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!