the foxymorons were devastated to hear about the death of elliott smith last month. he's been a longtime hero of ours and an inspiration. we accidentally saw him open for sebadoh in austin back in 1996. there aren't many artists whose entire catalog i own. he's the reason i'm still not embarrassed to play a crummy yamaha acoustic with a dean markley pickup. we've chased his sound on many of our recordings. when i was in los angeles last august we went to his favorite bar in hopes he might be there and we even took cheesy tourist photos in front of the figure 8 mural. we were lucky enough to see him perform at a sparsley attended kinks tribute that same weekend. i remember being shocked to see him smile during one song. last night jerry went to a los angeles concert in his honor. here's the story from mtv.

hey, wilco cleans up pretty nice. check out these excellent photos from the recent chicago show. i looks like they had some extra musicians on stage. cool.

i love the idea of jj living in california. i hope he ends up in the movies or getting one of our songs played on the wb. i can hear baby blue or august moon playing during an episode of the gilmore girls.

i'm looking forward to my trip out there in a couple weeks. he's gonna show me the town and all the happening joints. i know a trip to largo to see jon brion is on the schedule. i also plan to attempt surfing for the first time in my life. wish me luck. i hope this summer isn't a bummer for everyone.

congratulations are in order. jerry graduated from the university of texas business school today. i think that means people have to call him "master" now. way to go holmes! welcome back to the real world. college life is over... again. now, it's time to get some serious rocking done.

jerry's overseas again. i'm not really sure where this time though. one email came from singapore. another from malaysia. i wish i could say he was on a rock-n-roll tour over there but i think he's really just laying on the beach and meeting girls. sounds good to me. be safe bro! don't drink the water and don't forget to eat an applejack a day.

what the? i knew he was writing songs for a movie... but who put jack white in a movie? if any musician should be in a movie it should be jerry. he's the woody allen of our generation. girls, you know what i'm talking about.

jerry just hipped me to this cool elliott smith live mp3 archive. yea, jerry and i both like elliott smith. deal with it!

i had a productive album #3 recording weekend. set up my guitar amp in the living room and ran a bunch of really long chords into my studio room. my axes for the weekend were my usual 1997 gibson sg standard, andrea's 1967 fender jaguar, and andrea's 1995 squier telecaster. i ended up using the tele for most everything. we have 14 songs in various stages of production so i just went from song to song and added electric guitar as i saw fit. now i only have two songs left that need serious guitar work so i hope to finish those parts this week. jerry has some really great intimate and quiet songs this time around. what a heartbreaker. looks like i'm gonna be the hyperactive pop dude.