the stories we could tell...

now playing: rain falling on the sidewalk outside - otherwise, silence...i like this song.

i promised a while back i'd post my poco chronicle - somewhere, there are orange cones being retrieved from a stretch of the road to hell, freshly paved with my good intentions...i will, i will. i promise. stand by.

went to dinner with the gang tonight, and marvelled yet again at the playfulness that exists between my son and my daughter...there was a baby at the table next to us who just became enthralled with jayda for a few minutes - i told her that "you happy babies must have some kind of unspoken cosmic connection of some sort...".

she said, "yep. i was a happy baby. not that i remember much about it...."

both of my kids could be a case study in excessive intake of bovine growth hormone, i think. i gave up on trying to get 12 and under discounts for them years ago, because frankly, i wouldn't have believed that they were under 12...and if i don't believe it, then i can't sell it. whether it's true or not. they're not taller than i am or anything, but i just don't see them as being that age to begin with.

wendy is a trip. i think that if i could keep her up for 3 days straight, she'd still gallop up and down the stairs. when we first moved in together, every time she went up or down, i was certain she'd fallen. i still think that one day she's gonna take the sandy denny plunge and seriously hurt herself...

i started ripping the studio up tonight. i could only go so far into it, because i have a new console coming in and i've got some wiring harnesses on the way as well - and i want to try to wire that up before i go too far into setting the peripheral stuff up. i don't think it's going to take as long as i initially thought it would, though, and i think that the new layout is gonna be much more user friendly.

i think i know how i'm going to do the jodi record.

just like i did back in the day.

i think i'm gonna have her in and we're gonna set up upstairs and cut basic tracks for everything that we want to do, running the guitar direct, and getting her vocal in the room. maybe i'll keep the vocals from these sessions, maybe i won't, but i won't really have to worry about it until close to the end of the project. after i've gotten those tracks finished, i'm going to build on the basic track, replace the initial guitar track, overdub other instruments, and put down whatever rhythm track i might use after all the vocals are done from the basic tracks.

i realize this is totally backwards from conventional wisdom, where making records are concerned, but i think it can work, in jodi's case. get the absolute best vocal i can get in an intimate guitar and vocal setting, and then build the tracks around the vocal, as opposed to building tracks around scratch vocals and coming back and doing them for real later.

hell, i might have her come in and take a pass or two at the vocals after the tracks are constructed, but somehow, i doubt it. i'm betting that i get the best performances out of jodi without headphones.

now that i'm starting to whip the room into shape, i'm starting to get psyched about doing this. jodi's not the total flakeball that michelle nagy has historically been, and i think it'll be a lot more satisfying in the end. i just got an email from michelle yesterday, plugging a gig, and running down the list of the folks in her band - this not more than a month after she called me, telling me how much it'd mean to her to have me on board, how comfortable i made her, etc., etc - and i can feel the earth giving 'way beneath my feet, because i know what's coming next...

she came up during the summer and cut some demos here, and i only heard from her the one time since. i can't be in michelles' band. it was all i could do to be in her presence back in the day - she made me crazy many, many times while we were managed by the same company, and not being managed by the same guy doesn't make her any easier to take sometimes.

i'd like to see her do well, but she's trying to be everything to everybody, and i don't know of any instance where that has ever worked for anyone. the demo she sent me started off with a folky tune and went headfirst into this heavy hip-hop thing - it was exhausting. she can't decide whether she wants to be beyonce or lucinda williams. and you can't fuckin' be both.

boy, have i mentioned lately how much i enjoy doin' sideman work?

studio good. guitars good. divas bad.