent Allen versions of the 4 songs with no drums, just clicks. 122918 Did 2 long sets at a private party. Played nearly everything we knew. Wonderful having Danny Button sit in for most of both sets. Pictures up on our Instagram, Twitter and Facebook accounts. 122818 I don't try to write popular music and my music is not popular. You might think this is liberating. It is not. Making descisions is difficult when anything goes. Often I am in a field, not on a path. I find that, for me, the real craft is creating a unique trail for each song. This involves a lot of flailing, floundering and failing. This is the part where I'm might say "...but it's worth it." Well, sometimes it is. Upgraded vocals on Sweet and Low, Beat Box Caveat and Mars. Sent all 3 along with That Doesn't Turn You On to Allen Johnston. Every Penny is going back to Girl for Samson. 122718 Dug out the Cry Baby and Electric Mistress and added guitar bits to Sweet and Low. Also added acoustic drums and more vocal takes. By the way, this song was built from some noodling I did on John McConnell's resonator guitar in September. The instrument was tuned to open D. Looks like the KC Midwest "Peoples Choice" Fashion Awards are being moved to March 2nd. Venue still in play. Again, note to future self - SSD Trigger is located in the Dynamics list. 122618 Spent the day at war with Sweet and Low. Getting close to an arrangement. 122518 Spending the day getting 5 songs ready for Allen and other contributors to work on by the weekend. This mostly means getting everything tight and, while I still don't have words for anything, making sure the scratch vocals don't hurt anyone. The 5 songs are Sweet and Low, Mars, Beat Box Caveat, Every Penny and That Doesn't Turn You On. 122418 Worked on Mars. Bought a power supply for my Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress flanger. Sounds great and I'm sure I'll use it once and then pack it away. 122318 Midwest Fashion Awards have been postponed until March 1st, 2019. Watch for more updates as the venue may also change. Up early and whispered reference melodies for Sweet & Low and Mars. Much of the spam the Johnny Marie e-mail account receives concerns finding hot women for hot sex in my town. The static variables in every subject are Hot, Sex, Women & Town. I love the focus on supporting local businesses. 122218 Bryan, Shannon and I got together to hammer out some vocal arrangements. Bryan, with my encouragement, introduced a "snare" to his set-up. Why is snare in quotes? Because it was one of the 7,000 tambourines from his collection with snare bands stretched across the head. It sounds great but with Dave now playing exclusively playing upright bass it's too much so he switched back to the classic Mace set-up. 122118 Worked on Mars most of the day. Tried some vocoder bits on Sweet and Low. 121718 Recorded more backing vocals for Beat Box Caveat. Added some melody sketches to Mars. Got my Electro-Harmonix power adapters. Fooled around with the Electric Mistress, Doctor Q and Small Stone phase shifter. Added the Small Stone to my pedal board. 121618 Added loads of guitars to Beat Box Caveat. 121518 Finally added a noise gate at the end of my pedal board chain. Bought some power supplies for some of my vintage Electro-Harmonix pedals. 121418 How do I mark the end of a song in Pro Tools so that bounces aren't padded with silence? Mark the end of the song by going to the start and pressing Control/Shift/Tab. Then select the portion of the song you want to bounce by highlighting the song in the measures bar. Bounce that mofo. 121218 Mailed out another pile of CDs to local radio stations. Sometimes the identity of the song is revealed straight away. Is This Your Thing? was Is This Your Thing? the moment I hit the first guitar chord. Beat Box Caveat is proving to be a bit more challenging. Should it be super synthy or drums and wirey? All I can do is thrash at it until I see a face I recognize. That's where faith plays a role in songwriting. Not faith in Jebus, Martin or Buddy. Faith in the birthing process. 121018 Worked on Beat Box Caveat and Blind Jehovah Monster. Reviewed Every Penny, Doesn't Turn You On and Sweet and Low. Adjusted the email handing program. I've been getting spammed pretty relentlessly and was perhaps a bit too aggressive with the barbed wire. 120918 Mailed out another pile of "Land Ho" CDs to community radio stations. 120818 Sent out another wave of CDs to radio stations. 120718 How lovely that Barry Lee played "20,000 Days" leading into a block of Buzzcocks/Pete Shelley songs. Thank you to "Signal to Noise" and KKFI for promoting local music. Signal To Noise #695 "Winter Dreams" playlist 12/07/18 SIGNAL TO NOISE - SATURDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2018 Farewell to Pete Shelley 1. Cassandra Wilson//Beneath A Silver Moon 2. Iron and Wine//Someday The Waves 3. The Cocteau Twins//Great Spangled Fritillary 4. Courtney Barnett//Sunday Roast *********************************************************** 5. The Essex Green//Sixties 6. Donovan//Celeste 7. Volebeats//September Spell 8. Desi & Cody//She's No Good For You 9. The Splatter Pattern//Raining ************************************************************* 10. Leon Redbone//Diddy Wah Diddy 11. David Bromberg//Mr. Blue 12. John Prine//Eggs and Daughter Nite, Lincoln Nebraska 1967 13. Tony Joe White//Can You See The Lightning ************************************************************** 14. Jason Beers (Mrs. Helen Marf)//The First Noel 15. Howard Iceberg//Christmas In Missouri 16. The Monkees//Snowfall 17. The Forty Nineteens//It's Christmas Time Again ********************************************************* 18. Yo La Tengo//Shades of Blue 19. Janelle Monae//Afraid 20. Jack White//What's Done Is Done 21. St. Vincent//Slow Slow Disco 22. Girlyman//Caroline ********************************************************* 23. Gullywasher//Returning Softly 24. Ryley Walker//On The Banks of the Old Kishwaukee 25. David Bowie//Weeping Wall 26. Johnny Marie & The Lonesome Petunias//20,000 Days ************************************************************* 27. Buzzcocks//Lipstick 28. Pete Shelley//Twilight 29. Buzzcocks//I Don't Mine ************************************************************ 30. Mark Rubin//Spin the Driedel https://www.facebook.com/notes/signal-to-noise/signal-to-noise-695-winter-dreams-playlist-120718/10161108794100184/ 120618 I don't know why but Pete Shelley's passing has really struck me. He was a very underrated tunesmith and if you aren't familiar with his work start with Singles Going Steady. This is not punk rock. This is pure pop. 120318 Tune in to Barry Lee's "Signal to Noise" on KKFI this Friday night at 9 PM, because it's good and because he'll be playing a track from "Land Ho". "Slip sliding deep into winter with warm music and good thoughts. Bolstered by Iron & Wine, Cassandra Wilson, Volebeats, The Splatter Pattern, Leon Redbone, John Prine, The Forty Nineteens, The Monkees, Howard Iceberg, Jack White, St. Vincent, Gulleywasher, Johnny Marie & The Lonesome Petunias, Courtney Barnett, The Cocteau Twins, Jason Beers, Janelle Monae, Mark Rubin, and more.." Got a Roland Jupiter 6 sample pack and love it. Already smearing it on songs. 120218 Experimenting with some vintage synth sample packages. 120118 Recorded scratch vocals and keyboard parts for Beat Box Caveat and Sweet and Low. Added synths to That Doesn't Turn You On. 113018 Bought a Ibanez TA 35 acoustic guitar combo amp. I like how they sound with the Epiphones. Also bought the Samples From Mars set for some of the cool vintage synths. 112918 Worked on Turn You On bridge and some backing vocals. Added too new chord/melody bits to another unnamed song. Petunias pracitce. Focused on vocal arrangements, 112818 Re-cut all of the guitar parts in Doesn't Turn You On with the Strat. Added new percussion, bass and scratch vocals. 112518 12/1/18 private party in Kansas City, MO moved to 12/29/18. 112418 Upped the tempo of That Doesn't Turn You On and recut demo guitar and vocals. Worked out some melodies last night for another song and recorded a few takes. It started off sounding Pink Floydie but I'm inching away from that with the new bits. 112318 Sent out another large load of promotional CDs. 112218 2nd to last rehearsal before playing a private party on the 1st. That's right, if you are having a party in the Kansas City metro you can hire a quirky, energetic band to play original music in the corner of your living room without fear of neighbors buzzing the fuzz. 111918 What I do today? I came up with two chords and a melody on the piano for a bridge in That Doesn't Turn You On. Lord. 111618 First rehearsal at our new space. I want some real keyboard players for the next album. I'm talking to a few people but am delighted to announce that I got a commitment from Joe Salvato. I'm excited to write some songs that will feature two-handed piano parts! 111518 "Land Ho" has been out a month and there still isn't a single counterfeit copy of the CD on eBay. They still have plenty of bogus copies from the rest of our catalog, so hope is strong. 111418 Started mailing out CDs to Kansas City radio, clubs and electronic media. Normally I just move right on to the next record but I want more for this album than just abandoning it to chance listens. 111318 I was researching what we should charge to play at private parties. The first result from the search inquiry read: "Local jazz combos or acoustic bands may cost between $750 and $1500, while the region's most popular and exclusive party bands may cost $10,000 or more. On average, most great dance bands for weddings or special events are likely to cost between $2500 and $7500." We must be the Dollar Store option of "Local jazz combos or acoustic bands". 111118 CDs are ready to go out tomorow morning for website sales. Also sending out packets to local radio stations. 110918 Went to see the The Groove Pilots at Mike Kelly's Westsider. They graciously invited us to do a few songs during their break. Bryan wasn't there but Danny Button joined us for Sultan Eyes, Kitty Can, Trashbag Launderette and Land Ho. Terry Gann mimicked his beautiful pedal steel part on a lap steel. Thanks as always for a good time, Terry, Tim, Joe, Danny and Dave. 110718 Did "Capers", "20,000 Days", "Repeat" and "Kids Are Alright" at the Piano Room. 110618 "Land Ho" CDs will be here on 11/9. Will begin shipping on 11/12. 110218 Adding some new titles to the live setlist this afternoon. Oh Nellie from "Land Ho", White Girl from "Gardenaire", something that's still hatching intended for the 5th album and Brandy by Looking Glass. 103118 CDs ordered and should ship on the the 5th. 103018 Doing a short set in-between presentations at the Midwest Fashion Awards at The White Theatre at the Jewish Community Center on January 5th, 2019. 102818 Submitted artwork and masters for CD printing. Still on target to start shipping CDs in early November. 102618 Noisy electric guitar practice. Decided to do a few songs from Land Ho at The Piano Room on 11/07/18. 102318 A reminder that the only place you can find Johnn Marie & the Lonesome Petunias CDs is here. "Land Ho" was only distributed digitally. We'll have plenty of CDs on hand just after Halloween. Boo. 102218 Pro Tools: The minutes and seconds ruler option annoys me greatly. Sometimes if you click on the drop down menu to remove it the option is grayed out. Just click on the bars and beats ruler and then you can uncheck minutes and seconds from there. Heck yes! Another one. Pro Tools keeps starting at the beginning of the song rather than where you place the Timeline Selection Point. Just go to options and check Link Track and Edit option. Dammit. Pro Tools. The grid lines have disappered. Go to the Grid/Nudge/Counter and click on Grid. 102118 Will set up an option today for selling physical CDs. Had brunch with Allen Johnston. Friend listening to "Land Ho" in Tel Aviv. 102018 Great time playing at the Brookside Farmers Market. It is so moving how generous all of the vendors are. It's really touching. Land Ho release day. It's already starting to find its way around the world: Spotify Pandora Napster Slacker Deezer YouTube Band Website There is a topic linking issue with YouTube that I have contacted the distributor about. Songs are up, just not on our channel. YouTube issue is fixed. 101918 I am planning on re-releasing a few of my favorite songs from Her Bows with fresh mixes drums and other performances. I'll drip them out as singles while working on the new album. Thinking Billy Corgan's Cadillac, Ordinary Guy and nothingood. Talked with Michael and he confirmed that he wants to release physical CDs. Should have those by Halloweenish. 101818 Last rehearsal before playing on Saturday. Shannon Swift will be singing with us. 101718 Added and replaced bits on some of the new material. 101618 Pre-order Land Ho on Amazon.com 101518 I have 7 hunks of songs in the works for the 5th album. Today I added bass and piano to Better and guitars, bass, percussion and harmonica to Blind Jehovah Master. Found out that Michael is coming later this week to listen to some of the new stuff so cleaned up a few things and added a scratch vocal to That Doesn't Turn You On. 101418 Last of the YouTube samples of songs from Land Ho. 101318 Posted another collection of five 45 second samples of songs from "Land Ho" on our YouTube channel. I have a free day so going to record the guts of 5 or 6 new songs, sing a Girl for Samson song and work on getting Land Ho distributed. And digital distribution launched. 101218 Kind of a dark day in JMLP history. We ordered a large pizza during rehearsal and they brought a medium. Despite the significant disparity in size everybody still politely refused the last 2 pieces. For a minute. 101018 Posted five 45 second samples of songs from "Land Ho" on YouTube. Bryan re-mastered Blister Beetle, Long Dry Walk and Capers to address some minor issues. 100918 I have Land Ho masters and a commitment from Patrick to mix and master the 5th album. It's a good day. 100518 Bryan sexed up my Strat so I went electric for part of our rehearsal last night. Michael hung out with us and shouted at us like a personal trainer. "DO IT AGAIN!" 100218 Signed off on the mixes so now Patrick will begin mastering all 15 songs. 092818 Bryan sexed up my Strat. Now I'm thinking Newport 1965. 092718 Bryan and I listened to the Land Ho mixes last night and I sent Patrick a few more revisions this morning. And revisions are done! 092618 Sent Patrick notes after listening to the second set of mixes. It sounds so good. 092518 Got the 2nd mix of Land Ho songs back from Patrick. Heck yes! Recorded the guts of a song I made up on John's resonator when I was in Colorado. Had a dream that provided the missing Blister Beetle line. Sung it as soon as my morning voice evaporated and sent it off to Patrick. 092418 Struggling with replacing a line in Blister Beetle. I want to but don't having anything inspired to put in it's place. 092018 Sent mixing notes to Patrick. I miss things from our live versions of the songs that aren't on the recordings so Dave and Bryan sang some of their parts from 20,000 Days and Repeat. First rehearsal in a couple of weeks. Crusty but fun. Renamed "It's Wandering" to "Wake for Wanderers". 091918 Michael coming over to listen to mixes before I send notes Patrick. 091118 Listening to Land Ho mixes! 090518 Should have Land Ho mixes to listen to next week. 090318 Thank you to our friends who spent their Labor Day holiday with us at the SantaCaliGon Days Festival this afternoon. You're amazing. 083018 Good rehearsal ironing out some of the newer stuff for theSanta Cali Gon Days festival. 082818 Patrick indicated that he thinks he can have Land Ho mixes for me in 1 or 2 weeks. 082518 Thank you to the Brookside Farmers' Market and it's vendors for hosting us for a few hours today. It was wonderful getting tips in long beans, beets, Asian eggplant, potatoes, okra, peppers and sunflowers! Thank you also to the people who toughed out the set in the relentless heat. It was great seeing all of you. See you next holiday weekend at the Santa Cali Gon Days Festival. 080918 Productive rehearsal. Spent some quality time on harmonies. 080518 Someone suggested that we should take credit cards when we're selling CDs. I have a PayPal business account so bought one of their credit card readers and while waiting for it to arrive, attempted to load the POS software, PayPal Here, on one of our phones. Doesn't work on my 2 year-old Android or 4 year old tablet. Aborted. Signed up with Square Up and was able to process credit cards in about 10 minutes. 080418 Doing a long set at the SantaCaliGon Days Festival on September 3rd at 2 PM in the middle of the square. Sent Allen the guide file for Every Penny to record drums to. Fifth album is officially under way. 072818 Bought a card reader to marry with our new sexy CD sales stand. 072718 Lovely album feedback on Twitter. 072618 Made it through the full set. Bryan thinks we have about an hour and a half of material. 072518 Important update about our CD sales. Spent the day tracking vocals for Girl for Samson songs. I think I'll resurrect The Wall for our live set. 072418 "Land Ho" is now "Land Ho" and should be available around the world and in your town in Autumn 2018. 072318 Playing at the Brookside Farmers Market from 11 AM to 1 PM on 08/25/18 and 10/20/18. The market is located at 6321 Wornall Rd, Kansas City, MO. 072218 Got the guts of Every Penny down and added a few piano parts. 071918 Lovely turnout last night. Perhaps our largest gathering of friends and well-wishers to date. Thank you to everybody who took the time and troubel to be there. 071818 Doing a few songs from the new album tonight at the Piano Room. Drop by to express your appreciation for our marvelous catalog or to throw something potentially injurious. I think I have finally bumbled upon the right artwork for the new album. 071618 Some of our European friends are suddenly able to listen to our catalog on YouTube. That's a good thing. 071318 Did the first bit of recording for the 5th album. 071218 Good rehearsal. Added Push Past and Long Dry Walk to the set. Doing a few songs at the Piano Room next Wednesday. 070918 Added 957 more vocal ` takes of Long Dry Walk. All shite. Writing the session files for the whole album out now to take to Patrick tomorrow. 070818 Sang more takes of Blister Beetle and Wrong Star. Will do more takes of Wrong Star and Long, Dry Walk tomorrow before writing every thing to an external drive for Patrick. Michael came by to show me some guitar bits he has for the next album. Played him Push Past for the first time. 070718 More vocal takes of Nellie Ordinary and Push Past. Kevin added harmonies to Is This Your Thing?, Boyfriend and Blister Beetle. For tomorrow - add a few more vocal takes of Blister Beetle. 070618 Planning on doing a few songs at the Piano Room on 07/18. Sorted out some issues with Blister Beetle and sang a few more takes of Land Ho! 070518 First rehearsal in almost a month. Added Long, Dry Walk and Push Past to the set. 5 days left to finish this album. I think these songs will make the final cut: Land Ho! Blister Beetle Repeat Capers 20,000 Days Nellie Ordinary Parasol Is This Your Thing? Push Past ...and 2 or 3 of these: Glad To Pass On It's Wandering Long Dry Walk Wrong Star Boyfriend Bon Voyage 070418 Covered a bit of a Bruno Nicolai song in the bridge for Boyfriend. Got a new follower on Twitter that had a Bruno Nicolai song pinned to his feed and I recalled how much I liked his stuff. Rachel came over and recorded vocals on Long Dry Walk, Boyfriend (soon to be Bidanzato?), Capers and Push Past. 070218 Countdown to Turd Polish Day looms. Added guitars to Boyfriend, Long Dry Walk and Is This Your Thing? There is a thread about one of my early bands on a Facebook page deditcated to the first wave of local punk/alt clubs in Kansas City. It's interesting to see what people recall about the band and the music. Clearly, the more you repeat a phrase the more likely people will remember it for the rest of their lives. "I didn't know about 3797, 3797, 3797, 3797..." 070118 Probably spent too much time trying to get Boyfriend up to code. I think tomorrow I need to bravely chop out some bits that are troubling me rather than trying to make them work. 062818 Chris Ruzich added harmonies to Capers, Wrong Star, Long Dry Walk and Push Past. Added chimey guitar parts to Wrong Star, Capers and Long Dry Walk. Vocals after lunch. 062718 After some hand-wringing I decided to rebuild the song around Bryan's part. Dave came over and added more bass parts. Committed to capturing a tight vocal today. 062618 And now tornado warning sirens howling mercilessly. More vocal takes for Long Dry Walk. Having a go at Push Past once the thunder stops. Real thunder, not digestive issues. 062518 Found another Long Dry Walk Take. This one by Allen incorrectly named as Blister Beetle. I might be able to salvage this song with just a few tweaks. Made sure that all of the songs have at least one drum take imported and that the take is named so that Patrick can match it with the folder of drum files. Still need to re-sing a lot of things. 062418 Starting to clean up sessions for Patrick. 062218 Going to try to start over on Long Dry Walk and see if can match the spirit of Bryan's drum part. 062118 Dave knocked off 7 songs in a 4 hour session: Capers, Repeat, 20,000 Days, Blister Beetle, Bon Voyage, Push Past and Boyfriend. Bryan sent me takes for all 3 songs that I sent him. Will give him Push Past tomorrow to toy with . Added piano to Push Past. 062018 Did more work on Push Past. Dave coming over tomorrow to finish bass parts. 061918 Sent Bryan a mix for Blister Beetle and a tighter mix of Long Dry Walk. Recorded more vocal takes for Nellie Ordinary. Added more vocal takes to Push Past. Also added acoustic guitars, bass and acoustic drums. If I can learn how to sing it well it should make it in time to be included for consideration for the new album. 061718 Sent Bryan fresh mixes of Boyfriend and Long Dry Walk. Reviewed everything I have from Allen and sent him some notes. I like this record. 061418 Bryan Mace is going to drum on Boyfriend and Long Dry Walk. 061318 Tried a couple of new songs live tonight. It's Wandering was, but Capers came off really well. Play live and learn. In the last mile of a head cold and sporting fresh stitches in my lower lip. 061018 Got everything that Allen was able to finish minus Long Dry Walk and Boyfriend. May do those myself or find another contributor. If I scrapped them for this album I would still be giving Patrick 12-13 songs. 060918 Regarding performance set lists: 060818 Songs I want you to hear. 060718 Croaked my way through some of the new songs. Trying to see what we can get away with playing next Wednesday. 060418 Strugging with words for Push Past. Add vocal takes for Capers and Around the World in 20,000 Days. 060118 I've discovered that people residing ouside of the United States are unable to listen to our music on YouTube. According to Google: Video not available in my country Some YouTube videos may not be available in your country for the following reasons: 1) Video owners have chosen to make their content available only to certain countries (usually due to licensing rights) 2) YouTube may block specific content in order to comply with local laws 053118 Spent four hours really working on some new stuff for our live set. Decided to do another short set at McGuire's Tavern, the only planned performance for June. 053018 Recorded the frame for another sad song for the new album. 052418 Piano Room Video | Pictures I realized this morning that we've performed half of our one hour set over the past couple of months. With a few more rehearsals we should have an hour ready soon. 052318 Very short set at the Piano Room. We did Brought A Little Something Down, Kitty Can and Trashbag Launderette. Lots of good performers. 051918 I have hundreds of performance and rehearsal tapes from my music history (The Wilsons, Porps, This Jungle, Boxes of Love, The Waldinis, etc.) stored on cassette tapes. I'm torn between just discarding them, digitizing them and then discarding them or digitizing them and keeping them. Or stuffing them somewhere in my house and letting my heir sort it out. 051718 Did Maryland Mansion, End of Summer, Kitty Can, Toast & Marmalade For Tea, Trash Bag Launderette and 20,000 Days. Danny Button sat in for Trash Bag, though I neglected to give him any cues for when to play. You can identify pros by their reaction to nincompoopery. Pictures on Facebook and Instagram. Piano Room next Wednesday sans Button. 051618 Set list printed, gallons of water dumped into my torso, salad and poor sea creature consumed, voice warmed up to near croaking - get me to the arena, Mr. Henry. 051018 Added a couple of dates for May. Got through the whole set and was able to give some attention to On, Capers, Maryland Mansion and Blister Beetle. Sang along with Bryan playing Beatles songs after. 042518 Did 4 songs (Billy Corgan's Cadillac, Kitty Can, Around the World in 20,000 Days and Trashbag Launderette) at the Piano Room. Thank you to Karen Baum for accommodating our larger than normal set-up. 042218 Dave and I went to see Bryan's other group give a performance. Bryan is absurdly talented and it's laughable and marvelous that he's our percussionist! 041918 Book Johnny Marie & the Lonesome Petunias live shows here. Number 2 on Reverb Nation's KC alternative charts. 041618 "Dear Johnny, where can I get replacement tuners for my Epiphone John Lennon signature model EJ-160e?" About a month ago I broke a tuner on my Epiphone EJ-160e John Lennon acoustic guitar. I searched forums for a tip for a suitable replacement and only learned that the brand was Kluson. I gambled on a used set taken off of a Gibson Les Paul and failed because of a collar that prevented the post from making it through the hole in the headstock. I then found a vintage box of Klusons on eBay and they fit perfectly and the key is exactly the same shape and color. You can't tell the difference between the originals vand the replacement. There isn't much information on the box, but there is a hand-written model number which is SD90SLN. This model number is your friend. 041418 More drum takes from Allen. Here's where we stand: 20,000 Days (6 drum takes) [no bass] Around The World In 20,000 Days (3 drum takes) [no bass] Blister Beetle (0 drum takes) [no bass] Bon Voyage (4 drum takes) [no bass] Boyfriend (0 drum takes) [no bass] Capers (3 drum takes) [no bass] Glad To Pass On (7 drum takes) [has bass] Is This Your Thing? (0 drum takes) [has bass] Its Wandering (2 drum takes) [has bass] Land Ho! (0 drum takes) [has bass] Long Dry Walk (0 drum takes) [has bass] Nellie Ordinary (1 drum takes) [has bass] Parasol (0 drum takes) [has bass] Wrong Star (5 drum takes) [has bass] Number 6 on ReverbNation's Alternative rankings. I suspect that has more to do with content and distribution than popularity. 041118 Added Blister Beetle to the live set. 040718 Video stills from the McGuire's Tavern performance up on Instagram 040518 Cellphone video of our set last night up on our YouTube channel. 040418 Just finished our set at McGuire's. Yay for us. 040318 Doing a few songs at McGuire's Taven tomorrow evening. 040118 Finished arranging Blister Beetle and putting down some basic parts. Still needs more words. Even I know that. Fished out the Takamine for the live set on Wednesday since the Epiphone has a wonky tuner key. 033118 I'm still waiting on bass and drum parts for several songs before this album can be put on Patrick's plate so I'm going to try to dash off one more song. Will record the bits for it today and think about how it should be arranged. 032918 Ran through the set and the repeated the stuff for the live set that we'll do next week. We'll probably have to cut something but the current set list is: Little Something Sultan Eyes Kitty Can 20,000 Days Around The World In 20,000 Days Trash Bag Launderette Ask Wrong Star 031518 Ran through the set. Picked some songs for a shorter set. 030918 A raucous but spirited performance of the set last night and now the boys are getting anxious to go do this somewhere in front of something other than dusty living room furniture. Look out thin, disinterested crowd in a small, brackish bar somewhere in the city! Your day of reckoning is drawing nigh! 030118 Rehearsal with Dave and Bryan. Listened to more takes from Allen. 022818 Listened to some of Allen's recent takes. Some of the songs are really starting to come together. 022418 Had a chat with Allen about yesterday's notes. The "20,000 Days" and "Around The World In 20,000" days thing is already creating headaches. 022318 Getting drum takes from Allen again! Sent off some notes. 022218 Ran through all of the songs live again. Bryan insisted we rate what is working and what isn't so that we can focus on the troublemakers next time. 021418 Ran through the set with Dave and Bryan. Michael came by to check on our progress. Added Maryland Mansion to the set. 020818 Rehearsal with Dave and Bryan. 013118 Hey Pa Time to leave us all It's a short flight See the feathers fall Forgive me for saying But you lead the way And though I'm behind you It's too soon to join you 012918 Struggling with Capers. It's in danger of getting the Pool treatment. Pool was a Costello-esque rocker that got over-thought into electronica. 012818 How do you work a new song into a setlist without a vote? Pretend to play it absent- mindedly in-between songs. If someone joins in then you can add it to the list with confidence. If everybody stares at you blankly then you have failed. Again. 012518 Ran through the set with Bryan and Dave. 012218 Worked on the call in response in Is This Your Thing to my satisfaction. Recorded the guts of a new song. 012018 Added piles of Capers vocal takes. 011718 Yes, sang more lead vocal takes for Glad To Pass On. Added some harmonies to Capers. Taking some mixes from Allen's Glyn Johns set-up to Patrick for feedback. 011618 Added some more convincing vocal takes to Glad To Pass On. Also added backing vocals and hand claps. 011518 Worked a bit on the lead vocal for Glad To Pass On. 011218 Learned how to use Beat Detective vs Quantizing to adjust the timing of audio rhythm tracks. 011118 Sorted all of the buses and committed all of the mellotron parts. Added some shakers and cabasa to Nellie Ordinary. 011018 Added another dozenish takes of the lead vocal for Land Ho! Listened to 30+ It's Wandering lead vocal takes. Drilled it down to 21 that have useful moments. Teleconference with Allen. Tweaking the balance of click track and reference drums. 010918 "It's Wandering" needed a better vocal take so of course I added a cabasa track instead. And maracas. 010818 Allen sent 6 takes of 20,000 Days for my listening pleasure. Finished lyrics for Capers and tried a few vocal takes. Settled on verse lyrics for Boyfriend and sang about16 takes. Had to upgrade my DropBox account to accomodate Allen's drum takes. 010718 No blog entries means nothingood. 010418 Bryan and I ran through the set. 010218 And I did. He now has everything until somebody tells me I need to write more songs. Sent Allen: Wrong Star Long Dry Walk Boyfriend Need to sex up It's Wandering and Capers before sharing. 010118 Allen sent me some test files to make sure we were going to be able to communicate. And I did. Intend to send Allen 4 or 5 more songs today. Likely: Nellie Ordinary Glad To Pass On Parasol Bon Voyage Is This Your Thing? I still need to do work on all of those but they are together enough to drum to. That just leaves: Long Dry Walk Wrong Star It's Wandering Capers Boyfriend 2017 (recordong Land Ho/assembling live lineup) 123117 Had a good state of the union review with Michael. I need these. 122117 Had a little groove pop up in my brain. Recorded bass, drums, guitars, organ and some vocal ideas. Dave sent me a sample of factory machine noise that I had asked for. Fooled with resampling it with the SSD Trigger, which is in Dynamics, for future self., 121617 Strung up the battered Yamaha in a Nashville Tuning and aped the acoustic guitar parts in Capers. 121517 The two same-age, bass-playing Daves will be at the Rundgren show tomorrow. They have yet to meet. 121417 Rehearsal with Bryan. Working out Capers. Bryan brought his mandolin and Seagull acoustic so of course we had a Beatles sing-along after. Note to self: Listen to Spooky Tooth's version of I Am The Walrus. 121317 Finalized the arrangement for Capers (Harbor Breeze) and sent off a copy to Dave and Bryan. 120917 Still futzing with the arrangement of Capers. Need to re-cut nearly all of the parts. 120717 Rehearsal with Dave and Bryan. Dave and Bryan sang Beatles songs afterwards. Sent Dave a demo of Capers. 120617 Michael's birthday! Bryan turned me onto Nashville tuning. Ordered some strings. Gauges are 10-14-09-12-17-25. 120517 Got the new solos back from Danny Button. Way good! 120417 Smeared the Kent Americana all over Bon Voyage. Not sure if P will keep any of it. Still trying to muscle Capers into something. Getting awfully close. 120217 Going to try to put down some keeper parts for Capers today and squeeze it in for Land Ho! 113017 Good rehearsal with Bryan and Dave. Should have several contiguous sessions in before Christmas. 112917 Talked to Danny Button about getting some additional takes of the Is This Your Thing solo with more of a dirty 1960s vibe. I thought he might be annoyed but, as always, he was positive, enthusiastic and committed to coming up with the best part for the song. 112717 Spent some time arranging the different parts in Capers. Tried some different approaches to the opening line of It's Wandering. Considering resurrecting Sue's Green Dress for this album as a Her Majesty add on somewhere. It fits the theme nicely. 112617 Sent the first three songs off to Allen for drums - 20,000 Days, Land Ho! and Around The World in 20,000 Days. 112517 Shannon added vocals to 20,000 Days, Land Ho! and Around The World in 20,000 Days. 112417 Rachel tracked vocals on 20,000 Days, It's Wandering, Around The World in 20,000 Days and Land Ho! 112217 Going to start sending Allen songs this weekend. Going to try to have 6 ready by then. Added a half-dozen vocal takes to It's Wandering. 112017 Michael and I ran through some artwork options and then listened to what we have ready for Land Ho! He felt like we should include Wrong Star and Long Dry Walk. We'll at least send them to Allen and see how they feel with some marvelous drum parts. 111717 Sent Dave the last of the three songs that need bass parts. Contemplating producing a multi-band show for our first outing. 111617 First rehearsal with Bryan and Dave in 3 weeks. Bryan surprised me by playing Around The World In 20,000 Days on an acoustic guitar just days after I sent him the demo. The practice went surpisingly well. The holidays will probably slow us down but we're getting awfully close. 111517 Potentially have a flautist (Jazzy Jazz Miyagi) lined up for Nellie Ordinary. Sent off the current version of the song for consideration. Got Land Ho! pedal steel parts back from Terry Gann. Land Ho! indeed! Added shaker eggs, maraccas, tambourine and wood blocks to 20,000 Days. Added more vocal takes. 111417 Started to lather flesh on 20,000 Days. I like where it's going. Both it and the reprise are Get Happy sparse in terms of changes. Sorted through some more images looking for inspiration for Land Ho! artwork. 111317 Added a million slide parts to Around The World but they seem to clutter an already noisy song. Will let P decide. Set copies of the rough draft to Dave and Bryan so that we can pop it in the set. 111217 Fixed an error with the lyric display application. Finished AWI2KD but now am thinking about editing in a bridge. I hate editing in bridges. 111117 Got scratch vocals and guitar down for 20,000 days. It's going to go fast. Have nearly finished Around The World In 20,000 Days. Just need to comp a lead vocal. Here's the current track listing for Land Ho! in my mind. Kill Me (now Bon Voyage) Land Ho! 20,000 Days Parasol Is This Your Thing? Nellie Ordinary Glad to Pass On It's Wandering Around The World In 20,000 Days Thanks means pushing Wrong Star Long Dry Walk Boyfriend into the box where Dingus and about 30 other partially recorded songs live. Potential Bomb Pop Innuendo material. 111017 Fluffed up Around The World. 110817 Talked to P about adding accordion to Land Ho! Added SoundToys Little Plate reverb to Pro Tools. Recorded the framework for Around The World In 20,000 Days. Will do 20,000 Days tomorrow. 110417 I dreamt of some puns about biblical characters for Around The World In 20,000 Days. I was given the title too. 110217 Got guitar parts back from Danny for Is This Your Thing. Good stuff as always. 110117 Asked Patrick if he wanted the completed songs for Land Ho as they were finshed or all at once. Decided on all at once. I've traded recording for rehearsing for the last few months but need to get ready to start sending Allen songs for drums before Thanksgiving. Am committed to going through everything over the next 10 days and evaluating which songs are finished and which still need bits. Still need to write a few more too, which fortunately is happening organically. Her Bows one year-old today. 101917 Added 20,000 Days to the set. Dave brought a Shure SM58 Beta for me to try out, which I dug. 101217 Ran through the 19 song set with Bryan and Dave. Broke a string on the Ephiphone less than a week after re-stringing it. Talked with Bryan about contributing parts to "Land Ho!". 100617 Fourth rehearsal with Dave and Bryan. Should have an hour of stuff ready to go in early November. 093017 Adding Three Bells, Ordinary Guy and Girl for Samson's End of Summer to the set. 092817 Talked with Michael about a title for the 4th album and artwork. He's on board with Land Ho! for the title and my concept for the front and back covers. Third rehearsal with Bryan and Dave. Bryan is ready to add a few more songs so will learn Three Bells and something else. 092217 Second rehearsal with Bryan and Dave. Added Puff Adders and Falstaff to the set. 091817 Still rehearsing a 45 minute set instead of recording. Land Ho and Is This Your Thing are out getting guitar parts. Will probably start sending Allen songs for drums in October. 091517 Played around with a cover for the new album. Going with Land Ho until something better happens along. 091417 Dave and I ran through the set with multi-instrumentalist Bryan Mace. Very excited about the potential. 091317 Patrick Meagher signed up for mixing and mastering the 4th album. Big relief for me. 083117 Dave and I romped through the set. 082817 Chris Ruzich came by and helped flesh out a song he submitted as a bass idea earlier this year. Michael brought the congas by for our rehearsals. 082517 ReverbNation chart plummet. Held the number 5 spot for our city for about 6 weeks but have since dribbled down to number 10. I think all this means is that I need to post new content. A new picture and a blog entry would probably stave off our disappearing entirely from the front page. 082417 Dave and I ran through the set. Trying to get the science-y bits worked out so that we can get it to the place where we can drink while we play. 082317 Still trying to run through the set once or twice a day to get in playing shape Please consider this public record proof of ownership of the following band name: Touch Manly & the Bomb Pop Innuendo While I am googly-eyed by the thrilling possibilities of writing songs as TM, I am not made of wood and will consider any obscene offer for purchase. And by obscene I mean a figure high enough that my bank won't allow me to cash the check at the drive through. Like, they would need me to come in and show a bunch of credentials. Which I totally have. 082117 Filmed the changes in the sky during the eclipse for incidental footage for White Girl but there were dust spots on my sensor. Sang another dozen takes of Land Ho. 081917 Sent Dave (bass), Terry Gann (pedal steel) and Michael (piano) a demo of Land Ho! Michael and I went shopping! 081817 Ayo McPherson tracked congas on Nellie and Is This Your Thing. Worked on the B section of Land Ho. 081717 Ran through the set with Dave. John Bara sat in on congas. Yahoo suggests that, while searching for Johnny Marie & the Lonesome Petunias, you may have intended to search for: breanne marie & the front porch sinners jan marie & the mean reds donny & marie marie & the papaya girls beautiful day marie & the redcat marie & the misfits marie & the boys dance band andrea marie & the magnolia band I don't agree. I think you were spot on. Here's a whimsical look at the current "Similar Artists" list from Spotify: The Delta Riggs 888 Rann Akron/Family Revolution, I Love You Paul Weller I think Paul Weller is on the list because we both fret over gum recession and bone density. 081617 Did some base touching with the videographer. Sending Is This Your Thing off to Danny Button. Talking to conga players. Current live setlist clocking in right at 30 minutes without jibber jabber, tuning or replacing broken strings: Little Something Sultan Eyes Kitty Can/nothingood/White Girl Billy Corgan's Caddilac Ask Gardenaire My Sweet Lord/Toast & Marmalade For Tea/Trashbag Launderette Wrong Star It's Wandering 081517 Gardenaire (the song) now has over 1,000 streams on Pandora Radio. 081417 Recorded demo-y parts for Land Ho and Melody Maker. Recorded more soft lead vocals for Nellie Ordinary. Fooled around with the solos in Is This Your Thing. 081317 Added some chaotic solos to Is This Your Thing. 080917 juiceboxberries is now one year-old. 080617 Lots of stuff going on. I'm so focused on this new album that I'm startled whenever something good floats down the river from Gardenaire - which has only been out for 3 months. 080517 Michael may have scored us a conga player for recording and performance. 080417 Michael added backing vocals to Is This Your Thing. 080317 Dave and I ran through a dozen songs for our future set. Afterwards he added backing vocals to Is This Your Thing, Wrong Star and It's Wandering. 080217 The "White Girl" video project is still alive. Please not-too-long live the "While Girl" video project. Tom Bowman doing what Tom Bowman does. 080117 Official YouTube page for Johnny Marie & the Lonesome Petunias music and videos. 073117 Made some tweaks to It's Wandering. Allen Johnston is ready to start listening to songs. 073017 Thomas added bass and vocals to It's Wandering. 072917 Rachel added some vocals to Is This Your Thing? Got up at 4:30 to quietly capture the B part to It's Wandering. Got chords, melody, words - the whole pile. Thank you Giant Man. 072817 Fleshing out It's Wandering. Thought of a B part right before bed that will haunt me all night. 072617 There is a clerk at the local grocery store that I used to "know" a long time ago when he worked at a now-defunct music store. Whenever I see him he always asks after my musical pursuits. I recently answered him by giving him a copy of Gardenaire, which he immediately tried to buy. After a few weeks he asked for one of the other albums, which I delivered today, and again, he insisted on paying for it. How stand up is that shit? 072417 MTV Italy treating us better than the US. Fake news. Cregg optimistic about the new t-shirt designs. 072217 Sent a new t-shirt design to Cregg. Got the first rough cut of the video for White Girl. 072017 Dave add more takes to Parasol. I used a bass mistake from Is This Your Thing to build a loop in the outro. He had a few live runs at that. I decided to have it morph from loop to live like We Don't Do That. 071917 Talking to another artist about a video for White Girl. 071817 Finishing up a long droning ending to Is This Your Thing? 071317 Dave and Michael came over and we mostly talked, drank and sang. Ran through some stuff I imagine including in an open mic set. Song list up for consideration for number 4 thus far, or so far: Wrong Star Long Dry Walk Kill Me Glad To Pass On Is This Your Thing? Nelly Ordinary Parasol Boyfriend Old Clothes 071217 I've been posting some old CD artwork mock-ups on Instagram and Facebook. 071017 Played with Is This Your Thing? some more. 070917 Started fooling around with Is This. Your Thing? Also lathered some vocal flesh on Wrong Star. 070817 On this day last year I was listening to the juiceboxberries masters. Added piano and backing vocals to Wrong Star. Re-sang lead in Nellie Ordinary. 070617 Dave came over and tracked bass on Wrong Star. We ran through Kitty Can. 070517 Finished up the Kitty Can demo and added a million softer vocal takes to Parasol. Dashed off some guide tracks for Wrong Star. 070317 Look at how MTV is spoofing users by using a redirect for Johnny Marie on MTV.com (https://www.mtv.com/artists/johnny-marie-the-lonesome-petunias/) link to bounce to their homepage. Number 5 on Kansas City's Alterntative charts at ReverbNation just for being organized. 062917 Michael came over and listened to the mostly-finished and just-started songs. He really liked Kill Me and wants to open the album with it I forgot about Long Dry Walk and Wrong Star so suddenly we have 7 songs in the bank. I would like to develop at least another 7 before we call it soup or whatever you call a completed collection of songs. Is it soup? Smoothed out the changes in Boyfriend. Have 4 songs nearly ready to ship to Allen for drums. 062817 Played around with a live set arrangement. Doubled the length of Boyfriend and added some guitars and bass. 062617 Spent the afternoon setting up proper buses and naming tracks for the 4 songs that are nearly ready for Allen while "The Trip" from 1967 droned. I'll watch anything pre-disco era Bruce Dern picture. The wah-wahier the better. Michael brought by Gardenaire t-shirt samples. Had a meeting in the gardens about quantity, sizes etc. 062517 Rachel and Shannon added vocals to Nellie Ordinary, Parasol, Boyfriend and Glad to Pass On. Spent the early morning working up some covers to worm into a live set. Both Bee Gees-related. 062417 Tweaked Wrong Star, Parasol and Boyfriend. 062217 Dave and I put down a scratch track for Wrong Star. Talked about doing some 4-5 song set shows together. Was unfollowed by a handful of people for this tweet: "On social media, unsigned bands are as vulnerable as the sick and elderly and as invasive and toxic as Giant Hogweed." 062017 That moment when you realize you've been mixing with the isolation headphones on. That moment when you realize that there is a pair of hot headphones in the room that have been bleeding into your tracking. Number 5 on ReverbNation's Alternative charts for Kansas City. It's a tin tiera. 061917 Chris came by and recorded bass for the outro of Parasol. He also Sang harmonies for Glad To Pass On and Boyfriend. 061717 Sang more takes for Boyfriend and fooled with the arrangement. Storms overnight. Trees down. Power outages. Pro Tools computer wouldn't power up. Dig this - ends up that a single plug on the surge protector, the very plug the computer was in, was fried. Tried another plug and protector and the 4th Johnny Marie album resumes. 061617 I have musicians scheduled to come over and track over the next week so am trying to see which of the 6 half-cooked songs (Parasol, Nellie Ordinary, Glad to Pass On, Long Dry Walk, Old Clothes, Boyfriend, ) are ready. I also need to frame out a rollicking version of Wrong Star. 061217 Number 7 on ReverbNation's Alternative charts for Kansas City in mid-June when the winds are gusting from the South. 060917 juiceboxberries now available at Target.com 060817 Dave tracked bass on Nellie Ordinary and Parasol. Micahel popped by and we talked about some t-shirt designs. 060717 Worked on Boyfriend and Old Clothes. 060617 Popped Three Bells up on ReverbNation 060317 Gardenaire now playing on Pandora Radio 060217 Hung out with 5 Johnny Marie contributors sequentially. 053117 Another re-tooling of Boyfriend. Got an idea to make it less Violent Femmesy when I heard a sort of reggae song in an episode of Better Call Saul. Didn't work. 052917 Picked up a six string banjo. You're thinking "Oh, banjo and a mandolin! I know what you're up to!" No you don't. 052717 Finally got a chance to sit down and paw through Danny Button's guitar tracks for Parasol. Delightful range of tones and feels. Will be difficult settling on just one or two. Monkeying around with a mandolin. 052317 Received the approval notice from Pandora for Gardenaire. Took two weeks this time. Took 1 day for juiceboxberries and Her Bows. Should be live sometime in June. 052017 Finally picking up a banjo. Already have my eyes and ears on a song for it. 051817 Layed down a foundation for Boyfriend. 051717 Sat outside watching birds with my 1/2 classical guitar and came up with the chords for Boyfriend. 051617 Touched base with Terry Gann to make sure he was still available to contribute some lap steel/pedal steel parts. Looking forward to dreaming up something worthy of Terry's work. 051517 Sent Parasol off to Danny for some of his sweet noodling. 051217 Delighted to get Danny Button to agree to submit some guitar parts. Between he and Terry Gann I now have some shiny new tools in the box. 051117 Re-cut all of the falsettos in Nellie Ordinary. Sounds much better. 051017 Just got in a fresh batch of "Her Bows" CDs. 050917 YouTube links are now working. 050817 Physical CDs are here and should be available online in about a week. 050617 Album is finding it's way around the world. Currently up on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, iHeartRADIO, Slacker Radio, Napster, Google Play and Microsoft Music. YouTube is slowly adding songs. Pandora will take a few weeks. 050317 Worked s'more on Old Clothes. 050217 Started work on Old Clothes. 043017 Sent MP3s of Glad to Pass On to Chris so that he can develop a bass part. 042617 Pre-order "Gardenaire" at Amazon.com Dig: I'm thinking about building a set comprised of a song or two from each of the three albums and doing a few open mic nights to try to "move some units." I have mentioned this to my circle of friends so many times over the last month that more than once I have heard "Yeah, you were saying something about that." in reply. 042517 Digital Distribution launched. On target for a May 5 release. 042417 Issue with the resolution of one of the images so I went back to the lot and pulled the image to re-scan it. While looking through the slides from the roll of film I found a second shot that was wonderful and I'm using it for the CD image. A Passion Play. 042217 Order placed for Gardenaire CDs. Also ordered another box of Her Bows. 042017 I have the masters, they are gorgeous and they will be submitted to be printed tomorrow. I think we are having a May baby. 041917 Allen is starting to put together something that will enable him to record drums for us from afar. 041817 Still working, very slowly, on Parasol, 123&4 and Nellie Ordinary. 041717 I get many lines for JMLP songs when I have awakened in the middle of the night and have just about drifted back to sleep. The challenge is capturing the line without waking myself back up out of the sweet, sweet woozy state. Sometimes I can memorize it and scribble it down when I awake. I gambled on that last night and failed. 040917 Michael and I fooled around with the lyrics for Nellie Ordinary. I've been hammering away on Nellie Ordinary & pining for the Gardenaire masters. Still hope to get it out in April. 040217 Worked most of the morning painting noises on the current pile of songs. Started work on a sequence of guitar chords that Michael brought a few weeks ago. 033117 Ready to track some vocals and there goes somebody's house alarm. There are a variety of incidental environmental sounds that make their way onto vocal tracks - roofers, dogs, loud cars, wrens and cardinals. 032917 Bought and installed UVI's Mello. Michael came by and listened to the latest stuff. We decided to go ahead and order more copies of "Her Bows" when we submit "Gardenaire". 032617 Still slapping it on. 032517 Ladeling flesh upon Parasol, 123&4 and Am Again. 032417 Fooled around with some mellotron bits in 123&4 and Parasol. 031917 I want an M-Tron Pro because Andy Partridge uses one. Worked s'more on 123&4. 031617 Heaped a bunch of guitars and pianos on top of one of the bits that Chris brought. Then, 3 or 4 months from now, we'll pay somebody to strip it all way. 031517 Michael dropped by to share a collection of guitar chords he has been fooling around with. I may try to use some of the parts to supplement Parasol. 031417 Worked on Parasol. Mainly trying to find the melody hidden in the naked chords. Discovered that the masters are still a few weeks away from being in my paws. Poor world. 030517 The first optimistically over-priced Johnny Marie counterfeit CD just showed up on eBay. 030417 Chris came over and tracked a fistful of grooves he had been saving up. 030317 Went out with the gang to see Dave's cover band play. Got to meet Danny Button, Tim Kelly and talk Terry Gann into doing some pedal/lap steel work for future Johnny Marie projects. 030217 Need to do something with the phrases "unlaunderable funk" and "Virginians and Mohicans". 030117 Dave recorded bass for Long Dry Walk. Hung out with Michael, Shannon and played our hits until well past my bedtime. 022717 Thomas sent me a track order. I forwarded that along with Michael's to Patrick. 022617 Made arrangements with Allen Johnston to drum on future Johnny Marie albums. Made plans with Chris Ruzich to get some bass grooves to play with later this week. Talked with Patrick about shortening the intro to Trash Bag Launderette. 022417 Taking the AIFFs to Thomas (co-produced, mixed and mastered "Her Bows") for some track order feedback. Michael came by and gave me his suggestions for track order. 022317 Got the Gardenaire mixes back from Patrick - including all of the edits and Jackson Browne. I'm still wrestling with the intro to one song before sending this thing off to print. 022017 Fluffed up Long Dry Walk with demo bass, drums, organ and backing vocals. 021917 Roughed out Long Dry Walk structure with piano chords for number 4. I've included a Johnny Marie classic along with new stuff on each album so far. Comped the drums from last night's session and am starting to zip it up for P. There are so many "OK, this is the last *" moments in completing an album. BTW, taxes were submitted within about a minute of the zip file upload completing. 021817 Chris came by and recorded several drum takes for Jackson Browne. Also added some harmonies and cow bell. A proper cow bell at that. I'm talking wooden clapper that had to be held with his left hand while he sticked with his right. Sent mixing notes to Patrick. Site player feeds are still down. 021717 Got the mixes for the first nine songs back from Paris. Stunned. So lucky to have this guy in my corner. Had a listen with Dave straight away and then later with Michael. The feeds for the MP3 players are currently unavilable. Should be back up soon. 021317 Sang a few more rounds of the bridge so Patrick has plenty to work with. Chris is coming on Saturday to add drums and then this thing is off to the doctor. (Patrick is the doctor.) Falstaff now at 300 views while We Don't Do That is threatening 600. All you can hope for these days are ears. 021017 Decided on the 7th to have Chris Ruzich have a go at the drums for Jackson Browne and sent him an .mp3 to work with. Originally I wanted Gary Boyle to play drums on the song but felt like I was running out of time. The idea of Chris drumming to his own bass tracks appeals to me too. Working with Gary will be a pleasure I'll save for the 4th album. 020717 Chris Ruzich tracked bass for Jackson Browne. 020617 Michael signed off on the Gardenaire artwork and the lastest version of Jackson Browne. 020517 Michael brought over the Mackie ProFX12 because my ONYX820i doesn't have enought XLR inputs to accomodate all of the microphones I want to use on the drums. More finishing touches on the artwork. 020417 Sent a Jackson Browne mp3 to Dave for possible Swiercinsky Sounds. 020317 Finished laying out the artwork for Gardenaire. Just need to settle on fonts and a track listing. Touched base with Gary Boyle about drumming on Jackson Browne. 020217 Jackson Browne MP3 sent to Chris so that he can develop a part. 013117 Added new takes for just about everything in Jackson Browne. Just needs bass and drums before heading to Paris. Have a bass player lined up next week. 013017 Re-sang most of Jackson Browne and worked some more on the arrangement. 012917 Made progress finishing up Jackson Browne. Worked up a bridge and a lyric and added some slide guitar and keyboard bits. Tomorrow I'll start replacing idea parts with proper parts. 012817 We Don't Do That now has over 500 views on YouTube. Added guitars and more pianos to Now Here and whisked it off to P. 012717 Lost my nerve with Jackson Browne and reverted back to the initial notion rather than trying to implement older bits into the song. This inspired me to dig up one of the earlier versions of Pool that will work better with the temporarily discarded bits. 012617 Imported Dave's stand up bass part for NowHere. 012517 Windy sent to Paris. Worked more on Jackson Browne. Thomas came by and tracked bass for Windy with the Percision fretless and the Music Man Sting Ray. 012417 Talked to Gary Boyle about drumming on Jackson Browne and he's up for it! Now I need to finish it. I found a harmony and a vocoder part that patched up the bit that was annoying me in Windy. Scheduled Thomas to come track bass. Getting close on Windy. Got NowHere Again tidied up and just waiting on a bass part. Uploading the outro for Windy. Now to finish Windy. Did another bass take with the Music Man. Things I learned about Pro Tools today: The Insertion Follows Playback button is EVIL! Make certain that it is not highlighted. Control click on a bus track will enable individual track soloing. Control = is the antidote for an indadvertant Control W. 012317 Smushed Intro into the start of Jackson Browne. May also try to wedge in Bloof, another little bit that was born in Houston. Intro and Jackson Browne sessions were set at 110 and Bloof, with a guitar track, was at 115. What to do? If I change the tempo it will screw up the audio data, right? Here's where Paris once again pays dividends. He told me once to use Elastic Audio to convert the audio data to clicks which preserved the quality of the track during the tempo change. And it did. 012217 Sang a dozen takes of the intro to Trash Bag Launderette and sent it off to Paris. 012117 Dave has started to upload takes of Trash Bag Lauderette to my DropBox. By the way, he's using Stu Cook's 1999 Modulus Genesis 5 string bass. Stu of course is the bassist for Creedence Clearwater Revival and Creedence Clearwater Revisited. 012017 I'm giving Paris Three Bells. Made some progress on Windy but still needs some love. Working today on resurrecting Windy. This was a song Jason and I fooled around with in the early days of this project and was one of the first songs we worked on for Her Bows. I'll be giving it a better piano performance today and re-cut the vocals and bass. The outro for this song is an old demo of mine called Today. I will give Paris the option of using my original stereo demo or the reworking of the song I did last year. I need to learn how to use the Solo Safe function in Pro Tools today. This will strengthen and lengthen my relationships with sound engineers who are tasked with mixing my work. 011917 Uploading Sink Down for Paris to mix. Should have Three Bells ready this weekend. 011817 Uploading White Girls, Gardenaire and Blue in the Veins for P to mix. 011717 Added some more vocal parts and bass lines to Jackson Browne. Re-sang all of the bits in Blue in the Veins. 011617 Trying to get a couple of songs to take to Paris tomorrow. I decided on Gardenaire and White Girls. Trash Bag Launderette and NowHere (again) are waiting on a bass parts from Dave, I need to add a few more vocal takes to Blue in the Veins and Three Bells and Sink Down needs some stretching. Gave back Jezebel's Rode NTK. Worked more on Michael's new song. 011517 Got down the guts of an idea Michael had. 011417 Dave had a go at the bass for Trash Bag Launderette. Latest "Similar Artists" from Pandora Radio: The Delta Riggs Akron/Family 888 Revolution, I Love You Rann 011117 Sent Dave an MP3 of NowHere Again with Allen's drum tracks so that he can build a bass part. Woke up early and put some finishing touches on Sink Down. Will run by Michael tonight before handing off to Paris. 011017 Sink Down is starting to sound like Bananarama. 010917 Worked on the outro of Sink Down and added new vocal takes to Gardenaire and White Girl. Futzed around with vocal melodies for Bloof. 010817 Have a dozen drummers to audition but ran out of songs that need drums. Allen drummed on the first 6, I did Sink Down and I am thinking of reviving Windy, which already has Allen's parts on it. That leaves a couple of songs to prepare for percussion. I think the right way to go about this is to schedule drummers in 2 hour blocks to track the 2 songs. Then we can decide who we got along with and had the best performances. 010717 Borrowed Jezebel's Rode NTK while my mic is out on loan and am determined to track vocals for all 7 songs with it. There's a time when a man has to ask: "Will more songs fall out of my bottom if I buy a 6 string banjo OR a hulusi?" Getting some great drummer responses from the ad. Also, Dave gave me the numbers of a couple of people he has worked with. 010617 Added some bass ideas to Sink Down using the Music Man. Dave came by and hung out for a bit. Now I want a Hulusi. 010417 Re-cut a sloppy acoustic in Gardenaire and the Kent Americana in Trash Bag Launderette. 010217 Got drum parts from Allen (with engineering help from Thomas Montgomer) for White Girl, Gardenaire, Three Bells, Blue in the Veins, NowWhere (again) and Trashbag Launderette. An amazing talent as you will discover once the amazingly talented Patrick Meagher has mixed and mastered our work. 010117 So excited about Allen coming am I, that I put out some feelers for drummers to contribute on a more regular basis. Tuning Drums Day. Ew. 2016 (recording Her Bows/Gardenaire) 123016 After enduring months of sass and shaming from Dave and Thomas I finally invested in some quality guitar and mic cables. 122916 Thomas had another go at bass (fretless Percission and Music Man Stingray) for White Girl, Gardenaire and Three Bells. Need to buy Allen sticks for Monday. 5B-7A. 122816 Thomas had a go at bass parts for White Girl and Gardenaire. Michael came by and we ate tacos. 122616 After trying every gimmick I could think of to occupy a moment in White Girl I finally settled on just a classical guitar and piano and I like it super much. 122416 "juiceboxberries" Similar Artists list on iHeart Radio: David Gilmour Dave Lee Roth Mountain I don't know whether to laugh or whimper or wheeze. 122216 Scheduled time with Thomas next week to record bass for White Girl and Gardenaire. 122116 Michael and I pawed through the fragments of songs we have saved up to see what is worthy of pursuing. Re-cut all of the guitars in White Girl to my satisfaction only to discover that a mic in the room wasn't completely muted so there is significant bleed because I used the monitors instead of headphones. Still, the arrangement of the song is complete and I only need to up the quality of some of the parts. 121916 Big boxes of guitar tracks on White Girl. I am in the removing spices stage of arranging the song. 121816 Still dry humping White Girl trying to create sparks. 121716 Smashed two ideas together and What a Day for the White Girl is born. 121316 Her Bows on Pandora Radio 121016 The juiceboxberries cover has magically re-appeared on Pandora. Long live magic. 120916 Michael and I spent the evening listening to songs and making notes. Both took a couple of stabs at drunkenly bellowing parts during the outro of Trash Bag. 120716 The chalky little turd that is my muse gave me enough words to finish Gardenaire today. Added better vocal takes on Three Bells, Gardenaire and Trash Bag Launderette. 120516 Focused on getting some good takes of the Trash Bag Launderette intro with the new verse. Patrick Meagher is going to be mixing and mastering the next album. 120416 Gardenaire, Three Bells, Trash Bag Launderette & Blue in the Veins sent to Allen. 120316 "juiceboxberries" and "Her Bows" now at Mills Record Company in Westport. http://millsrecordcompany.com/new-releases-1125-mills-record-company/ Added loads of guitars to Three Bells. Set up a basic template, cover image and fonts for the alternate album title. Always enjoy watching the JMLP Similar Artists list on Pandora Radio evolve as we add albums: Similar Artists Temples Angels & Airwaves 888 The Delta Riggs Brad Laner 120116 Cut some Blue in the Veins vocal tracks with the new lyrics, made the Three Bells arrangement match my latest revisions and re-sang the intro to Trash Bag Launderette. I've been getting lyrics in the middle of the night lately. Got a verse for Launderette on the 30th and 3 verses for Blue in the Veins last night. Sleep would have been nice but some people can't sleep and get nothing in return for their suffering. 113016 Dave played around with bass parts for Gardenaire, Three Bells and Trash Bag Launderette. 112816 Lathered more meat upon Gardenaire, Three Bells and Trash Bag Launderette. 112616 Fleshed out Gardenaire and sent Dave a copy to use to develop a bass line. Then it's off to Allen for drum consideration. Going to try to finish Three Bells next. ...and worked on Trash Bag Launderette instead. 112416 Had a little challenge today. Gardenaire was built from some bits I recorded in Houston on a MacBook. I guess when I imported them into Pro Tools 12 the session defaulted to 44.1 kHz instead of 48 kHz, which is what I use for everything else. So, when I would exit a Gardenaire session and load something else Pro Tools would freak out about the difference and I would have to continually exit and restart. How could I convert Gardenaire to 48 kHz? I tried creating a new session at 48 k and then importing the 44.1 project. This fails because the import screen (and this is a well-documented issue) is longer than the computer screen and if you attempt to resize it it disappears. Went for a walk to think about it. Came back, opened up Gardenaire, launched the Save As process and discovered that it had an option for the frequency! Worked like a charm. Rock and also roll. 112116 Added a moog solo to Gardenaire. 112016 Back from a short trip south. Took one of the old MacBooks for Garageband and a half-sized classical guitar to write with. Got the guts of Gardenaire. 111116 Made a new project out of the old NowHere ending and fleshed out a new little guitar ditty. I'm starting to feel juicy again. Saving some time today to explore: Indian Run - Spindrift Everything Happens for the Best - Dick Flood Going Nowhere - The Nukes Tid Tom Ta Lai - Man City Lion Floating on a Cloud - Christopher Blue Poo Yai Lee/Green Onions - Louis Kennedy Suppanahong - Johnny Guitar Brave Awakening - Terry Reid Dont Worry Tracy - Christopher Blue Close to Me - Charles Manson Dreaming Casually - Little Willie and Thee Midniters You Said I'd Never Love Again - Faye Tucker Baroque #1 - Ultimate Spinach Nom Sami Mai - Saknatee Srichiangmai 110916 Physical CDs available at cdbaby. The moment you find yourself believing that somehow you can survive this, visualize how happy Ted Nugent is right now. 110716 Physical CDs mailed off and should be available online in a few days. Working on resurrecting Windy, Starting by striking the intro and upgrading some of the inserts. 110416 CDs should arrive today. CD release party tonight. "Her Bows" should be up on Pandora in a few weeks. 110316 Her Bows now on YouTube, Spotify and Slacker Radio. 110216 Got together and ran through Three Bells several times live. Shannon showed up and we retired to the piano with Dave's stand up bass and ran through Carly Simon songs. Michael pointed out how similar the colors for the album artwork of "juiceboxberries" and The Uncle Devil Show's "Terrible Beauty" are. This pleases me. 110116 Allen Johnston coming on Jaunary 3rd to record drums on the 3rd album. Her Bows now available at Amazon.com Her Bows now available on iTunes.com ...and no, I don't have an issue with Billy Corgan. Billy Corgan's Cadillac just sounds awesome together, it rhymed with the gibberish that was holding its place and he does happen to be a popular music rebel who ended up doing pretty well financially. It wrote itself. 103116 And we have liftoff. Day six of waiting on the review results for digital distribution of Her Bows. It took just 3 days for juiceboxberries. 102816 Player and store for Her Bows now up! Physical CDs available in about 2 weeks. Already lobbying for "Trashbag Launderette" as the title for the 3rd album. Current response from Forlorn Petunioideae is frosty. 102716 You can listen to Her Bows and Billy Corgan's Cadillac here and here. I always forget how long the CDBaby Digital Distribution process takes to finalize. It took 4 days for juiceboxberries so we are probably looking at Her Bows being dumped on the planet by 11/01/16. 102616 Final master in hand and uploading the songs to be printed. If I can get the artwork done today this little monster will be leaking onto the web by the weekend. 102516 Now that I am about a day away from pulling the trigger on this album I am getting cold feet on the artwork. I sent a PDF to Graeme Walker for feedback yesterday and he helped me with some justification issues. Just wringing my hands now over the title font. 102416 Track 1 "Her Bows" 0:00.000/4:38.980 (4:38.980 runtime) Track 2 "Juno Contacto" 4:38.980/7:54.231 (3:15.250 runtime) Track 3 "Billy Corgan's Cadillac" 7:54.231/12:21.826 (4:27.594 runtime) Track 4 "Jacob's Ladder" 12:21.826/16:21.575 (3:59.749 runtime) Track 5 "nothingood" 16:21.575/21:13.187 (4:51.612 runtime) Track 6 "Pool" 21:13.187/24:41.704 (3:28.517 runtime) Track 7 "Cleo the Liar" 24:41.704/27:48.240 (3:06.535 runtime) Track 8 "Maryland Mansion" 27:48.240/30:25.837 (2:37.597 runtime) Track 9 "NowHere" 30:25.837/34:14.464 (3:48.627 runtime) Track 10 "Ordinary Guy" 34:14.464/36:47.991 (2:33.526 runtime) Track 11 "Corky Finds Something" 36:47.991/38:49.237 (2:01.246 runtime) (38:49.237 total runtime) Graeme Walker is giving me some 11th feedback on the CD artwork. 102316 Got mastered album back from Thomas. Gave it one run through today. Will listen s'more tomorrow. 102116 Waxing nostalgic listening to the nearly completed 2nd album. We started writing and rehearsing songs for Her Bows in early December of last year (with Allen recording drums for Windy and Corky on New Years Eve) and finished with Ordinary Guy on October 7th. I've learned so much during the making of this album. Corky was started on the MacBook using Garageband (the same setup we used for juiceboxberries) so I had to learn Pro Tools 12 and a lovely variety of plug-ins during the making of. I think it was more fun to make because we were starting to get more comfortable with the writing and recording process. Less flailing around. Listened several times to the tracks in sequence to get a feel for how the album will flow. Thomas is now working on the mastering. Got the track sequence for Her Bows from Thomas: Her Bows Juno Contacto Billy Corgan's Cadillac Jacob's Ladder nothingood Pool Cleo the Liar Maryland Mansion NowHere Ordinary Guy Corky Finds Something 102016 Worked up a guitar solor for MTTROM. Single mixing adjustment from last night's session sent to Thomas. 101916 Listened to Her Bows mixes with Dave and Michael. Dave had a run at bass on the temporarily named Michael to the Right of Me. Purchased the Vahalla Vintage reverb and like it. Room and Plate will follow. 101816 Paris and Thomas have talked me into getting te Vahalla Plate, Room and Vintage reverbs. 101716 Played around with some vocal ideas for Michael to the Right of Me. 101616 Added an M-Audio SP-Triple Keyboard Pedal with Sustain, Soft, and Sostenuto Functions to the studio. Pretty sure I'll only ever use the sustain. 101116 A horrific escalation of tinnitus symptoms after spending most of the day under headphones. Going to take a break for a week and then ease back into aural abuse. 101016 Listened to the latest mixes with Thomas. We're very close. Played around with Hashtag Laundromat for a few hours. Added piano, drums, acoustic, tamby and some scratch vocals. 100916 Pick up a copy of juiceboxberries in Japan for just ¥ 1,400. 100816 Ran into Dennis Jones at a party. Dennis recorded one of my early bands at Hear Hear. My first time in a studio. He recorded us on 4 track. Tape. With a spring reverb. Added Slate Digital Trigger Platinum Drum Replacement Software to the JMLP studio. I'm just old enough that I'm still uneasy about spending money on something that you download vs something gleaming and blinking in a rack. Speaking of racks, I almost bought a used Roland GP-100 because GFS used one all the way through "12". It then struck me that we didn't use it on "Sleepnovox" because it had died. Reset shopping cart. 100716 Ordinary Guy handed to Thomas. Future moments to celebrate: completion of mixing, completion of mastering, CDs in hand and digital submission. 100516 Added one last Ordinary Guy vocal take and have the files ready to go to Thomas on Friday. 100416 Added an Ordinary Guy vocal take. 100316 Got a decent vocal take for Ordinary Guy. Wasn't happy with the tube preamp settings so will have another go tomorrow and then off to what we in the business calll "Post Production" or "Thomas." Thomas is having a difficult time replacing the piano parts with the new samples because they have already been slip-edited and/or automated. This makes it challenging to import and lineup the new parts. Fortunately it only involves 4 songs. 100216 Since we are about done with Her Bows I began the process of adding some of the ideas that I had on my phone to Pro Tools. We already have about 8 songs in various states of undress so it's not going to take long to come up with another 10 good ones for our third album. More Ordinary Guy vocal takes. Thomas may have to build this syllable by syllable. 100116 Met with Thomas. Gave him NowHere and talked about mixes. Paris told me to get the Native Instruments Alicia's Keys sample package for piano. And I did. Big memory hog but the samples are nice. Converted the pianos in Billy Corgan, Juno Contacto, Jacob's Ladder and Cleo the Liar. 093016 Had a bit of a cookout with most of the key players in attendance. Everybody signed off on the alternate NowHere ending. Will give that to Thomas this weekend. Artwork has also been approved. 092716 Three more Ordinary Guy vocal takes. 092616 Got the recording of the machinery from Dave and it fits better than I had dared to imagine. Or something like that. Nice fit. Going to track a few more vocals for Ordinary Guy today and then hand this albatross off to Thomas. This will just leave NowHere and it's mystery ending as the last problem to solve. 092516 Becoming more sure-handed with Illustrator and the album cover is looking more like an album cover. 092416 Now that I'm responsible for my own product I recall with new eyes Paris hastily cross-fading and consolidating regions before Thomas could see them during the Sleepnovox sessions. That little trick resides somewhere between wearing a padded bra and changing your test score from a B to an A. 092316 Sent Thomas notes for the mixes. Had a few more runs at Ordinary Guy and the end of NowHere. 092216 Dave recorded some clanky and hissy machine sounds that we want to use in NowHere. 092116 Set up Her Bows as a new project with DiscMakers so that I can test my work as I learn Illustrator 10. Have created the jacket and CD artwork and added text and everything looks good so far,. Listened to the NowHere ending over and over and finally threw up my hands and just cut the swing part and tripped out the ending. Now I have to sell it to my associates. I want to try some voice doubling on the lead for Ordinary Guy at the end of the week. 092016 Thomas printed (vs bouncing) me new mixes of the stuff he's finished and it is amazing. The difference between printing and bouncing is amazing and his work is amazing. Dave feels like the swing part in NowHere may not require a team of Super Friends to make it work so I will play with re-cutting some drum takes over the next few days so that we can get it to Thomas. 091916 Recorded drums for an idea I had and a B part for Three Bells. Tried some more Ordinary Guy takes but the work over the weekend was better. 091716 More vocal takes for Ordinary Guy. Hit the 128 audio tracks maximum and had to go on a killing spree. 091616 Still trying different vocal approaches to Ordinary Guy. Thomas plans to have mixes for Pool and Billy Corgan early next week. 091516 Fresh box of juiceboxberries CDs arrived. 091416 Dave had a gig so Michael and I spent the session going over album cover mock-ups. Agreed in principle on a title, cover and back cover. 091216 Worked some more on the Ordinary Guy vocal. That song will be ready to go once I get a good take, leaving NowHere and its swing part at the end as the last song to finish. 091016 Did some album cover mockups. Kristen ITC for JMLP and Vijaya for the title both using #DDD771 and Mangal for the 2nd option using #D7E0E9 for JMLP and #F6F9FD for the title. Toying with Her Boys, NowHere and nothingood as titles. 090916 Thomas came by and recorded a piano part during the Billy Corgan outro and a bass part for Ordinary Guy. He took home Billy Corgan for mixing. Two to go. 090716 Dave had a go at the verses Ordinary Guy and added a a few more bass passes to Billy Corgan. We listened to some of the finished mixes. Thinking this album could be done by Thanksgiving. Dave left a microKORG at the studio. Look out. 090516 Did another 3,000 vocal takes on Ordinary Guy, a song challenging my Three Blind Mice comfort zone. Finishing up Jacob's Ladder to give to Thomas tomorrow. That leaves Ordinary Guy, Billy Corgan's Cadillac and NowHere to tidy up before mixing. 090416 Sent off a current version of the swing bit at the end of NowHere to Dave Bostwick. 090316 Rachel and Shannon added backing vocals to Ordinary Guy and Jacob's Ladder. 090216 Ordered another pile of CDs. 090116 ...and Pool delivered to Thomas. Thomas brought over a mix of nothingood and we talked about it. I played him Pool and Ordinary Guy. Re-sang Pool and added some harmonies to Jacob's Ladder. 083116 Michael and I listened to the balance of songs to be mixed but the important thing is that he actually said "...jazz, to the point of stripper." Thomas dropped off an extended version of Her Bows to audition. It's growing on me. 082716 Another session working on Pool. Getting close. 082616 Spent some time trying to sex up Jacob's Ladder. I don't think that I succeeded. Also spent some time working on Pool and think I may have gotten closer to improving the chorus. There is that moment, at the height of deconstruction, that panic sets in and you wonder if you should try to refill the hole you just spent an hour digging. I kept digging. 082516 Added more vocal takes to nothingood and whisked it off to Thomas. 082416 Dave and I listened to mixes and decided that nothingood and Billy Corgan's Cadillac were ready to send to Thomas. We talked about how the swing part at the end of NowHere isn't working and he suggested getting some proper musicians together to record the bit and set the wheels in motion. How neato is that? According to Pandora, similar artists include: Angels & Airwaves 888 The Delta Riggs Brad Laner "To start things off, we'll play a song that exemplifies the musical style of Johnny Marie & the Lonesome Petunias which features punk influences, mild rhythmic syncopation, mixed minor & major key tonality, a vocal-centric aesthetic and slide guitars." 082316 Did a few more vocal takes on Pool with the tube pre-amp. Also tried some alternate takes on the chorus. Still need to iron that out and a percussion bit that is annoying me. 082216 More vocal takes for Pool, Ordinary Guy and Billy Corgan. Added fresh acoustic guitars to Billy. 082116 Shannon added vocals to Three Bells. Thomas has the first 4 mixes ready to sign off on. Added loads of harmonies to Three Bells when I should have been adding loads of chords and verses. Or finishing the 6 remaining songs for the 2nd album. 082016 Added some slide guitar ideas to BIlly Corgan and created a demo session for Three Bells. 081816 With the keyboard and Pro Tools working in harmony I had yet another go at tightening up the end of NowHere. And here is what finally worked: Disable the Unknown device Power off computer Unplug computer Plug in computer Power on computer Correct device found One variable that may have been critical: I originally had a multi-USB port adapter in-between the keyboard and the USB port that I removed for troubleshooting purposes. Apparently Windows wanted to see the adapter??? 081716 A couple of days spent wrestling with what appears to be a common problem. Suddenly, after working for months, the M-Audio Keystation 88 Pro is no longer recognized. I either get the malfunctioned error or the device unknown error. I've dealt with this before but apparently did not document the solution. Schmer. 081316 Shannon added harmonies to parts of Ordinary Guy and Billy Corgan. 081116 Physical CDs are now available. Check out the Links page for retailer options. BTW, these are not CDRs or Pro CDRs. These are proper CDs produced at DiscMakers. 081016 Michael and Dave recorded harmonies for Billy Corgan's Cadillac and the bridge in Ordinary Guy. Someone complimented the backing vocal arrangements on juiceboxberries yesterday, and I realized that we haven't done a lot of band harmonies on the 2nd record. So, tonight... 080916 Submitted We Don't Do That and Falstaff to Pandora. 080816 More vocal takes for Ordinary Guy, Pool and Billy Corgan. 080716 More vocal takes for Pool and Billy Corgan. 080616 Thomas starting on Her Bows in earnest. 080516 Physical CDs sent to distributors. Took a picture of Dave recording bass for "Ordinary Guy" and realized that nearly every picture of him on the site is with the 76 Percision. This despite the fact that he shows up every week with an armful of bass options. 080416 Still waiting for that magic moment when someone other than a team member refers to our organization as JMLP. Michael Jackson taught us that sometimes you need to start your own fires. 080316 Juiceboxberries is now available in the US. 080216 Juiceboxberries is now available in Russia. Still re-working Pool. 080116 Ratdrangea. There is your band name, debut album title and opening track. 073016 Tore Pool a new one. Note to future self, if there are mutinous cries from your comrades you can revert to the version from 07/29/16. 072916 Talked for a bit tonight about what we should put on the 2nd album. Thomas is already working on Corky, Maryland Mansion, Juno Contacto, Cleo the Liar and Her Bows so that just leaves 5 songs. We decided to go with Jacob's Ladder (just need to comp bass) NowHere (EQ swing section) nothingood (all good!) Ordinary Guy (comp bass, sing a few more takes) Pool (try live drums and substitute guitars in middle of song with something else) That will leave Billy Corgan's Cadillac, You Should Be Dancing, Windy, Heron, Dingus and Minor Dingus as starter meals for the 3rd album. 072716 Dave tracked bass parts for Billy Corgan, You Should be Dancing and Ordinary Guy, formerly One Million Chickens. Got new mixes of Corky, Cleo the Liar, Juno Contacto and Maryland Mansion from Thomas. 072616 Digital Distribution process launched. Horrors. Loaded Billy Corgan's Cadillac into Pro Tools and it errors out. Apparently it was corrupted when the power went out yesterday. I had a day old backup but lost a few things. Fortunately I remember what they were and they are easily re-created. 072516 CDs ordered. Estimated delivery date is August 3rd. Got started on the digital distribution. Just waiting for the ISRC codes. 072316 Today is Upload the Album to be Printed Day. A little intimidating as my colleagues in Girl for Samson have always taken care of this stuff in the past. 072016 Hair is gone and artwork is done. The printers and digital distribution are the only thing standing between me and pennies a day. Michael and I worked on something we cooked up a couple of weeks ago and Billy Corgan's Cadillac for the 3rd album. 071916 Got the artwork revisions back from Carrie. I think we found a font for the title we like. Sent back a text mod and a request to remove an vintage, errant human hair that apparently was on the slide, narrowly avoiding a butcher cover controversy. 071516 E-mailed font revisions for cover art. 071416 Artwork in hand awaiting a handshake before calling it done. 071116 Added a few more vocal takes to Her Bows and got it packed up and ready to go to Thomas for mixing. Got a new version of the masters for Juiceboxberries from Paris to listen to. 071016 Sent Carrie the text for the back cover. 070916 Taking Cleo the Liar to Thomas for mixing. That's 4 of 10. 070816 I have mastered tracks to listen to! 070716 Track order for Juceboxberries sent to P. Little Something We Don't Do That Falstaff Sultan Eyes Industrial Debris Tambourine On 062916 Dave tracked bass parts for One Million Chickens. Paris sent the last mix of Tambourine so we are down to track listing, artwork and production. 062716 Have mixes of Corky and Maryland Mansion back from Thomas. Taking him Juno Contacto tomorrow. 061816 Listened to mixes with Michael. We were talking a little about the artwork when he abruptly decided that he liked the mouse cover more than the cake. 061716 Got the lastest mix of On and Tambourine from Paris. We are a sign-off and track order away from having this thing mastered and printed. 060916 Paris sent me a mix of On. He did amazing things. Gave Thomas Maryland Mansion to mix. Contacted someone about doing the artwork for Juiceboxberries. 060816 Played Michael the One Million Chickens demo. Patrick is starting on the last song (On) for Juiceboxberries. 060116 Dave tried some noodling bass parts on the fretless during the outro of Her Bows. 053116 Re-worked the outro to Pool. Gave it new guitars. Probably needs a new bass part. I've had a string of chords and a melody sloshing around in my head that I finally got down in demo form. Throw-away title of One Million Chickens as a temporary nod to the Cincinnati Zoo incident. 052816 Thomas is nearly done mixing Corky and Paris has just about finished mixing Tambourine. I want to make a video for We Don't Do That. I have a fistful of Canon DSLRs that shoot video but wonder if a dedicated video camera would be better. Trying to identify any human resources that I may have to assist in making this happen. 051816 Michael and I worked on the piano for the swing section of NowHere. Dave came by and had another go at bass parts for Her Bows and Maryland Mansion. Determined that those two songs are ready to go to Thomas. 051216 Working out some issues that are the result of recording with Pro Tools 12 and mixing with Pro Tools 11. 050316 Handed off On and Tambourne to Patrick and Corky Finds Something to Thomas. 050216 Finished prepping On and Tambourine for Patrick to mix. 042916 Changed the bass and drums in Tambourine. You just can't give me a song back to before it's done because I will dick with it and dick with it thoroughly. 042816 Replaced some vocal harmonies in Tambourine. Got the new laptop loaded up for Thomas to start mixing with. 042616 Listened to Jue Box Berries mixes with Dave, Michael and Shannon. 042516 Worked on the rough mix of Tambourine. Have most of the instruments sorted out. Just need to check the vocals and I can turned it over to Grand Master P. 042216 Sent Patrick some mods for Industrial Debris and Brought a Little Something Down. Played Thomas most of the songs from the 2nd album. Hope to start sending him tracks to mix by next weekend. 042016 Michael and I listend to Patrick's Juiceboxberries mixes and the bulk of the current album. Picked up some equipment that will get Thomas started mixing the 2nd album late next week. 041916 Patrick sent me mp3s of the 5 songs he mixed. Listening wtih Dave and Mike tomorrow night. 041216 Worked on the NowHere outro. Michael and I reviewed some things and worked on his 2 songs. 041116 Re-recorded some of the vocal, piano, drum and bass parts in On. Somehow we lost a bass track in the B section. Tried a few more vocal takes in Her Bows. 040616 Dave added a bass in the bridge of Cleo the Liar and in the bridge of NowHere. Michael showed me a new idea for a song. That now makes Michael to the Left of Me and Michael to the Right of Me. 040216 Rachel tracked vocals on Cleo the Liar, Jacob's Ladder and Maryland Mansion. 040116 So much to do so why not come up with another ditty? Cleo the Liar, born this day, 2016. Annoyed by a Pro Tools quirk that has kept me from mixing On and Tambourine. Let me tell you about it now. I have been recording this album at 48k but the two Juice Box Berries songs 44.1. This means that every time I load one of them Pro Tools has to be restarted, and then restarted again when I load one of the new songs. Did the Save Copy In option that Paris taught me to convert them to 48k and it seems to have worked without any glitches. 033116 Worked s'more on Jacob's Ladder. 033016 Renamed Fried Fruit to Jacob's Ladder. Replaced vocals with fresher versions. Had a listen to On and gave the tracks meaningful names. A little painful listening to everything dry. Poor Paris. Listened to some guitar solo ideas that John McConnell sent for the outro of Pool. 032816 Worked on Fried Fruit vocal parts. 032716 Picked up Steven Slate Drums. I'm learning that you can spend hundreds and thousands on home studio enhancements and nothing in the room changes. Rachel coming over to replace sampled vocal parts in Her Bows. 032616 I'm going to have a go at mixing On and Tambourine from the 1st album. Starting with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Btj1GDXK0XI Worked on words and melody for Fried Fruit. Learned a couple of Pro Tools tricks from Patrick: I moved my session files from one computer to another and now have "missing files" errors that won't go away. P taught me to load the session, suffer through the errors, and then use the Copy function to save the session as a new project. The new project loads without errors. I run into timing issues when using too many Xpand2 loops and had been using bus routing to convert them to audio files. With Pro Tools 12 all I have to do is use the Commit option to convert them. Worked great. 032416 Sent Pool off to John McConnell for some guitarwork at the end. Played with some melodies in Fried Fruit (which desperately needs to be renamed) and laid out some bones for Michael to the Left of Me. 032316 Michael and Dave suggested some changes in Pool, which I implemented. Dave sang a harmony in Juno Impacto and recorded a scratch bass for Fried Fruit. 032116 Worked on Pool. Added drums and more vocal takes. Also re-cut vocals for Her Bows. I'm having a difficult time with that one. You can't sing the word f****d, especially at the height of a melody, without sounding like you are emphasizing it. Please see Currie, Justin's When Raymond Comes Around and the word c**t for more information. 032016 Pro Tools has been blowing up after I close a file and go to open a new project or even exit. The drag is that I have to reboot the computer. The normal system returns after the error but ProTools.exe is lodged in memory and can't be removed or re-run. This might be due to having to search for missing files on a few of the projects upon startup. It never finds them but everything is there. 031816 Still managed to get some things done. Took out a drum build in Dingus that didn't work and synched up the live drums with the percussion loop. Added tambourine to Juno Impacto and took the bass out of the intro of nothingood. Spent the most time on Pool. Added a guitar, organ, tambuorine and re-cut all of the vocals. Tweaked the tones and effects so that it sounds more like the demo. So, I made a list of things that need to be done for each song and a checklist for the day to force myself to see this though. Then I saw a squirrel sniffing around a hole in a tree that I knew contained a Starling nest. Are you saying that you wouldn't have grabbed a chair and your coffee and watched what happened next? You think I'm made of wood? Going to make at least one improvement on every song today. Hopefully that will keep me from making up something new instead. 031716 Worked a bit on converting Pool from an interlaced stereo WAV demo to a proper Pro Tools project file. That just means re-cutting all of the parts in the WAV file. That's easy enough. Getting all of the feels and tones right is not. 031616 Played the 'tunias Juno Imacto. Wrote out the 8 "completed" (Corky Finds Something, Windy, Her Bows, Maryland Mansion, NowHere, Juno Impacto, nothingood & Dingus) songs for Dave to ponder. Thinking of creating a sample using Structure Free in NowHere today, just to learn how to use it. I did. I replaced an annoying part in NowHere with samples of the intro and the "shake" in the verse. I like it. 031416 Re-sang main vocal and harmonies for Juno Impacto. Also re-cut piano. 031316 Had a run at the drums in Juno Impacto for the first time on the Mackie. Not bad. 031216 Annoying issue with Pro Tools 12 clipping note duration when quantizing MIDI tracks. Someone suggested going to Events and using the Remove Duplicate Notes before quantizing to fix the issue. And ta-da. 031116 The lord done bless me with another chile. World, meet and ignore "Juno Impacto". So much easier to write new songs than to finish existing songs. 030916 The Beatles made me want to play guitar. George Martin made me want to record it backwards. Got the Mackie mixer and the FireWire card. Didn't take long to get everybody talking to one another but now I have to learn what all of the stupid buttons do. 030516 Got off some decent vocal takes for Maryland Mansion. Bought a Mackie mixer and some good mixing headphones. 030416 Michael worked on Dingus again today. Dave came by later and listened to the 2 new songs. 030316 Michael came by a had a few runs at the piano on Dingus. 030216 Michael came by and had a listen to Maryland Mansion and Her Bows. 022716 Rachel and Kevin came over to record more vocals. 022616 Rachel came over and recorded backing parts on NowHere, Corky, Windy and nothingood. Was playing with some melodies and phrasing for the New Guitar Song demo and realized that the bits from Pool work perfectly. Just have to arrange it. Dear Jimmy or Johnny or whatever, How do I delete volume automation from a track in Pro Tools? Hi. How are you? You can delete the automation points by selecting a point and pressing Alt and Delete. Goodbye. 022516 Went through all of the songs on the new computer and corrected all of the "broken while moving" issues with the exception of the missing input errors. Worked on sequencing Maryland Mansion. Tried singing actual words to replace the knock-off bit and still can't best it. 022416 Second Rokit arrived so I unpacked the stands only to discover that the bases are too wide to fit in my old configuration. Additionally, the old stands were made of wood so they were sturdy enough for carpet. These wobble terribly so I'm going to have to find another solution. Until then, they sit on the floor. *sags* Spent a long time getting the new computer to play nicely with Pro Tools. It was handy having a working set-up on the old computer to compare settings. Finally whupped it. Got one of the KRK Rokit 8 monitors yesterday. The 2nd should wander in today so that I can return Dave's Yamaha HS8s. 022316 Replaced the M-Audio 49e with an M-Audio 88 key controller courtesy of Steven Brown. 022216 Got the Dell OptiPlex 3020. Everything works fine except that it doesn't see the Behringer. I initially had this issue with the original computer so hopefully futzing will address the problem. Added a scratch vocal with dummy words to Maryland Mansion and as usual I really like the performance and am not sure I can best it. There's something about those let-me-just-knock-off-this-vocal-idea-for- reference-later performances. 022116 Instead of finishing the 6 partially-completed songs I started a new ditty. Maryland Mansion for now since nobody gave me $10. 022016 Had a listen to a few of the unfinished Juiceboxberries mixes with Patrick. Pretty exciting. More studio upgrades to consider: Replace Behringer with a Mackie Onyx 1220i FireWire Production Mixer. Replace M-Audio 49e with an M-Audio 61 key controller. Maryland Mansion. That's mine now and you can't use it. Unless you give me money. Like $10. Or $20. No, no, wait - don't go! $10 is cool. 021716 Michael had a few runs at the piano during the outro of Dingus. 021616 Starting to get intermittent stutters in playback that doesn't effect the recording. Might be a plug-in but I think it's time to start looking for a cheap computer to dedicate to Pro Tools. Thinking Dell OptiPlex 3020 Pentium G3240 3.10GHz 500GB HDD 8GB Ram Windows 7 Pro 64Bit. 021516 Played Michael a guitar/bass demo last week that I set up in Pro Tools today. This was another stereo demo in a WAV file from several years ago. For sketching purposes, I imported the WAV file into Pro Tools and hacked up the bits to create an outline. I thought of Paris everytime I heard a click where I didn't cross-fade. 021316 Met Michael at Joelle's World of Love Benefit Concert. Talked to Victoria about coming by and tracking some vocals. For Michael and Dave: Zeta One Theme by Johnny Hawksworthy (1969) Tried recording some drum tracks for Dingus. Will try again Monday. 021216 Went to war with Dingus - added a scratch bass part, piano track and did loads of editing. Should be in good enough shape to show the Lonesome Petunias on Wednesday. First order of business, make sure that the instruments are all grouped together and that the comments are useful in all of the songs. That little task unearthed a missing drum track so restoring that will be added to today's menu. 021116 Yesterday I came up with an intro for Dingus that I'm now considering giving life as its own song. That's they way this shit is supposed to work. 021016 Ate hamburgers for a pre-game meal. Dave (who shudders everytime he has to plug something into my cheapo Behringer mixer) learned and tracked bass partsfor nothingood. 020916 Kept after nothingood all day. Loads of editing, added more vocals, guitars and keyboards. I'm going to try to get Dingus this far tomorrow so that we have 5 nearly done pies. Nearly done pies are better than a sack of flour and an unopened can of dead fruit. 020816 More vocals and first wave of drums for nothingood. More outro vocals and drums for NowHere. More vocal tracks for Windy and Windy outro. 020616 Lord have mercy. First day recording with Pro Tools 12 and the Behringer. Curiuosly, I had all of the same problems that Bruce did today while working on NowHere. I also started to have CPU issues. Now that my audio tracks are not limited I went back to using a Bus for effects for the vocals to cut back on plug-ins. Finally manged to knock off a three mic drum take or two and tried some more guitar solos with the Strat instead of the Bronco. Dear Johnny or Jimmy or whatever, It's me again! I have 2 fresh problems: 1) I'm having trouble getting input and output from my Behringer XENYX 1204 interface. 2) I'm having dreadful latency issues! Bruce Dear Bruce, 1) Check your mixer to verify that the red "2-TR/USB to Main" button is UP and that the red "2-TR/USB" button is DOWN. Also, in Setup>Hardware make certian that you have disabled all of the inputs and outputs from the sound card unchecked. 2) Make sure that in Setup>Hardware you do not have the Hardware Buffer box checked. You can tweak the buffer size at the bottom of the window. I love you. Dear Johnny or Jimmy or whatever, I have a problem with Pro Tools 12. Suddenly the playback has stopped working for any of my session files. I can see the waveforms but the timeline doesn't move. Also, is there a shortcut for toggling the Edit and Mix windows? No name? That's not very friendly. Pro Tools wil balk at playing a session if it doesn't see the hardware configuration it was expecting. This could be because you unplugged an interface during the session without going into Hardware>Setup. Ctrl-+ will toggle the Mix and Edit windows. 020516 Loaded all of the Pro Tools 8 LE sessions into Pro Tools 12 and everything works, all the plug-ins are there etc. I think I am a USB expansion device away from being fully operational. Already eyeing the entry level versions of Melodyne - Essential or Assistant. Comped Michael and Dave's vocal parts from 2/3. 020416 Bought Pro Tools 12.4.0 Now instead of an MBox interface taking up a coveted USB slot I have an Ilok. It sees the Behringer, which is good. Will try some tracking tests tomorrow. 020316 Mike and Dave did Lonesome Petunia vocals on Windy, Corky and NowHere. Dave had another go at the bass on NowHere. Dear Johnny or Jimmy or whatever, I recently imported some WAV files into my Pro Tools 8 LE project and now the waveforms are just a flat line. I can hear the audio fine, I just can't see it. Is there anything I can do to increase the size of the waveform without effecting the volume or impacting the other waveforms in the project? Your fan. Dear Your, I get this question all the time. Just go to Audio Events>Other>Normalize. You're welcome and please don't send money. To the wrong address. 020116 Worked on NowHere all day. I have been wanting to re-employ some of the Casio SK1 samples somewhere in the song and finally started that adventure. Plopped them at the start (added 8 measures) and the end. Did several more takes of the guitar solos and re-sang the outro. 013116 Starting fresh on the Windy outro. It was originally built on a very awkward drum machine pattern which was critical for the feel of the song. I tried to replace it with a very warm live drum sound and it just doesn't work. 013016 Re-sang everything on NowHere. I think it's about done. I need to give Paris a few more takes of the guitar in the outro, get a good bass and drum track and this one is on the wall with Corky. Now I need to look at what needs to happen to call Windy soup. Go Google "call Windy soup". I'm going to. 012916 Had another try at some guitar licks during the outro of NowHere. Comped a bass track from Dave's scratch tracks from Wednesday. Sent an AIF to John to see if he can come up with anything to spice up the soup. Or sweeten it. 012716 Dave recorded bass parts for NowHere. 012616 Talked to Paris about where mixing JBB stood. He feels like he has 3 songs to finish up before he's done. He reassured me that he would be able to mix the next album. 012516 Re-cut vocals on Nowhwere and Corky. Did some carving on Windy, Dingus and nothingood. 012016 Have NowHere whittled into an actual song. Added a B section that needs a glossy bow. 011816 Worked on NowHere most of the day. I had a dazzling bit of lyrical inspiration but got distracted trying to bully it into the feel of the song. Fresh ears tomorrow. 011616 Fleshed out NowHere. Not as good as the demo but they never are. Issue: The Audio Device buffer underflowed! Solution: Load the Dither plugin in front of the SansAmp plugin. 011516 Steve Neal came by and recorded some harmonies on Windy and Corky. Discovered the 32 audio track limitation of Pro Tools 8 LE. Good news for Paris. 011316 Played Michael and Dave some demos. Dave recorded some nice bass takes for Corky Finds Something. Talked to Michael about using the cake picture for the album cover and he was OK with it. 011216 Adobe Illustrator loaded. Dave is coming over tomorrow to track bass on Windy and Corky. Steve coming over later in the week to add some vocals. 011116 Built scratch tracks (drum machine, guitar and vocals) for Dingus and nothingood. Tried a few acoustic guitar takes on Windy. 011016 Tracked a few more lead vocals in Windy. Also replaced the whistling bit in the start with a pad. Experimented with a drier vocal in Corky. 010816 Learned a fortunately not-painful lesson about splitting regions. I had been using B which makes a split through every track! Control E is correct tool. Bought Illustrator 10 for the PC, which is the same age as both of the dead/unreliable Macs. Speaking of dead/unreliable Macs, if the iMac holds up I'll probably use Garageband and the Behringer to record drums, since Pro Tools 8 limites me to the Mbox interface with its 2 channels. Speaking of the Mbox, I thought one of the XLR outputs was dead but discovered in the IO setup in Pro Tools that it only lets you select one of the two channels for input. Going to learn about sends today. 010716 It's step measuring day: 1) I was able to resurrect the iMac. Wiped the hard drive and loaded a fresh operating sytem on it. I still lost Adobe Illustrator for the album artwork but at least I now have a place to put it when I buy it. I can also use this to record drums with the Behringer since there is an issue with the Mbox interface. 2) Actually recorded some tracks with the Mbox and Pro Tools. Discovered that there is an issue between XLR Line 1 and Pro Tools but Line 2 works and both instrument ins work. 3) Learned about cloning and moving regions, changing the time signature, quantizing and other little goodies. 4) The MacBook Pro, which we used to record all of Juiceboxberries, is not long for this world. It's suffering from one of the most common ailments for these computers - the inverter power cable is breaking. The symptom is that the display works intermittently. You have to sort of tilt the screen until you find the sweet spot to get any output. Paris: "Recording music with computers is hard." 010616 I have a few demos that I want to generate click tracks for so I learned 3 different methods for determining the tempo of a song in Pro Tools. One method is Beat Detective. You highlight a region and use Beat Detective to analyze it. That is a conductor on operation. Another option is to line up the region in grid mode and use the up and down arrows to vary the temp until the grid at the bottom marks the start and end of a measure. In the 3rd procedure you disable the conductor and Keyboard Focus, highlight the current tempo, press play and tap the T key along with the beat. How do you disable or toggle off Keyboard Focus in Pro Tools 8? Ctrl Alt 1 will turn it off, pressing the AZ button will turn it on. R & T to zoom in and out. This is with Keyboard Focus off. Clicking Bars & Beats toggles the grid. 010416 Found some old Girl for Samson Sonar session files from Dingus that I should at least be able to use as a guide for its resurrection. Also found the audio tracks for the demo of NowHere which features a Casio SK-1. 010316 Loaded the Garageband session for Corky Finds Something into Pro Tools on the PC. Todd willing, I'll be starting the balance of the songs from scratch in PT from this point forward. 010116 Loaded the Garageband session for Windy into Pro Tools on the PC and it worked! Forgot to disable the effects so I will be repeating it. Padded Allen's drum tracks and the balance of the scratch tracks to import into Pro Tools. Pro Tools workstation du jour is a Windows 7 PC using Pro Tools 8 LE and the absolute minimum memory. Am toying with the idea of booting the iMac with a firewire drive and running Pro Tools 9 on it. 2015 (recording juiceboxberries) 123115 Allen recorded drums on Windy and Corky Finds Something. We replaced the two SM57 overheads with a single Rode NT1-A. Shannon added some harmonies to Windy. 123015 Allen Johnston is back in town so I'm hastily recording some demos for him to drum on. Going to try to at least get the first two parts of Windy down. 121815 Talked a bit with Paris about how the mixing was going. He is happy with what he has finished but a little overwhelmed by what remains. One issue is that I gave him too many bass tracks to sort through. He is also spending a lot of time tweaking drums so I probably need to invest in something that will let me put the 4 mics on their own tracks. We are now looking at late January or even February before he is finished. This gives me time to either pick up a copy of Illustrator or find a graphic artist to do the CD artwork. 121715 It didn't occur to me until today that the iMac dying also means that I cannot finish the artwork for Juiceboxberries. 121615 iMac died. Gruesome question mark on a folder when the comptuer boots. This means I need to hunt down another one before we can start working on new songs in earnest. 121415 Mailed off Industrial Debris MIDI files. 121315 The Mac Pro sees the Behringer mixer so once I learn Pro Tools I can, with enthusiasm, abandon Garage Band. Having fun with the Pro Tools plug-ins. It is a blessing that this was not in my hands while the last album was still in progress because every song would have a Hammond organ and an ARP loop. 121115 Was able to figure out how to record a MIDI file in Pro Tools. Sent a test to Paris and all is good. Will record an earnest version of Industrial Debris this weekend. 120815 Loaded Pro Tools onto the Mac. My first test will be to create MIDI files for Industrial Debris. Next, I need to find out which mixer interfaces will work with this setup. 1206315 Prepping some one-part demos to take to our road game on Thursday. Introducing (all temporary titles) Shaking off the Sand, Daytime, NowHere and New Guitar Song. Also working on marrying the Cowboy Whistling Song with Windy. 120515 Still not settled on an album cover. I like the dead mouse. Michael and Dave like Faith in her pink bathing suit. The half-dozen people that I have shown the options to like the birthday cake. 120315 Got together and learned Dingus and nothingood. 113015 Finished Little Something and sent a reference file to Paris. Processed the files and have them ready to hand off tomorrow. I still need to marry the artwork and text with the template and procure a barcode. 112815 Whittled Little Something down to 65 tracks, which includes loads of extra takes. Re-cut some lead and backing vocals. I have a couple of more ideas for tracks for tomorrow and then I just need to sequence the song for Paris on Tuesday. 112715 Celebrated Black Friday by paying full price for a 2nd pair of Direct Sound EX-29 Extreme Isolation Headphones. 112617 "Do They Know It's My Birthday?" A fistful of chords and words and I've finally got the anthem I've waited so patiently for. 112515 Paris thinks he can have the album mixed and mastered by Christmas. "How can you suppose that anybody knows you're not a hussy anymore?" Christian is really starting to grow on me. 111815 Juiceboxberries is nearly out of our hands so we set up and played for a few hours tonight. 111615 Tried tracking some different grooves for Little Something. Also recorded some tick tocks and clicks. Will comp tomorrow and track a few more vocals. Handing off the other 3 songs tonight. 111515 Trying to figure out a way to record the next album in Pro Tools so that there are less post-tracking issues. I think the cheapest way to get off of Garageband while still using an old Mac (OS X Leopard: 10.5.8) is to get Pro Tools LE 8.0.5, which only requires an Avid interface (MBox 2 or 3 or Digi002 Rack/Digi003 Rack) as a dongle. This would be a $200ish investment. 111315 On, Tambourine and Falstaff are on a thumb drive waiting to be handed to Paris. Now to start listening to Brought a Little Something Down. 111215 Finished padding out the tracks in On. Decided to have a couple more cracks at the vocals. Talked to Paris about switching to Pro Tools for the 2nd album. 111115 I'm running out of time for creating MIDI piano parts for Industrial Debris. The link below points to an application and will convert the AIFF to a MID file: http://mybeatbuddy.com/forum/index.php?threads/getting-a-midi-output-from-garageband.1385/ 110915 Parts added and On reference file sent toParis. Going to re-record bass and guitars in Tambourine. I've also decreed that On is finished so will send a refence file to Paris and then start prepping it for mixing. Planning on submitting Tambourine and Falstaff tomorrow and On in about a week. 110615 Tambourine reference file mailed off even though I haven't finished prepping the tracks yet. I will get it done by Tuesday. 110515 I think I am going to retract my earier recommendation of swallowing a fistful of poorly chewed salted cashews before recording vocals. Ack. Decided to take another stab at the lead vocal in Tambourine. I recorded 12 takes after tracking some high harmonies. My voice started to give out after take 4 and by the end I was barely able to croak in key but kept recording. I think I like them. They sound a little different than my normal whelp. Going to do my whoopdangist to get Tambourine done by the weekend and to Paris for mixing on Tuesday. That will leave On and Brought a Little Something Down to finish. 110415 Had a nice hang out with Michael and Dave. We haven't gotten together in a month or longer. Agreed that when Juice Box Berries is done we will work up the 7 songs live, just to play together again. We worked through some business decisions. We settled on using CD jackets vs jewel cases. I showed some alternate covers that I had mocked up and I think everyone still likes the woman. I may try to offer a few more choices before we sign off. Michael had a listen to the French Horns in "On" and the new chorus in "Industrial Debris". For some reason our talking business turned into telling sad stories about our school days. Lonesome Petunias. Falstaff ready to go. Reference file sent to Paris. May add a few more hisses and sizles to Falstaff before sending it off. I also want to explore a way to extract MIDI files from Garage Band. 110315 Talked to Paris about my challenges getting him a MIDI piano file for Industrial Debris. I was secretly hoping that he would say "Well, don't you worry your pretty face, I'll find a way to use the piano tracks you gave me.", but he didn't. Not even close. Falstaff just needs a reference file and a notes file and it is ready to go. I will have one last listen tomorrow. Added a few more tick tocks to Falstaff before getting ready to prepare it for submission to Paris for mixing. At this point I always do a quick save to a thumbnail drive before saving the project under a new name so that I still have the full version preserved. During the backup to the thumb drive GarageBand started reporting errors which resulted in all of the tracks getting corrupted and deleted. Fortunately I had done a backup yesterday so repaired the disk, restored the project and re-cut the tick tocks. Now to try to get this ready to hand off tonight. I really dislike this part of the process. I just want to make up songs and track parts so its challenging to stay motivated during this part of the game. Having crud go so terribly wrong after I finally committed to getting something done is almost comical. 110215 The drums for Falstaff have been troubling me. There are a lot of percussive sounds happening in the song - tambourine, congas, maraccas etc. and the drums get in the way. Or, as I finally determined, the cymbals are getting in the way. Went to a snare, kick and toms only pattern (see Girl for Samson's "Meri") and it came out nicely. Recorded 3 takes. Spent too much time trying out soft multitrack recorders with MIDI capabilities. I just need something that's simple to use. I only need one digital audio track for reference and one for a MIDI piano. I also want to hear the MIDI track along with the digital audio track. I know that I've downloaded programs that claim to do this but can't get all required functions to work on my computer. Again, this is all because Garageband won't output a proper MIDI file. I think I may have better luck finding someone with a nicer piano and dragging the the MacBook and a couple of microphones over to record a few takes. 103015 Given the choice of comping drums and creating some album artwork mock-ups, I didn't comp drums. 102915 Tried some different drum patterns for Falstaff. Also diddled around in the vintage image collection for an alternative cover for Juiceboxberries. 102815 Watched game 2 of the World Series with Michael and Joelle. Talked a little about the artwork for the album, how I'm getting cold feet with the current mock-up and am thinking about some alternatives. Michael was supportive as always. Also debated the merits of jewel cases vs jackets and determined that we both tilt slightly towards jackets. 102215 Wandering south for a week. 102115 Expenses coming into focus: $250 for mastering $80 for digital distribution $280 for 100 CDs ------- $570 101715 Dave recorded some French Horn parts for the outro of On. We set up in a bathroom. The R0DE SM6 pointed at the bell and a SM57 in the tub pointed at the tile for reflection. 101515 Tried some low-fi DAW to see if I could knock this off. Tried Reaper and Anvil and was unimpressed. Tried the lite version of MultitrackStudio which works great but has bursts of noises in the MIDI files rendering it useless. Got Sonar loaded and after some fisticuffs I was able to get it to see the M-Audio device AND eventaully see a signal. It even records the signal. What it does not do is create sound. No MIDI sound during recording or playback. This is so fucky. This is like needing to climb to the top of a mountain where I will find a map that will lead me to a key that will unlock a safe back below that holds life-saving medicine, and not being able to find any shoes. BTW, carelessly typing the word MIDI can, on occasion, result in typing MOFO. 101315 Going to load Sonar on the PC and create MIDI files that way. Tried using the Edit/Add to Loop Library option. It created AIFF files in the User/ Library/Audio/Apple Loops/User Loops/ Single Files directory. Supposedly the MIDI info is imbedded? I guess I'll try another application. I should change the name of this site to How to Record an Album Using a Wheezing MacBook and Comically Out- Dated Version of GarageBand. So, new challenge: Gargeband does not export MIDI files in any way that's easy or useful. Off to find time-sucking workarounds. After slaving away on the keys, Paris is requesting a MIDI performance because the piano is "out of tune and boxy". Back to the phones. Reference file for Industrial Debris sent to sweet Paris along with this sober note: "Bringing this tonight. It will be the stoutest test of our bond. I included multiple takes (you don't want to know how many tracks) of everything, especially my trembly (it's how you express vulnerability, asshole!) vocal. America won't get it but I feel like I can get away with writing a bad ballad because I have a history of writing bad non-ballads. Plus I used a masculine character instead of a female. Sorry the vocal is so loud in the reference file. I can assure you, that is not my dream." Cut a couple of pretty good piano tracks for the chorus of ID. 101215 Tracks padded, renamed, reference file created and notes file created. I may take one more stab at the loose piano part in the chorus tomorrow before handing it off to be mixed tomorrow night. Answer to problem below: paste a blank region in the gap and then join. Got close and hit a snag. Fun fact, if you put a split in a region and slip edit a space or cut out the space, re-connecting the two regions with join appears to resurrect the deleted data. Even if you don't want it to. 101115 Made myself keep grinding away at this song and finished padding all of the tracks. Just need to name the files, write mixing notes and make a reference .mp3 by Tuesday night. Got about half of ID padded for import into Pro Tools. As usual, none of the AIFF file names match the track OR region names. Would love to figure out a way to force Garageband to use either one of these options as the audio file name. During my work I unearthed the original demo bass part which works nicely with Dave's bass part during the C section. 100915 Made good progress this afternoon. Just need to join all of the regions & pad them so that they start in the correct spots when imported into Pro Tools. Also need to make sure the AIFF names are meaningful. Most likely a weekend project. Learning, again, that in Garageband, re-naming the track and/or the region does not impact the name of the AIFF file. At least not in any useful way. I think the lesson is to give the track an appropriate name right at the start. While finishing up ID this afternoon I want to conduct an experiment. I want to determine if the quantizing (letting the computer correct timing and tuning issues) results are actually written to the AIFF files or if it only occurs during playback. Logic suggests that the effected results are saved but I want to see for myself. This isn't critical, I just want to understand the process. I also decided that I should give Paris the original version of the chorus (or B section) along with the new version. It makes creating the Pro Tools-ready files a little more complicated but options are good in this scenario. I need to make a page with a list of things I've learned about Garageband. I want to run the disk utility on the MacBook soon and have already forgotten the process. Searching for it in this sad tangle of verbiage is daunting. 100815 Industrial Debris: I have all of the verse and chorus vocal tracks (sending 12-14 takes), drums and piano ready to go. Tomorrow I'll go through the backing vocals and bass parts. Only death (me or Echo) will prevent me from handing this off on Tuesday. 100715 Thank you Matt Simon for the phrase "Burdensome and unnecessarily sinister..." More takes of drums on bass for B section of Industrial Debris. I like where it's going. May take one more stab at the piano (sadly, NOT my weakest instrument) and then start calling tracks crap and candy. Note - I think that's the part I dread the most. I suspect I changed the feel of this section just to put off having to comp tracks! J'Accuse! 100615 Not much time to spend recording today. Tried several takes of fluffier bass parts during the B section in Industrial Debris. 100515 OK, I was possibly over-optimistic about getting Industrial Debris done by the weekend. Today I recorded some more vocal takes. I also tried some different synth bits during the "chorus" and cut some triplets on the piano and new drums to give that section a little more swing. We're coming up on 5 months since we created and started developing these 7 songs. If we can get them in the can in 2 months that will be a month per song. Take out some of the learning curve time and we should be able to churn them out even faster in the future. 100215 Recorded several good vocal takes of Industrial Debris. I had a good cry beforehand (did not make the vocal more vunerable) so Paris will be mixing out sniffs, snorts and sighs in-between parts. 100115 Figured out how to get the barcode for the artwork. Shooting for having Industrial Debris ready to submit for mixing by the weekend. 093015 Need to discuss production options tonight. Of course we'll use Disc Makers. We can get 100 CDs (jacket or jewel cases) for about $300 shipped. That number bumps to about $500 for 200 CDs. 200 vinyl records for $1,700. Once we decide I can start learning Adobe Illustrator in earnest. Cleaned all of the sf2 files off of the MacBook except for the Ensoniq files and ta-da, all four collections work. Want to have Michael and Dave sing Ringo-background vocals to the A section of On tonight. I'm thinking that the right wobbly chorus effect will make them sound like a mellotron. This is one of those times where some combination of sounds that already exist in the song suggested this idea. Like you can almost already hear it. 092915 Created some patterns to be used for loops in Brought a Little Something Down. Locked the tracks and then saved the project to see what I would end up with. Interleaved stereo files in a folder named Freeze Files. Next, I tried soloing one of the tracks and exporting it. Also an interleaved stereo AIF. 092815 Added a few more vocal takes to Industrial Debris and more B & C drum takes to On. Industrial Debris should be about ready to comp and clean up tracks for Paris. Falstaff and Brought a Little Something Down are just waiting on horns and Tambourine is waiting on mandolin. On, the first song created on the MacBook, is going to be a bit more complicated. It is actually 4 mini- songs recorded sequentially in one project. I think I'm going to break the song up into 4 projects to make cleaning up the tracks and importing them into Pro Tools more manageable. Summoned the courage to try loading the Ensoniq SF2 files on the MiniMac to see if I would have better luck. It instantly recognized and played banks from all 4 files. Elated, I loaded the mellotron SF2s and everything else I had on hand into the Library/Audio/Sounds/Banks/ folder so that I could finally explore some other sounds. Not only did they not work but now Garageband only intermittently recognizes the Ensoniq files. Baffled, I removed everything but the Ensoniq sound files and now they are working consistently again. I'll next need to consider how to get soft files to the MacBook by converting them to "real" files. It appears that there are 2 common methods: locking the track or soloing and exporting it. The issue with the solo method is that I think it will create an interleaved stereo AIFF. 092515 Added more vocal and drum takes on Industrial Debris. 092415 Got my hands on a MiniMac loaded with Adobe Illustrator C5. Now I begin the grim process of making imagination stay in the lines. 092315 Listened to everything to get a feel for what songs are finished and which still need parts. Decided that: Falstaff - done On - needs loads of love Tambourine - re-sing, add guitars and mandolin Brought a Little Something Down - needs horns Industrial Debris - Dave replaced a bass part and I'm re-cutting vocals Talked about buying Adobe Illustrator, QuarkXPress, CorelDRAW or Adobe Photoshop so that we can do our own album covers. 092215 Handed off the first two songs to be mixed. 092115 Added a few more Ahhh and Verse Harmony takes to Sultan Eyes. 092015 Sultan Eyes is now ready to be mixed. Need to re-do one of the verse harmonies before handing everything over to Paris on Tuesday. 091915 I think I'm going to get Sultan Eyes padded and renamed this weekend so sent Paris a reference mp3. Sent Paris a refence file for We Don't Do That and started the process of padding with silence and creating meaningful file names for the 34 tracks. Had strangely intermittent luck clicking on a region and giving the audio file, not the track, a new name in the editor at the bottom of the screen. The padding process went well. I would copy a quiet second from a region in the track I was working on, paste it at 0, click on the track header to select multiple regions and then join. Yesterday I learned that Garageband keeps the original name of a track for the AIFF throughout the recording process. These file names are often not useful, espeically if you were cavalier and assumed that renaming them within Garageband later would actually change the name of the sound file. So, this weekend I'm going to experiment with making new tracks with names helpful to the mixer and copying the corresponding track data into the new tracks. 091815 Addendum to the issue with JOIN that I brought up yesterday. I had copied a bit of a track called Metronome, which was the output of an actual metronome, placed it at 0 and tried to JOIN it to drum track, guitar track etc. JOIN was grayed out in the menu so something was wrong. Today, I copied a bit of silence from one of the drum tracks and was able to JOIN it at 0 to both the drums and guitars. The regions that I am joining ARE on the same track but they are many measures away from one another. I thought that was the issue yesterday. Here's what I learned about how the files in the Garageband MEDIA folder are named. 1) A sound file maintains its first saved name. If you rename a track in Garageband later, the AIFF will still retain is original name. Choose wisely. 2) The # in the file name is the take number. ` 3) If you add another region to a track it will be named the same as the original file but with an incremented take number. Guitar#01, Guitar#02 etc. 4) If you JOIN two regions in a track the original tracks disappear and a new track is created with the original track name and the word "merged" - Guitar merged. Initially the take numbers are scratched. 091715 First, my idea for adding a second of silence to each track so that Garageband would write out a full track was good. It was very good. But it doesn't work. Garageband writes different recorded moments in a single track as multiple tracks. So, if I added the second of silence to a drum track Garageband creates a second of silence track and the drum track. It does not concatenate or combine the two tracks in the media folder. And you cannot use the JOIN optin to connect them because JOIN wants the files to be right next to one another. I would have to create a long take of silence and then paste it at the start of the track and slip edit it to the start of the take. Then I could JOIN them. Super fucky indeed. More testing tomorrow. 091615 Very good session. Dave added a sexier version of the bridge bass part in Sultan Eyes. Michael and Dave added chorus vocals. Dave and Michael both added a harmony to the "holed up 'till fall" line in On. Played with the Share option on Dave's computer and it didn't do what I needed. On the way home I had an epiphany while staring vacantly into the street lights - all I have to do is add a second of anything at the start of every track and it will pad the track with silence! Then I can just use the Garageband project files. Will experiment with this approach on the morrow. Freeze Folder experiment is a fail. While it DOES consolidate the tracks so that they all start at zero it still writes out the AIFF as interleaved stereo instead of mono. So, back to seeing what a later version of Garageband will offer. Must buy some new drumsticks today. Mine are so splintered that bits of wood are accumulating on the mixer and on Echo. One last thing to try before using a newer version of Garageband to export the files for Pro Tools. The link below claims that locking the tracks you want to export will put the consolidated (common starting point) files in a folder called Freeze. The downside is that you lose the file names. Will experiment with this this afternoon. 091515 Re-recorded guitars and bass in chous of Sultan Eyes. Also added more takes of the chorus drums and tried a different pattern for the new loose bridge. This is one of the starkest issues with digital recording other than the quality of the sound. I was spending loads of time trying to edit a drum measure that didn't feel right. It's a little tricky because I can only record 4 channels onto two tracks so I can't isolate individual drums and cymbals. After 15 minutes it occurred to me to just sit down and recut the part. I got it and got it good in a single take. It took about 5 minutes, including prep. Because Garageband 08 exports an interleaved stereo track vs mono I'll need to find another option for getting the tracks to Paris for mixing in Pro Tools. Decided to try importing into Dave's newer version of Garageband and testing some of the export options. 091415 Found a less Ramones-y approach for the chorus of Sultan Eyes. Well re-record bass and guitars tomorrow. Looks like the best option for consolidating the tracks so that they are all the same length is to disable all of the effects and plug-ins, zero all of the panning, and export the tracks one at a time. We Don't Do That has 51 tracks and probably 20 or more are unused takes so this is painful but doable. It will be interesting to see what it does to the file names. Learned a little about Garageband AIFF naming convention. If you have 10 tracks you'll find 20 AIFFs in your project folder (MEDIA). 10 will be the actual raw audio and 10 will start with a "." to denote is as some kind of information file or something. In Gargeband 08 the file names are truncated with a hash tag (#). I need to find a way to may all of the tracks start at 0 in the timeline. With a common starting point Paris will be able to easily line them up in Pro Tools. I don't know how to do this. Recorded additional takes of verse and chorus vocals for We Don't Do That. I was hoping the SAVE AS trick would clean up unused Garageband tracks but nope. I think there is an option for this in later versions. I haven't a later version and will have to outwit the machine. 091315 Gave all of the Garageband tracks in We Don't Do That meaningful names yesterday. Later, I looked at the Media folder and realized that Garageband, using some system that I don't understand, seemingly randomly truncates the names of the AIFF files. Some retain the full name and others are truncated beyond recognition. 091215 I learned today that when you delete tracks in Garageband they are only removed from the project interface. The individual AIFF files are not removed from the Media folder. Tomorrow I'm going to try to use SAVE AS to save the song as a different name to see if it drags along the extraneous files. Naming tracks so that they are useful to Paris. No fun. We Don't Do That = We Done Did That. Let Paris know that it was finished and asked him if he would like me to delete unused takes to ease the conversion process or leave them in for comping. 091115 To-do list for next 10 days: We Don't Do That think about vocal phrasing in chorus looser piano in outro? balance drum transition Falstaff clean up extraneous takes sign off on bass On take another stab at lead vocals in A-B replace synths with clarinet, cello etc. arrange end of B section Brought A Little Something Down another pass of drums? Tambourine take another stab at lead vocal work on B section Industrial Debris take another stab at lead vocal Sultan Eyes rethink 3rd passage of solo sexier rhythm in chorus? 091015 Comped bass parts from last night. There are some synth parts in On that I want to replace with a clarinet so I'm soaking a reed. Speaking of comping parts... 090915 Very productive session. Dave added a nice bass part for the solo section in Sultan Eyes. He also added better takes for the A & B parts in On and the outro of We Don't Do That. Kevin and Rachel popped by to hang out with Michael and Joelle. Jezebel recording mandolin parts for Tambourine. 090815 Talked to Paris a little about the mixing process. His plan is to import (a friendly sounding word for what will most likely be a brutal manual process) the files from Garageband to Pro Tools. I just thought of the line "the hounds of hoo-ha" so I pretty much own that now. 090715 Decided to put a 12 measure solo in the middle of Sultan Eyes. Not quite the the same process as yelling into a mic "Dear friends, let us add 12 measures here for a solo. 1, 2, 3, 4..." Ghosted out a feel I like with the Kent Americana and a noisey octave pedal. 090415 Chipped away at Sultan Eyes. Played the latest version for Michael. Ran out the clock eating cheap tacos, drinking Mojitos and watching a documentary on the Wrecking Crew. 090315 Added a sample of Sultan Eyes to the sounds section. Yes, I've dropped When the Lever Breaks (You Better Moot) as the title. It hurt AND it left a scar. Steve Neal dropped by and added harmonies/backing vocals to most of the songs. 090215 Joelle's birthday party. Spent a couple of hours adding a new bass part, guitar (Fender Bronco!), drum part and vocals to When the Lever Breaks (You Better Moot). I really need someone to boss me around. 090115 Decided to write something new today instead of working on the CD. Partially constructed a song with the working title When the Lever Breaks (You Better Moot). 083115 Goodbye, Meri. 082915 John sent me electric and acoustic slide guitar parts for Tambourine. Steve Neal coming on the 3rd to record some vocals. 082815 Thought of a title for the EP that I liked last night and played around with a mock up for the CD. Used slides_17_faithmodeling_faith_6.tif and copied the bottom border to create a fill so that the layout is square. "Johnny Marie & the Lonesone Petunias" using Free Style Script and #ACA0B9 as the font color. "juiceboxberries" using Rockwell Extra Bold with juice as #6D7659 box as #C8A5BF and berries as #FF016D Colors used for song title Rockwell fonts #C2A0B6, #E9E6E4, #A8AEAC, #9A5E4E & #DBCFC4 Michael approves so just waiting on feedback from Dave. 082715 Wasted more time trying to figure out the procedure for repairing a hard drive on a Mac. You have to do it from the startup disc but you can't just put in the startup CD and reboot. You have to hold down the C key during the boot process and then do the repair from the Utilities. Wasting time trying to manipulate banks of multiple Sound Fonts using an external MIDI controller. The M-Audio Keystation will recognize a few of the files. I fired up the Juno-106 and it only sees 0,0 of any of the banks. Is this a Garageband '08 issue? Is it because I am using MIDI cables that terminate in USB connectors? Is it a SF2 issue? A Roland or M-Audio issue? Am I being punished for trying to use samples? Maybe I should be. 082615 Lost chunks of the work I did yesterday with this seemingly innocuous error message "invalid regions changed". What actually happened is that one track was replaced with portions of another and 6 takes of vocal tracks were gone. I'm going to try saving this Garageband project as a different name (which it was due for since it's still using the working title) and see if that resolves the problem. Repeat to self "I'm not having to buy tape. I'm not having to buy tape." Update: So, doing the "Save As" to a different file name at least stops the error message from popping up. 082515 Made some lyric mods for the B section of On so recorded it again. Recorded two takes of drums for the B and C sections. 082415 Recorded a fistful of vocal takes on the A and B sections of On. You just don't know if something magic is giong to happen unless you hook up a mic and fire up the computer. Nothing magic happened. John still sending me guitar tracks for Tambourine and Industrial Debris while I send him confusing and conflicting suggestions. "Imagine an ant that has a heavy cast on two of his six legs, caught in a spider web made of pale blue cotton candy that is lightly animated every 5 seconds by one of those rotating fans on the lowest setting. I don't mean the lowest factory setting. I'm talking a modified lowest setting. That's what the last note should sound like." 082015 Finally added a demo sample of Industrial Debris to the site. Sent a full AIF file off to John McConnell to play with. Learned another little Garageband 08 trick: I was importing .WAV and .AIF files by dragging the files into a set-up track in the project. Wasted step. You can actually drag them into the blank gray space underneath the last track header and it will automatically create a track using the file name. Got some Spaghetti Western solo options from John last night. It took some wrangling (do you see what I did?) to import them but done and done. 081915 We just listened to the songs last night and talked about what to do next. Dave brought his chum Mike by and we had a nice time chatting with him. The evening ended in everybody having a go at the viola and cello for fun. Popped open Tambourine to do some last minute mixing with John's guitar part and got the gut-wrenching "track not found" error message. It couldn't find the Spaghetti Western bass track. I found it in backups. We're doing this with 2008 technology, folks. Those of you in the front row WILL get wet. Got 3 decent takes of drums down on Industrial Debris. Set up the piano with the Rode and a 57 and had a go. Recorded another lead vocal take. 081815 John sent me the .wav files for the cool crunchy guitars in the outro of Tambourine. How do you import .wav files into a Garageband project? You can't copy and paste them. You have to drag them to an available track. They are converted to AIF files when you save. Getting close on the drums for Industrial Debris. I realized that I'm rehearsing the song. That's why it's taking so long. Bought a fistful of 1/8 to 1/4 stereo jacks so I can avoid a repeat of the great Pioneer Headphone Disaster of 2015. Hazard of recording in your office: shelf is jostled and a foam ear plug tumbles down and upon the top of a printer where it finds the single entrance to the inside and tumbles in never to be found again. Added a blips from the BOSS DB-60 metronome to help me with the piano in Industrial Debris. 081715 John McConnell sending Tambourine tracks for feedback tonight. I was really determined to at least get drums down for Industrial Debris, and perhaps vocals today. Really struggling as I've never really drummed on a piano-based "ballad" before. Decided to listen to "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" and "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" because "piano-based ballad" + "drumming" = "Nigel Olsson". Run the figures yourself. You'll come up with the same answer. Johnny Marie & the Lonesome Petunias website domain is now JohnnyMarie.com 081615 As we pile tracks upon the 6 songs for the EP, I am trying to be courteous to poor Paris who will have to paw through the chaos in order to build a pretty song during the mixing process. I am trying to use meaningful track titles and employing Garageband's little list of icons. (Note to P: I can't tell the difference between the little guitars and the little bass guitars.) I'm also putting a blank track at the bottom of every song titled "Archived Tracks" and shoving all extraneous takes below that so that all he is left with are the winning bits. I'm leaving the unused tracks in the song so that he can cull a bit here and there if neccessary. Highly likely. I misplaced (lost) a critical adaptor for the 2nd set of phones yesterday for Rachel's session and had to use a vintage pair of Pioneer SE-50 headphones. Later that evening I kept discovering little bits of black something or other in my hair and on my face. Yup, the insulation/foam from the Pioneers is deteriorating. True to my nature, I have a backup pair of SE-50s should I ever get in this situation again. #itceasestobehoardingifonediesandyouonlyhaveoneleft Did you notice that I no longer mention sound fonts and MIDI controllers? Day 8 of an uneasy truce. 081515 Rachel came over and recorded harmonies on most of the tracks. Posted a fresh version of Tambourine on the site. 081415 Sent Ala Fries (The Sinclaires, Intermission, The Catherines, Chemical Wedding, Boudoir) a mix of Falstaff in an .aif file so that she can track some parts. Ala and I used to play with Allen Johnston (This Jungle, Secret Society) who was here about a week ago recording drums. We also played with artist Jill Fetterman (Boxes of Love, BCR, Short-Term Memory) who died on the 12th of this month. Jill was a wonderful artist, great musician and a priceless friend. Scheduled Rachel Thompson to come over on Saturday and record some vocals. 081315 Comping parts from last night. Getting ready to e-mail an .aiff file of latest Tambourine mix to John McConnell for noodling consideration. He'll import it into something on the PC side, add parts and then just export the single track of his work for me to import back into Garageband. It's a not-awful time to be alive. 081215 Dave and Michael experimented with some ooos (sharing a mic, as always) during the Spaghetti Western section of Tambourine. Michael, Dave and Shannon added the jazz hands "What's it all about?" harmonies. Michael recording some keyboard tinkling at the end of On. Dave had a run at the bass part for Tambourine after a wonderful dinner courtesy of Joelle, Shannon & Michael. Added some cymbal builds to Tambourine. Also tried some gallops with a tambourine lying on a floor tom head. 081115 Worked on bass, drums, vocals and tambourine for Tambourine. Added some cymbal and rim shot bits. 081015 After John left I had a go at the lead vocals and drums on Tambourine John Bara came over and tracked conga parts for We Don't Do That, Falstaff, Brought A Little Something Down & Tambourine. Single SM57 six inches above and center. Pictures were taken. Going to try to finish vocals, drums and guitars for Tambourine & Falstaff today. 080915 If you see a story about a mall shooting, rape, serial killer basement/torture shenanigans, child molestation, porn or scandal involving bribery, the perpetrator is nearly always a male. Frequently a white male. I don't understand why males are allowed to drive cars and own guns, much less run for public office. #gunsdontkillpeopledudesdo 080815 Kevin loaned me an M-Audio Keystation 49e 49-key MIDI Controller to manipulate the SF2 banks with on the MAC. I am now able to successfully cycle through the presets in Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra but still not the ENSONIQ. Additionally, Garageband records the MIDI signal, but not the actual selected sound. This paragraph needs a cute one syllable summary like "Sigh." or "Poop." but I like surprise endings. 080715 OK, I put samples from some of the 6 demos on the Sounds page. I think that at this point, since the site contains a blog, pictures and music samples (known as "content") I will remove the "Proper website, sounds and debut EP coming soon." sign from the door. I think what's tripping me up on the SF2/Mac issue is using the soft keyboard (Apple K!) that comes with Garageband. Going to try a proper MIDI Controller this weekend and see if that changes the game. 080615 The 1204USB came so after set up I labored over getting a good drum part down for Falstaff. I got close but was really suffering from ear fatigue as the song is a bit shrill. Will remix tomorrow and have another run at it. Added a Sounds page to the website. No reason why I can't get up a few samples of what we're working on in the next day or so. (Begins new quest to convert AIFF files to MP3s. Hoping Audacity will do it. It's like I'm looking for reasons not to track parts. "Listen all y'all, it's a sabotage!") 080515 Didn't do the must-do. Spent all of my tracking time dicking with SF2 conversions. I can't get Garageband to see any of the ENSONIQ or Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra presets after splitting up the banks using Polyphone. It's actually not that important for the project but it is absurd and I hate being told what to do. Must-do for the day: add a sturdy blip on all of the tracks to usurp the timid click that comes with Garageband. Of course I could use a kick drum loop or something but over the years I have developed a Pavlovian response to the harsh bleep of the BOSS DB-60 metronome. 080415 Upgraded the Behringer Xenyx 1204 to a Behringer Xenyx 1204USB which comes with compression and of course a USB connection which will allow me to take the TASCAM interface out of the loop. Also bought a MIDI to USB cable so that I can at least use some of our dead synths as MIDI controllers. I discovered that Garageband won't recognize SF2 bank files that contain multiple sounds. It will play the first sound in the bank and that's it. I have some alternatives for breaking up the files manually using Polyphone but am hoping that a MIDI controller will recognize the full potential of the files. I have an ENSONIQ soundfont collection that has some potential to be entertaining. Dave's Yamaha monitors sound great. 080315 Allen Johnston stopped by and had a go at drums on We Don't Do That. He's such a lovely drummer. We toyed with playing a straight beat through the 1st half of the song and then going really loose at the 2nd guitar solo. Dave brought over some Yamaha HS80M monitors to get me off of doing rough mixes with headphones. He also brought a fresh box of VALOMILK Candy Cups! 080215 Juno 106 died yesterday so Michael dropped off the Roland D-20. And the D-20 promptly dies. Blog is up. You can almost smell the sawdust, hear the bearded lady playing the harmonica, and see the tent sagging over the frayed trampoline. 080115 Got a little closer to getting a good signal/good sound from the Ludwigs. Using a Shure 57 on the snare, two Shure 57s as overheads and a Shure PG52 on the kick. May add the Rode somewhere for a room signal. 073115 Lengthend the Spaghetti Western B part in Tambourine. Hoping Dave can deliver a trumpet solo. If not, it will be me adding whips and harmonicas. 073015 Introduced Tambourine. Listened to some of the other tracks to see where we stood. Decided that we love each other. Moment is documented by drunken cell phone photographer while we sway unsteadily just out of reach of the streelight's helpful glow. 072915 Had another go at the vocal for Bee Miner/We Don't Do That. 072815 Set up Johnny Marie & the Lonesome Petunias Facebook, Gmail and Twitter pages. Put down the guts of Tambourine. 072715 Got a little Behringer XENYX 1204 mixer for recording drums. 072315 Added bass and some backing vocals to Industrial Debris courtesy of Dave, Michael and Shannon. 072115 Paris said that he would mix the EP when we are finished tracking. He has a long history of polishing my turds. 072015 Played Michael Industrial Debris. Learned about using Apple-A and Apple-T to insert measures in a timeline in Garageband. 071915 Working on Where Did All the Cowboys Go?/Industrial Debris. 071715 Had another run at on vocals for Where did all of the cowboys go? 071515 Rode NT1-A came so tracked some parts to test it out. Ran Dave through the paces. Considering Johnny Marie and the Lonesome Petunias for our moniker after Dave mentions discovering "Lonely Little Petunia In An Onion Patch" while sorting through some old 78s. May have also agreed on an image for the EP cover. 071415 Worked on On guitar solo. 071315 Worked on We Don't Do That guitar solo with Les Paul. 071215 Worked on We Don't Do That guitar solo with an old Kent semi-hollow body guitar. 071015 Borrowed a friend's Rode to re-record primary vocal tracks on On and We Don't Do That. 070915 Worked on comping bass parts. 070815 Made up We Don't Do That. Dave recorded all of the bass parts for On AND a stand up bass part for We Don't Do That. He took the cello and viola home to tinker with. 070715 Thinking of Johnny Marie and the New Petunias for Petunia. 070615 Recorded some acoustic guitar and piano takes for The Wall. 070115 Added scratch drums to The Wall. Put finishing touches on On to show Dave and Michael tonight. 062715 Amp simulator pedal came so messed around with On some more. 062515 Comped vocals on The Wall and added some parts to On. 062415 Good Petunia session. Dave tried some bass parts on The Wall and then he and Michael sang some background vocals. 061715 Michael and Joelle co-hosted for an hour on KKFI today. 061615 Brought Extreme Isolation headphones home from the studio. Should help greatly with recording drum tracks. 061515 Worked on On. 061415 Worked on Am/On. 061315 Worked on comping Dave and Michael's vocals. Put down some parts for the Am/On piano bit. 061115 Michael and Dave did backing vocals/harmonies for Falstaff, Puff Adders and The Wall. They shared a mic for all 3 tunes. 060315 Worked on Falstaff. First Petunia session actually recording something. 060215 Worked on Falstaff. Michael bought a MacBook so that we can share files. 060115 Worked on Falstaff. Played it for Michael. 053115 Worked on Falstaff. This song was built on a bass part. 052815 Bought a Mackie ProFX12 mixer with Michael to interface with the Mac. 052015 Worked on Brought a Little Something Down. 051915 Put some more tracks on the Brought a Little Something Down. 051715 Worked on the scratch tracks for Brought a Little Something Down. 051615 Finished the rhythm scratch tracks for Brought a Little Something Down. 051515 Michael bought some good KRK Rokit monitors. 051415 One of our last live rehearsals before switching to recording-only mode. 050815 Worked on drums for Puff Adders. 050715 Recorded some passes on the drums with Puff Adder. 043015 Was able to figure out a way to load Dave's Puff Adders bass line on my Mac so we're good to go. Just copied the file from the project Media folder and imported it into Garageband. 042915 Dave gave me the bass line for Puff Adders. Have to upgrade Garageband before I can import it. Fail. 042615 Worked on Wall scratch vocal. 042315 Currently rehearsing Pool, Come on Out, Brought A Little Something Down/Talk, Wall, Puff Adders, Little Shootin' Elvis, Monkey Island and I'm Hiding A Slave. 041515 Petunia practice. 040915 Petunia practice. 040215 Petunia practice while Shannon and Joelle hang out. 032615 Petunia practice. Dave brought over a bass to play with Joelle. 032015 Bought a MacBook and a Tascam USB interface. The plan is for me to work up demos as a frame for new songs and then we'll replace all of the demo bits with permanent parts. 031915 Petunia practice. 031215 Petunia practice. Brought Come on Out and Brought a Little Something Down. 030515 First full session as a 3 piece. 022615 Personnel adjustments. Co-founder leaves. Now a 3 piece which means I move from drums to guitar. 021115 Moved gear to Joelle's. 020815 Drove over to meet Joelle and check out the space. All good. 012115 Need to move the troops to a new rehearsal/recording space. Michael mentioned going to Joelle's. 073014 Michael's first session. 043014 Dave's first session. 073109 First meeting with co-founder.

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