I’m not sure who originally said this, but I think it pretty much sums it up for me.”my mom said college for me was like performance art, it was really painful to watch and a huge waste of money” Not sure that my mom would put it that way, but it certainly did crack me up a bit.   In other news, it looks like Sweetwood Groove may start playing again, sans a bass player rather than sans a lead singer.  I’m pretty psyched about it since I didn’t really have any hard feelings towards the the drummer or the bass player (and really, i’m a grown-up, I don’t hold grudges anyway)…  So that’s definitely some good news.

So Stacie and I went to the gym and had an hour with a personal trainer this afternoon.  We’ve been going consistently every morning and doing 2 or 3 miles on the treadmill and then lifting so I thought we’d just be stepping it up a bit.  Mistaken, is the term that comes to mind.  Holy crapski.  I can barely walk up stairs. I walked up to my office and I’m a little worried to actually go back down the stairs.  The guy’s really good and he definitely made it fun, but there was one point on the stationary bike where I was pretty sure that my breakfast was going to make an appearance.  The funny thing is the trainer (Jay) used to be a programmer for a company that has a content management system fairly similar to ours, got sick of it and now he’s a personal trainer (at least he’s not an athletic supporter… buh dum tsshhh!) anyway, i can’t think so good right now ’cause of all the blood being out of my melon so…

Man, there are times when I miss new england immensely.  Just have a look at this story.  These towns are right around Putney and I used to go to the Brat a bunch when I was up there. Whether you agree with the politics or not, you’ve got to just appreciate the free spirit (ie: balls) that a lot of them thar Vermonters have.

This is a cool little write up on the people that I got so amped up about at AdobeMAX in october.  Interesting read at least.

http://www.apple.com/pro/profiles/bigspaceship/?sr=hotnews

And while you’re at it, read up on your monkeysphere:
http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html

Well I finally got around to writing a post about this.  (A little late, but these things will happen).  I’m playin’ with SWG tonight at the Summit again.  It’s our second gig and we’ve got a bunch of new songs so it’ll be fairly different from the first one which should be fun.  We’re psyched to be playing out again and hopefully we’ll be starting to do more of it in the near future.

We’re also working on recording a 5 song demo/EP and are looking to have that done by march (well at least 3 of the songs).  I’ll post some of what happens tonight up here as soon as I can.

In other news, I’m leaving for Raleigh on sunday and will be there, then columbia SC monday then Charleston SC tuesday, then back to Raleigh on wednesday and flying back on thursday.  So anyone down that way who wants to get together, gimme a call and we’ll grab some drinks!

So I’ve done a lot of online collaborations in the past. I always have a great time doing it even though it’s a fair amount of work. I’ve always been just the singer which is what I’m basically best at. This time there was an opportunity for me to be a producer and I though, “yeah, I’ve always produced my own stuff it’ll be a blast and I’ll hopefully end up with a song that I’m really proud of”. Turns out I’m an idiot. You know how you always look at someone doing a job and you think, “that’s bullshit, they get paid how much? I could do that job 10 times better than them”? That was kind of my line of thinking although a little more along the lines of: I can probably do this and i hope it works out…

Cut to 6 weeks later. Everything’s coming a long fairly well, but MAN am I a fish out of water. The people that I’m working with are all really professional and very cool and that’s awesome. I picked a country song to record and got a few curve balls thrown my way which has made me re-think a fair amount of how the song will end up going. I’m sure that we’re going to end up with a song that I’m proud to say that I’ve worked on, but let me tell you about the organizational skills and the ear for music that it takes to do a lot of this. There are guys on my team that picked stuff out 2 weeks ago that I’m just realizing now. Granted I’m doing this as a learning experience, but no one likes to feel stupid. Thankfully the other people on this team are gracious enough to not call me an A-hole…

So if you’re wondering where I’ve been. I’ve been working on this tune. Not to mention being in North Carolina for a couple of days meeting all of the very cool people that we work with down there. And working on new music w/ Sweetwood groove (got 3.5 new songs put together over the last 2 weeks and I’m REALLY psyched about them). Of course there’s always work/holiday/other crap that always goes along with… Anyway, I just had to put this out there. The next time you’re maligning producers as gasbag knowitalls whodon’tknowshit. Give it a second thought. They might not be making music you like, but it’s likely that they know their shit…

On another note. I’ve got some great photos from Thanksgiving, should be posting them in the next couple of days, i think i’ve explained why I might be a little late…

Well, i was going to post these yesterday, but never got around to it with work and everything else.  So here’s some tunes for you to listen to.  Hope you enjoy.

• Waiting
• Desperation
• The Boneyard
• It’s Not Unusual (that’s right a little Tom Jones for you)

And if anyone’s interested, i set up www.cafepress.com/sweetwoodgroove so you can go and git you some duds.

Wow, we woke up yesterday morning and had a little bit of snow. No big deal, but it snowed all day yesterday and all night and it’s still snowing. It’s fairly warm outside so as soon as you’re down the hill (about a mile away) it’s just raining. Up here, we’ve got this though:

Here’s the view looking at the house:

And finally, here’s the driveway…

Well, i’ve got a new band that I’m pretty excited about. Sweetwood Groove is going to be making our debut this friday @ the Summit in Hereford PA. You can get a sample of some of the music here. (I know, I know, it’s myspace, but what can i say… It’s free!) I’ve been playing with these guys for a little over 3 months at this point, in that time we’ve written 8 or so new songs together and tweaked ones that they had as well as some of the ones that I’ve had over the years as well. Style wise, it’s fairly similar to stuff that I’ve written in the past, but a little more complicated. Tim, the other guitar player has a great jazz sensibility so there’s a lot of that thrown in there. We’re going to be looking at doing some recording for a demo here in the next couple of months. I’ll keep you posted on what’s up there. In the meantime, i’ll be recording the show this friday so you can enjoy what you heard, or you can hear what you missed.

http://weyerbacher.com It’s a sad state of affairs, but it’s great to see the brewery being so honest.