well, i didn't get as much recording done as i'd hoped. thursday night was wasted rounding up extra drum parts. my drum kit is so old and crummy i had to make a few calls to help piece together a working kit. friday night i figured out the tempos of all five songs and i recorded an acoustic guitar and vocal for each song. i also had to re-learn some of the songs. whoops. couldn't remember the arrangements. saturday i spent most of the day trying to figure out a click track. argh! it took longer than expected but i ended up learning a ton of stuff about the recording gear. got some sweet folk implosion beats happening. saturday night i was reminded that i'm not a real drummer. boy, it's hard to play music to a click track. i'm used to just pressing record and seeing what happens. i felt like a scientist. took me a zillion takes to get it right. since i had the drums setup, i got up sunday and listen to all of jerry's songs again to see if i needed to redo any drum parts. i ended up adding a rimshot and hi-hat to the man you want me to be. not much has gone on since sunday. i went to see the wilco movie last night and i really liked it. jerry made it sound really boring but i enjoyed it. i'll be getting back to the record in a few days.

i'm ready to rock! i put in a hard day at work, cashed my check, and headed to the store. stocked up on pizzas, waffles, and drinks. it's a foxymoron weekend and i ain't leaving the house. i plan to cut my 5 songs for the album this weekend. we cut 8 of jerry's songs back in august when i bought the recording gear. i've spent the last few months figuring out how to use it and adding the finishing touches to his songs. now it's my turn. wish me luck.

when i'm not doing foxymorons stuff i make web pages at a place called echomusic here in nashville. most of the time i do sites for regional independent artists but every once in a while i do a site for a more established artist. this fall i'm gonna be doing a website for guy clark. he's a texas singer/songwriter legend along the lines of willie nelson, towns van zant, and steve earle. you know, those rebel country dudes of the 70's that broke all the slick country pop rules of the day. this week i got to go over to guy's house and talk about the website. it was really interesting to me so i thought i'd share it with you.

my boss and i hop in the car and start driving toward west nashville. that's my hood! i ask him where guy lives and he tell me "over by target." target? i was thinking we'd be driving into the country or something. he was on the cover of no depression last month and read some of the article. i just assumed he'd be out in the sticks writing songs and making guitars. it turns out he lives in a regular neighborhood probably slapped together in the 80's. i figured, since he's living here he'll at least have a big texas truck out front. nope. just a regular old oldsmobile from the early 90's.

when we get to the front door there's a note scribbled on the glass that says come downstairs. we barge in and head downstairs. he meets us at the bottom. he's much taller and skinny than i imagined. i guess about my height in fact. he immediately guides us back upstairs for coffee. on the way to kitchen i see a familiar painting. the blue shirt painting from the cover of old number one. there it was, hanging in the hallway. that was kinda surreal. the house isn't terribly clean and it definitely reeked of cigarette smoke. guy holds a coffee cup under the hot water for about a minute. he's very slow and deliberate in his words and actions.

it's been a while since i posted. i moved the website to a new server over the weekend. hopefully all the links still work. let us know if you can't download an mp3 or if you run into any crazy errors. the new server should allow for more mp3s to be posted! so that's a good thing. i think i've finished two of the jerry songs for the new record. we both seem to be pretty happy with the results. i'm getting really close on some other ones. he basically left me with 8 songs in various stages of completion. one of these days i'll dive into my songs for the record. i say he and me when really they are both of our songs. i'm just referring to the lead singer of the song to keep things straight. we're a band ya know. we'll, i guess that's all for now. i'm going to the slow bar tonight to see gary louris from the jayhawks play a solo show. that should be great. this weekend denton's centro-matic are in town but i might be on a road trip with verde so i might miss it. darn.

mission accomplished! one concert played and eight studio songs recorded. i dropped jerry off at the airport this morning at 8 AM. as you read in his last journal entry, the concert was really fun. i'm pretty sure everyone in the band had a great time and we had plenty of friends, fans, and loved ones in the audience. much thanks to those of you that came to the show. extra special thanks to those of you that traveled from other states to witness the spectacle. peter wins the distance award by coming from california and sloth wins the road dog award for taking a greyhound from abilene, texas. thanks to the texas crew (vic, rebel, patrick, chang, and chad) who rented a van for the show. heather and lyla also get mad props for their saturday arrivals from DFW and memphis.

on to the story...

after i got home from work on friday we made another trip to bobbie's. this time we got their awesome burgers. oh wait, can i say that? sure i can. forget indie cred, we're from texas! anyway, we finally hit the basement when lux liner scott showed up. everyone did a great job learning the songs. luckily we already remembered most of the older stuff so it wasn't any trouble learning the new material. after practice we cleaned up, loaded up the van, and headed to la hacienda for some mexican food. to our delight, we found the wait staff to be uncharacteristically competent. after chowing we hit the honky tonks of lower broadway. robert's western world was our first stop. we listened to a country band for quite a while then crossed the street to wolfy's and heard some rockabilly stuff.

saturday started with a few unsuccessful trips to the bus stop to pick up our friend sloth. our posse hooked up with verde brian and ate at jackson's in hillsboro village. the highlight of the morning was spotting garth brooks and trisha yearwood waiting in line at the pancake pantry. jerry said his trip was complete, he saw country stars. after a trip to the airport to pickup heather, the afternoon practice session began. we zoomed through the setlist this time. we make a last minute change and ditched one of the new ones for 'nashville'. vic and patrick documented most of our practice on video. after practice we suited up for the show. bass player chad, sloth, and i decided to bust out the western shirts since we were playing a "saloon" in nashville. jerry rolled his eyes.

most of our entourage ate at the sutler before the show. that proved to be a mistake for some people. everything went really well during the show. lots of smiling, bouncing, mistakes, and a few off color hecklers. several jokes were told and no guitars were smashed. the setlist for evening was this:

1 left sideways
2 august moon
3 hesitation eyes
4 almost active
5 terror on the tarmac
6 what you're waiting for
7 librarian
8 irene
9 nashville
10 ten x

after the show our gang hit johnny jackson's soul satisfaction at the cantina for a sweaty night of 70's flavored dancing. good times were had. then we headed back to my place to watch the concert video and a bad homemade movie from the last foxy nashville weekend in 2001.

sunday morning came much too soon. we had a last minute basement jam session with our texas crew before they had to leave. jerry and i finally headed back into the studio (my second bedroom) around 3 PM. we dove into the remaining drums tracks on all of the jerry lead vocal songs. we finished them around 7 and started in on all of jerry's electric guitar parts. he banged through those tracks quickly so we headed to eat before starting on vocals. i bet you can guess where we went. we finally got started on vocals around 11 PM on sunday night. jerry finished singing his 8 songs by 3 AM. we were done. no computer crashes, no obvious technical glitches, and no fist fights. i'm still in shock. it ended up being a really great foxy weekend. mucho music and fun. now it's my turn to finish the record. wish me luck.

last night after work jerry and i headed right back down to the basement and chose four jerry songs to concentrate on. by 7:00 we had the arrangements figured out. he kept getting on to me for playing too fast. andrea cooked a wicked awesome vegetarian dish. jerry seemed to like it since his plate was totally cleaned. after dinner andrea typed a paper on the computer, which also happens to serve as the recording studio. while she got her last few minutes or work out of the computer jerry and i began bringing the drums up and getting the drum mics setup. let me just tell you that foxymoron mic placement is a highly scientific process. very complicated and detailed. yea, right. by the time we got everything in place it was time for dessert. so we jumped in the car and headed over to bobbie's dairy dip for some ice cream. andrea and i got shakes and jerry got a kiddie cup of vanilla and some sweet potato fries. whatever? on the way back to the house we listened to the new verde recordings. then jerry and i drove over to lux liner larry's house to borrow some sleeping bags for the all the party people showing up over the next two days. thanks larry. we finally started recording drums at midnight. everything went really well considering the fact that i'd never even tried to record drums with the new software. i'm glad it all worked. i sat behind the kit and jerry sat at the computer with his electric guitar. i wore headphones so i could hear jerry's guitar and i sometimes played to a cheesy keyboard beat. jerry would press record then lip synch the song and gently play the guitar to keep me from getting lost. we got the drums to three songs done before i got tired. now we have a system so the remaining songs should go fast. we were both surprised at how well things were sounding. can't wait to get to the vocals and guitars. our backing band arrived at 9am this morning. they and some friends drove all night to get to nashville. once again, i'm at work today. i'm leaving in a minute to meet up with everyone and begin the concert rehearsals. that should be funny. more later.

so things have begun. jerry came two days early so i still have to work the day job. i skipped out yesterday to pick him up at the airport. he exited the plane in true rock star fashion. no suitcase, no bags, no laptop. just him and an electric guitar. rock! i dumped him off at my house and headed back to work. i don't even want to know what he was doing alone in my house while i was gone. when i returned home after work he was asleep on the couch and it looked like he might have been naked? i woke him up just in time to get dressed for our photo shoot with verde keith. verde was practicing in the basement last night so keith came over early to snap some shots of us. luckily he was late as usual so jerry had time to fix his bedhead. verde brian arrived right after that so keith put him to work as a photography assistant, light boy, and location manager. we started in my scary basement and ended up in my backyard with lawn tools as props. verde brian should be fired for letting that happen.

after the shoot, jerry and i headed to eat as you read in his entry from last night. geez, that was funny. we sneaked down into the basement to catch the last few songs from the verde practice. (thanks for letting us intrude verders.) then we headed upstairs to begin work on the boring stuff - figuring our chords and capos to all of our songs. we were also teaching each other songs for the show. oops, seems like we should have been doing that months ago. looks like we'll be playing 10 songs at the show and recording about 13 or 14 for the album. not all of them will be used though. we're planning to put the 10 best songs on the album.

keith and and brian came in and showed us the pictures from the shoot. mission accomplished. we picked out several good ones. thanks to the verde dudes for the great photo work. once they left we continued organizing the songs and lyrics sheets. andrea ended up making some strawberries, shortbread, and icecream so we were "forced" to take a break. thanks andie, that stuff was good.

at around midnight we finally headed down into the basement to work on arrangements. i sat behind the drums and jerry strapped on his telecaster. it wasn't pretty. some of the songs had obvious arrangements but others seem to need an extra kick. i guess we'll play with more ideas tonight then start taking the drums upstairs and recording the ones we know.

so that's the plan. we're about ready to mic up the drums and "get some sounds". wish us luck. we've never done this before. we'll be recording using a digital performer 3.0, a MOTU 896 interface, an apple G4 450 dual, and a bunch of crappy mics. we've always had an engineer or producer helping us out in the studio. i'm sure it'll be fine though, we just might have a few road blocks to cross along the way. we'll be getting back to the days of the 4-tracks and our silver leaves record. no engineering knowledge and no protools experience could be at our advantage this weekend. rock!

jerry will be arriving in nashville in exactly two weeks. i'm getting excited. i purchased some recording gear yesterday. i'm working out the details of our show. i made flyers for the show. i've sent the setlist to the band. now i just have to figure out how to use the recording equipment before jerry arrives. yikes!

why am i just finding this out? jerry saw them in austin a few weeks ago. he said the singer was obessed with talking about slacker.

oh no! what are we going to do now? what has the world come to? god help us all.

man this guy from the dismemberment plan doesn't like major labels at all. i hope the atlantic records guy reads that. i'd like to hear the rest of this story.

in foxynews, it's been brought to my attention that i must arrange and demo the rest of jerry's songs by next weekend. he's off to europe for the summer so we need to agree on the arrangements before he splits. i'll be doing the boring drums and bass tracks while he's gone. once he's back, we'll finish the album in nashville together. hope that makes everyone happy.

here she goes again. what i want to know is, when will winona ryder discover the genius of jerry james? she goes from rock star to rock star, obviously never finding true happiness and satisfaction. she's just not looking in the right places. winona, listen to the music of the foxymorons and fall in love with the lyrics of jerry james. he's an american original. a boy interrupted. plus, i think you guys are in the same grade. Beck, Pete Yorn, Ryan Adams, Dave Grohl, Dave Pirner, Jack White, and coming soon... Jerry James.

i don't know if it's cool to admit this or not but... i'm a huge juliana hatfield fan. i think she might be one of my biggest musical influences in a strange subconscious kinda way. she has a greatest hits comp (with new songs included) coming out in june. now i read that she is a starting a new band called 'some girls'. a chick trio with freda from the blake babies on drums. cool. you can read more about this and all things juliana at Julianasite.com.

jerry is tubing down a river in the hill country of texas today while i'm stuck at work making webpages and dreaming about recording our next album. swell.

last night i pulled out all the cassette tapes containing the 4-track demos for our next album. loaded each song into my computer so i could transfer them to compact disc. so now i have a cd blueprint for our next album. fourteen songs in total. we plan to whittle the final count down to ten. half are just guitar/vocal and the rest are full-on rock band demos. i'm having fun listening to them all today. just mailed jerry a copy of the disc too. i'm gonna start arranging his songs and hopefully work up some full band demos of them. we still don't have any "real" recording plans yet. hopefully this summer we'll get it done. their are also rumors of an east coast tour... we'll see. sometimes it really sucks living 800 miles apart.

jerry is going to see evan dando tonight and i'm jealous. i'm sure it'll be boring but still... it'd be fun to go to. i hope he's sober while he plays. andrea saw him once and he was a total mess. as high as a kite. speaking of evan dando. LemonEvan.com has a new mp3 of him. i'm not sure what the project is but it's really pretty and grown up sounding. i like it. hopefully jj will be coming to nashville sometime in march. all i know is we will be busting our butts working on the new album. possibly recording stuff too. who knows. later.

why haven't i heard of Loobiecore before. it's lou barlow's own personal website. lots of cryptic artsy pages and some mp3s! i miss lou. jerry saw lou solo acoustic once. i'm going to see centro-matic tonight in nashville. nothing else is new. no plans for the recording of our record yet. we've got the songs, just no recording plans. we're on the sxsw standby list... again. we've been asked every year that we apply, but we had to turn them down last year. i hope they ask us sooner this year.

howdy from tennessee. hope everyone had a swell holiday season. i was able to visit relatives in both texas and california. for christmas i got a new acoustic guitar from my parents that i plan on using during the recording of the next foxymoron album. it's the perfect little guitar to have sitting around the house. i can grab it on a whim and work out a new song or melody that's floating around my head. i also received three harmonicas but i don't really know how to play them yet. i think harmonicas are cool but i don't want to sound like alanis or anything. maybe we'll find a tasteful way to use them on the new record.

the new record, the new record, yadda, yadda, yadda. it's kinda strange to have an entire record written but not recorded. we've never really been in this situation before. hopefully by spring we'll have some definite plans or news to share with you. in the meantime all i can say is that we're strongly leaning toward calling the album hesitation eyes. that's the name of one of our new songs plus we think it's just a cool title. we just know that we didn't want to name the album after a city again.

in recent news, i posted information how to obtain your very own foxymorons sticker. yes, we've finally joined the ranks of millions of other bands, and created stickers. now we can plaster rest rooms all across america with the good message of the foxymorons.

i also posted our old SXSW debut concert video on the web. it was our first concert ever so please be sure you go check it out. it's a real bootleg blast. sxsw didn't allow cameras or video equipment but my cool mom was able to sneak her video camera in. thanks mom! now you can see thirty minutes of blazing rock-n-roll engery with a bunch of nervous stage banter.

i also want to apologize for all my jumping around. i guess i was really excited to be playing. i think i was also excited to be playing guitar. at that point in my life, i was playing a lot of bass with the luxury liners so maybe i was just jumping for joy due to having a guitar around my neck. i did have (i mean "get") to play bass on one song though. our bass player for the night, chad edgington, played guitar during broken heart. boy am i glad we switched. his solo was so ripping and dripping with country twang. (it was so good we totally forgave him for singing the first chorus too long.) chad's excellent harmony vocals really made it a top notch concert too. action jackson chang played keyboards and carlos jackson was the drummer that night. it's a true crime that you can't see jackson on the video. he was a dancing fool. his whistle blowing was a highlight during perfectly. that's also the song where jerry's guitar strap broke. classic foxymoron comedy relief. jerry also stopped the rock for a while when he layed down his axe to play jingle bells for the duke of gloucester. nice touch. the final song, ten time, is one of my favorites. everyone chanting the trivial lyrics to ten x and getting crazy on the freak-out noise drop-the-beat solo section. rock!