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Nov 10, 2005 11:40:56 GMT -5
Post by Dan on Nov 10, 2005 11:40:56 GMT -5
So Mr. Blogs, I contacted the music director at KRUI about getting the album some airplay and he agreed to put in it the rotation for at least a week and see how it goes. That’s pretty exciting to me. I have been coming up with all kinds of ideas and ways to make this thing work and I refuse to rest until it does. Even then it will just be time to move to the next step.
Jeremy and I met up with Chris and Adam at the Ranch to discuss the recording sessions for the upcoming Outros album. Adam has agreed to play the drums on it though he has never heard 1 song from it. Jeremy and I are confident in his abilities to do so. We figure we don’t even know the songs well ourselves so it will grow together. Chris seems like a cool guy who knows music so we scheduled our first studio session for this Saturday. We were going to give Chris and Adam a demo to give them some idea of what we are doing but we forgot to even mix anything down. We have been so busy writing and getting down ideas that we never even really looked back for long enough to consider a mix down.
After we were done at the Ranch, Jeremy and I headed back to his place to get some mixes of the demos done so we could give a disc to Chris and Adam. Of course we also snuck in an episode of our muse “What’s Happening”. We had one of our intellectual heartfelt conversations that I am so found of and then I headed back to the homestead to be with the wife.
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Nov 11, 2005 13:16:31 GMT -5
Post by Dan on Nov 11, 2005 13:16:31 GMT -5
One thing that I have been doing recently is coming up with a question and brainstorming for the answer. It seems that all you have to do is ask yourself the right question and the brain searches until it can find the answer. I think that I used to spend a lot of time asking the wrong questions and therefore I was getting answers that I didn‘t need. For example I could ask “Why do I suck so bad?” Now this is a bad question because the answer will be a list of reasons why I suck. A better question would be “What can I do to improve?” Now the list is a bunch of helpful answers that can be applied. Though its probably common knowledge, I like how it is working for me so far so I am writing about it here.
As far as events of the day go, its was a fun day. I began with my daily list of to do’s and began to check them off one by one. A few sacrifices had to be made because I ran out of time but those things are still on the list to be done. One thing that I am excited about is that I might have found a local practice space. This will be so much better than driving to solon, plus its heated! I spoke to the guy in charge of it and we are to meet soon. AC and Jeremy are going to head out there with me as I think we might all go in on it so we can get a couple of rehearsals in of each song before recording the Outros album. Speaking of Jeremy, he and I worked out a deal to release his solo album on the Dillweed label. I’ll admit that is exciting news to me. I believe in that guy and his music.
Adam called me feeling sick, I guess the Ranch got to him in a bad way. He wanted to know if it made me sick too and it did but nothing like it made him. The food just gave me a few Outros and an encore. Adam sounded like shit, almost drugged out or something. Still, like a trooper he said he would make it over to catch the gig on TV.
I headed out to Jeremy’s place and we worked on finishing one of the songs that we had left incomplete. It came out rather well for a demo and its one I look forward to recording. Adam called as we were finishing up with the song and said he was still too sick to make it over. I was slightly disappointed but my friends health is much more important to me than forcing him to watch some ego trip gig. Jeremy decided to head over to the studio and be a part of the audience.
There are 5 chairs in the studio audience and all of them were filled once everyone got to the show. The show itself was a blast and I would do it again and again giving the chance. Brad recognized me as a guy from Sunformer and then asked how Justin was doing. I guess he had worked with Justin at another job. It seems like he really wants to get the full band on the show as he invited us to all come and play when the show returns in 2 weeks. With Adams back situation and Mike no longer in town I’. not sure how feasible that is. Candy man offered to stand in for Adam on the drums and that was a nice gesture. Brad said to dump him like the drummer in “That Thing You Do” . He doesn’t know that Adam has been my friend since Jr. High though.
I played 2 songs, Sun The City and Criminal. The first went over ok but it seemed like everyone loved Criminal. I admit that I picked it because I thought it was appropriate for the show. There were two guys there from a local campus magazine, one of them approached me after the show and took a cd for a possible future review in their magazine. He said that he would like to use Criminal for a motocross video that he does but he would have to edit it to make it more pg-13. I figured that would be ok, I have no gripes about editing music to fit a format. I just won’t edit my creative output on the albums I put out. Once its out there people can do whatever they want with it. All in all, it was a good time and experience.
When I got home Kel wanted to go out so we went to Wally World so I could get some canvas to paint on and a few other trinkets. Then we swung over to Pancheros since I had not eaten since breakfast. Kel refused to go in for some reason so I went and got it to go. It was about 1 in the morning by the time we got home and I was bushed. I pretty much passed out as soon as the head hit the pillow.
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Nov 11, 2005 16:11:40 GMT -5
Post by chelsea on Nov 11, 2005 16:11:40 GMT -5
whoa dan, you're doing good with naming your blog. mr blogs is pretty awesome too. i wonder what he'd look like... hopefully he'd be really hot and one of those guys where you can just look at him and get an orgasm. hm. yes, there he is. mr blogs.
but bloggy is pretty cute. it makes me think of your blog as a young child. aww. babies.
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Nov 12, 2005 4:14:52 GMT -5
Post by Dan on Nov 12, 2005 4:14:52 GMT -5
whoa dan, you're doing good with naming your blog. mr blogs is pretty awesome too. i wonder what he'd look like... hopefully he'd be really hot and one of those guys where you can just look at him and get an orgasm. hm. yes, there he is. mr blogs. but bloggy is pretty cute. it makes me think of your blog as a young child. aww. babies. I suppose if I had to choose I would go with the baby for a blog since I have yet to meet a man that gave me an orgasm on sight. Then again, thats not really my thing.
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Nov 13, 2005 0:54:49 GMT -5
Post by Dan on Nov 13, 2005 0:54:49 GMT -5
Friday was rough going at first. I slept in because I just didn’t want to deal with the pain in my leg. Eventually I figured that I would have to deal with it so I got up just in time to go pick up my paycheck for my one day of work. I didn’t even have time to shower or any other kind of grooming so I’m sure I made a great impression at the office.
I got home and started on my daily list and that always makes time fly. It seemed that as soon as the list was finished for the day it was time to meet up with Adam and Jeremy about the practice space. I drove over to Adam’s place and scooped him up and then went on to J’s. J was nowhere to be found so we waited as long as we could before we had to be at the space to meet Tye but J never showed.
Tye was an interesting fellow. Apparently he is a business owner who runs a clothing line out of this warehouse. I guess he was trying to find a way to pay his rent by renting out to bands. His prices were kind of high in our opinion. The deal was 2 hour blocks for 3 days a week for $160 a month. We are used to paying around $70 for a place to play but in Tye’s favor the warehouse is heated and has a rest room. It just seems that by the time you include set up and tear down time plus breaks you might have an hour to play. That’s barely time to warm up. Of course his solution to this was to offer an extra hour for a price bump of $240 a month. Not something that’s in the cards right now. Maybe if he still can’t find any takers in the future he will drop the price. I’ll be sure to check back with him about that soon.
I came home and I played the Bradman deal for Adam. It was so weird to watch and amazing how much I missed because the behind the scenes things going on were so humorous. The show is only an hour long and AC split right after it ended.
I still hadn’t gone for my daily walk so I asked Anna and Ryan if they wanted to trek out with me. Anna agreed but Ryan was way to engulfed in a video game. We walked for a little while but I started to feel nature calling so we took a detour into a gas store. That was a trippy scene in itself. There were people playing the slots, some elder folks just hanging out, and a new chicken shack restaurant in the corner of the store. The place was jumping to say the least. I did my business and then Anna talked me into getting her a drink and chips so I decided to try some breaded fries from the shack. We sat down to find some little kid no more than six years old running around the store like crazy. He crawled under our table and began to roll around on the floor. Then he tapped on my leg and started to beg Anna for some chips. She’s a nice kid so she shared with a smile on her face. The kid asked us if we were married and Anna flipped out! I think she was offended but found it funny at the same time. The kid just blew it off and started to roll around on the floor again singing “Halleluiah! Halleluiah!”. Anna asked how old he was and he replied with 6 fingers in the air, then decided he was seven. Anna then told him that seven year olds don’t roll on the floor and he snidely replied “Sometimes they do and this one does!” We busted out laughing and decided to get out of there but not before the kid tried out a few more ploys for free chips.
The rest of the night was pretty quiet. I spent a lot of it studying.
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Nov 13, 2005 12:15:21 GMT -5
Post by Dan on Nov 13, 2005 12:15:21 GMT -5
Kel and I were supposed to start the day off by looking at some houses to move into but we decided to cancel those plans and go get new cell phones instead. I think we got a pretty good deal on those so it worked out well. If we can get the rebates in time it will help with the holiday shopping.
We took the kids for lunch to a new place in Coralville called Iguanas. The food there was good but there was a slight language barrier problem that I had to get through when ordering. I need to learn Spanish someday beyond my 10 word vocabulary.
After we ate I was dropped off at Adam’s place as we were supposed to pick up with Jeremy and head over to meet Chris, which we did. Chris has a nice little studio set up with a pro tools mixer, padded drum room with an isolation wall, all kinds of amps and instruments, and even a Moog! I have a good feeling that the Outro’s record is going to sound great! We hung out for awhile and debuted a few of the demos we had done, and listened to some stuff that Chris had recorded in various projects of his. Some of his music was very Ween and Captain Beefheart like which is a good thing in my book.
For the next hour we sat around and discussed the approach that we will take on the recording and got some plans in place. If we can get the drums to sound good the rest should be easy and from the recordings that I heard this should be no problem.
When we left the studio we decided to grab some food at the Vine. The scene was pandemonium as the Iowa game was on TV and we were winning. With every play the bar would light up in a smattering of applause. One drunk guy had to give high fives to each of the 10 people at his table after every play. I thought it was great.
By the time the game had ended it was dark and I headed home to spend some time with the family. It was chaos as usual as there is always some kind of drama going on. When its possible I choose to stay out of that crap and dive into my work. Not much else happened.
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Nov 14, 2005 14:33:24 GMT -5
Post by Dan on Nov 14, 2005 14:33:24 GMT -5
My day started off typical with my daily list of things. One of them being to get a few things mailed out. I called up Adam to see if I could drop by and grab my phone charger which I left at his place. Adam agreed. Right before I headed over I told Kel about some investments I made and she got really upset. I didn’t realize that she would get so upset about it since I had tried to talk with her earlier about investing some cash into myself and a career but she didn’t want to talk about it. It was upsetting to her so I figured I had to make the decision without her. Anyway, I felt bad once I left the house for the way I handled the situation and gave her a call. Kellee was still very upset and now had begun crying. I apologized over and over as I really was sorry for making her upset. I only wish she supported me and my dreams. I support her in every way I know how. Sometimes I think she wants me to hand her the things she dreams about and maybe that IS her dream but I have no idea. She tells me I should know by now what she wants. Maybe it’s a conflict of interests. I don’t want to stand in the way of her dreams and I want my own. I have really been trying hard to get on the same page that she is on by including her dreams and goals into my own. What more can I do?
Anyway, I got to Adams place and almost forgot to grab the charger before we headed out to the post office. We both got our stuff mailed, drove AC back to his place, and headed home to help with the household chores.
When I arrived at home Kel had already done most of the work that needed to be done. I finished up what I could and then she decided we need to grab some groceries for the week. I was going to stay home because she still seemed upset with me but the way she was stalling made me thing that she wanted to be with me still and try to move on, so I went with her.
We basically did household stuff for the rest of the night. At one point the Tivo recorded another show instead of the one that Kel wanted and she got angry. I guess she needed to blow off some steam because she decided to take the car and go for a ride. I understand how that helps so I didn’t try to stop her. Our anger can be a gift if it brings on a positive change. I hope she realized that. While she was gone Anna and I went on another walk. Along the way I tried to be thankful for things and was trying to teach Anna to do the same. It’s a good time for reflection when you are out among nature.
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Nov 15, 2005 13:36:22 GMT -5
Post by Dan on Nov 15, 2005 13:36:22 GMT -5
The day began with me filling out some applications and turning them in. I forget how time consuming it can be just filling out papers all morning. After a few hours my body decided that it hadn’t had enough sleep so I took a cat nap. Kel woke up around this time and still seemed displeased with me. She went off to work without saying much of anything to me.
When I awoke I added and did a few of the list things for the day. This blogmeister takes a lot of time since I need to reflect upon the previous day and then write the bloody thing. Before I knew it Kel had come home for lunch. She decided that we needed to talk so we did. She told me that she wanted to separate for awhile and see how it works. I was a little taken back by this and asked her why and she said something to the effect of that she was starting to hate me. I have some ideas where this is coming from and can even understand some of it. I let her know that I needed to think it over before we made any rash decisions. So off to work she went leaving the conversation open.
I decided to take a good look at her pain and why it is driving her to feel this way. We wrote a little bit back and forth through email because I do love her and wanted to work things out, plus I knew by some of the things we discussed that she was just going to add more pain in her life by following through. Its like those people who go on a diet and deprive themselves of their love of food. It almost never works out because you are just adding pain to pain, when what really needs to be done is work with the things you love and exercise to keep in shape.
I wrote a long letter to Kel explaining how I felt and asking her what her feelings were to see if things could be ironed out. It was taking quite awhile for her to write back so I decided to go start my exercise for the day. I have to admit that the drive was not all there but I became more and more driven as the session went on. My pain was refocused into energy and I felt a lot better when the hour was up. Apparently my concern had helped Kel out too as she wanted to go out and be a couple for the night which of course I agreed to.
We went out and had a nice meal and a hearty conversation. Things started to feel normal again. We still discussed the possibility of me going away for awhile but its just not feasible for either of us now. I’m glad because I do love her and want things to work out for the best. We discussed some of Kels hopes and dreams and she really believes them nearly impossible. This makes me so sad because I know that everyone has the power to achieve if they only try until they do. When you stop trying the only way it will happen is dumb luck and who wants to wait for that one in a million chance? Not me.
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Nov 16, 2005 10:07:16 GMT -5
Post by Dan on Nov 16, 2005 10:07:16 GMT -5
It was a fairly slow day. By the time I had gotten everything I needed to get done for the day, it was almost over. I did quite a bit of reading and learning which took up a big chunk of time. I also amped upped my workout so it takes a bit more time as well. I feel myself getting stronger everyday and can see the results as well. I don’t know how noticeable it is to the naked eye but it is in the minds eye.
I did get some good news two fold yesterday, the first being that Terry and I spoke and he agreed to be involved in The Outros project and will be coming to rehearse with us on Thursday. Adam brought up that it would be the Geno lineup which hadn’t even occurred to me until that moment. Its interesting how things come around like that.
The second bit of news is that Matt Lynch also agreed to help the Outros project. He is hopefully going to get his other friends from Matt & Tom to help out as well. I still plan on asking a few more guests to help out but I need to hold back until its time. This project has never been about forging ahead at light speed, its more of a chunking process where we get little chunks done at a time.
Kel came home from work and we made plans for Thanksgiving. Now much is set in stone yet other than what we want to get in the way of food for the day. We usually spend the holiday with either of our parents but everything is kind of up in the air this year. It wasn’t long before we settled in for the night and hit the sack.
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Nov 17, 2005 14:43:53 GMT -5
Post by Dan on Nov 17, 2005 14:43:53 GMT -5
It was kind of a lazy day yesterday at first. I don’t exactly know why but it took a little while to get motivated. I think it was the fact that it had snowed and it put a crimp in my routine. I made up for it as the night came and went on.
I didn’t do anything to exciting, a bunch of html and reading. I did get in my anaerobic exercise for the day at the end of the night which was nice. I always feel good after a workout which hasn’t always been the case. Its amazing what state of mind can do if used in your favor.
Kel seems to be getting more excited about my state of mind and starting implementing some of the techniques I have been using and she went to bed buzzing. Its so good to see her happy.
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Nov 18, 2005 13:30:28 GMT -5
Post by Dan on Nov 18, 2005 13:30:28 GMT -5
Hi again, its me! Happy to see me? Eh? What’s that? Sorry I am almost deaf from all the years of playing loud music. Anyway….
I spent a lot of the day working on html. I did make sure I got out of the house and went for a mall walk being that it was way too cold to do a half hour walk outside. While I was out I ran a few other minor errands but nothing worth mentioning. As I was coming home my mom called me and asked me to pick up some stuff for her from her former employer which I tried to do only they said it wasn’t ready yet. It was inconvenient but not a big deal. I just hung out awhile and went back across town to grab Ryan from school and back to get the papers again. Fun stuff huh?
I got back home and had lunch with Kel and then feverishly began to work on my list again. All of the time Kel was writing to me very pleased about her new found feeling of joy. This felt good and made me feel closer to her. Its amazing to see how much a relationship can improve just by letting a little joy into your heart.
Adam and Jeremy showed up at my place around 6 and we began to set up in the garage. Terry was supposed to meet me at 5:30 but didn’t end up getting there until about a quarter after six. It happens when you drive sometimes, plus its T so it was almost expected. The practice itself went well and after only a few times through we all pretty much had the song down and were ready to record. That’s the great thing about doing this with T and A (lol) is that we all have played together for years so its easy to fall into each others playing and writing styles after only a few takes.
We all became pretty confident that we would have it ready for this Saturday and did one last run through before calling it a night. We packed up the gear and decided to hit the Burg. It was interesting talking with Terry as its been awhile since we had seen him. He had just gotten married this past weekend so that was discussed a lot too. He seems much happier now and I am very happy for him.
After the Burg we all said our “see you Saturday” thing and went home. I didn’t eat much at the Burg because I wanted to have something with Kel who didn’t get home until around the same time I did from the Burg. She had put in a 12 hour day and was exhausted. We made some food and pretty much went to bed after watching some tube.
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Nov 20, 2005 9:45:56 GMT -5
Post by Dan on Nov 20, 2005 9:45:56 GMT -5
Friday was the day that I made it to be. One of the highlights was hearing Trip played on the radio again for the second day in a row. I need to get some more cds out to other stations, I will put that on my to do list. Anyway, most of the day was spent hammering on html and just trying to get things to work. I finally secured a real server for dillweedmusic.com and will be making the switch very soon.
Kel was working overtime and wasn’t going to be home until about an hour later than usual. I decided it would be a nice surprise to make her a dinner by candlelight. I found out what she wanted to eat and went to the store and prepared it. Imagine my surprise when she called me up about 20 minutes early to say that she just got off work and was about 5 minutes from home. I was almost done cooking but had nothing else prepared yet. I quickly rushed her off the phone and got it all ready just in the nick of time. I think she enjoyed it and almost passed out when she saw the other surprise I had for her. It was a good night.
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Nov 20, 2005 10:04:44 GMT -5
Post by Dan on Nov 20, 2005 10:04:44 GMT -5
Yesterday was a hell of a lot of fun. I awoke pretty much just as everyone began to call about meeting up for the studio day. Kel made me a nice breakfast that I could eat quickly. Soon after, AC and Jeremy showed up around noon and we loaded all of our gear up in the Weedwagon and headed over to meet up with Chris.
It took awhile for Adam to get his gear set up and even longer for them to get a decent sound. Terry had shown up around this time and Chris suggested we play some video games or something because it was going to be awhile. We ended up watching Iowa stomp a hole in Minn ass and going out for refreshments. Things were pretty much ready with the drums in about 2 hours.
Terry was going to run direct from the pod but it didn’t have xlr outputs which caused a slight problem. Chris had an old mixer that could convert it but it caused a crazy hum that took an hour to get it to a point where it wasn’t too annoying. The rest of the setup went pretty smoothly after that. We pretty much nailed the basic tracks in about 6 takes and Terry split. Then began the overdubs.
When it came time to lay down an electric rhythm track my guitar, Gibby let me down. Justin had warned me the pots needed to be cleaned but it had always worked well until now. It would sound fine for a few bars and then the volume would just suddenly shift to a softer clean tone. It Didn’t matter though, I just switched guitars and played through Jeremy’s.
It seemed like overdubs took forever and we hadn’t even got to the vocals yet. It wasn’t that it was a bad thing, I was just impatient to hear the finished song. We decided to grab some food and begin fresh with the vocals when we got back. From there out things went smooth and we had a rough mix by 9 pm. Not bad for a days work. We all had a great time and Chris is probably one of the best, if not the best recording engineers I have worked with.
I came home to find Kel drunk, alone, and slightly depressed so I decided to lift her spirits and take her out. We hit a Chinese restaurant up the street, ate, and snuggled up in bed for awhile. It seemed to lift her spirits and was a great way to end the night.
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Nov 21, 2005 12:42:22 GMT -5
Post by Dan on Nov 21, 2005 12:42:22 GMT -5
Not much to say today blogmeister. It was a day of coming down from the high of the studio. I spent a huge chunk of the day trying to finish up the site to get it done by goal time. I did it though even after writing up a 3 page thing for the discography page only to lose it with a bad keystroke and a computer crash. *sigh*
I managed to get a small list of things in for the day before it became time for my Sunday night veg. By the time the good shows on the tube were over there wasn’t much else to be done. I pretty much just fucked around on the internet and did a few random things that I had been meaning to get done.
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Nov 22, 2005 13:04:39 GMT -5
Post by Dan on Nov 22, 2005 13:04:39 GMT -5
I did a lot of writing yesterday including songwriting. I penned a new tune which I think turned out pretty well. I recorded a rough copy of it with acoustic guitar and made some plans with Terry and Adam to record it for a Dillweed release.
Anna stayed home sick from school so my normal daily routine was slightly altered and I had to make adjustments. I’m not sure how sick she really is, part of me things she just wanted to get out of school. Sure she has a cold but she also has been having problems at school. It just makes me wonder anyway.
I made plans to meet up with AC at Real Records as I wanted to speak with the owner and he wanted to buy some record sleeves. When we got there Adam got his sleeves but the owner was nowhere to be found. Oh well, everyone deserves a day off so I didn’t mind. Things will happen when they are meant to.
From there AC and I hung out a little but he had to meet up with some folks and eat so I went back to the van and surfed the net until it was time to meet Jeremy. Jeremy and I got together to mix down some Outros songs, the entire catalog to date in fact. It was a good time just going through and remembering it all. This is going to be one hell of an eclectic record when its done. We also took a few shots for his solo album for which he has agreed to release on Dillweed Records.
I came home and Kel had won a little money in the powerball so we went out and grabbed a bite to eat. After that I worked with the layout and designs for Jeremy’s album and by the time I was done it was midnight and time for bed.
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