Man is a rational being. Reason, as man's only means of knowledge, is his basic means of survival. But the exercise of reason depends on each individual's choice. "Man is a being of volitional consciousness." "That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call 'free will' is your mind's freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom. This is the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and character." -AYN RAND





Chase your dreams!

Is the world coming to an end? I am sweating as I type this. I just walked around the neighborhood with Buddy. It is 80 plus degrees outside and we are 15 days away from Christmas! The Canadian Loonie is now worth more than the US Dollar! I just wrote some music that I am completely ecstatic about!!

Monday we drove from Big Canoe, GA over to Chattanooga. We opened at Rhythm and Brews again. This time for Chris Barron (formerly of the Spin Doctors). They sounded great and we had some fun with our set too. Back on the road, we fueled up with Krispy Kreme and truck stop coffee. That kept up jittering 'till we got home.

We are working on music for our next album. We've been fleshing out some new ideas. Inspiration is the easy part. Turning that riff or idea into something worthwhile is where it gets more difficult. Usually the initial inspiration comes as a gift, a bit of jamming or improv turns up an interesting musical nugget. Taking it from there usually goes one of two ways for me. Either the piece flows out in a flurry of inspiration. Like the faucet has been turned on and you have trouble trying to catch it all in your musical bucket. Or the second way, a bit of inspiration without much follow up. This is more akin to trying to tune in a fuzzy radio looking for that station that briefly came in crystal clear just a few moments ago. Sometimes you rely on music theory or patterns to poke around in the bushes. Sometimes that turns up more inspiration, sometimes not. When I can tune back in, it's obvious. Once the afterglow wears off, maybe the hardest part is deciding what's really good. Coming back to things after time, is usually the best judge. Being self critical is the hardest. It is easy to loathe everything, or even worse, love everything. Balance is somewhere between and is the voice that has to be continually sought. Despite the effort, the best things still feel like a gift.

OK, back to the drawing board...

-Jonathan

Back from Iowa. Long Drive. Good Concert. I like the rural midwest, the people, the landscape. Conspicuosly free from clutter and chain stores. Like a breath of fresh air.

An interesting quote from Chris Rock:

Chris Rock: Music kind of sucks. Nobody’s into being a musician. Everybody’s getting their mogul on. You’ve been so infiltrated by this corporate mentality that all the time you’d spend getting great songs together, you’re busy doing nine other things that have nothing to do with art. You know how shitty Stevie Wonder’s songs would have been if he had to run a fuckin’ clothing company and a cologne line?

Krzysztof (from Poland) emailed recently about using our tune "Gringo Flamenco" to accompany his slideshow of Photos from his recent trip to Andalusia. The photos are beautiful and we're delighted the he decided to use "Gringo Flamenco" as an accompaniment to the show. Here is a link to the show. Enjoy!!

CLICK HERE FOR KRZYSZTOF SAWICKI'S PHOTO ART

We had a great time in Idaho. the day we arrived the weather was absolutely perfect. The wind was slightly cool, but the warm western sun kept us right in the perfect zone. Once we unloaded our gear, we headed downtown and found a great Thai restaurant called Mai Thai. They had a vegertarian Bento Box with veggie chicken bites that really hit the spot.

Fri. we woke up early and dropped by 94.7 "The River" for a short interview. Afterwards at the DJ's recomendation we stopped by the local indie record store (The Record Exchange), which had a a great selection including a lot of Vinyl (including brand new titles). Jenn has been talking about getting a used record player and starting a vinyl collection. Fri. night we had a great crowd and really enjoyed the concert..and getting a chance to meet some folks afterward.

Here are some pictures from the concert, courtesy of Dave Jensen.

We're just about finished getting packed. We head out tomorrow for Boise. We're looking forward to heading out to the Northwest again. We both have strong connections there, Jenn lived in Seattle for a while with her Dad and I studied at MSU in Bozeman. We've also done a good amount of playing out there, and it feels a bit like a second home for both of us.

Packing for a flight is always stressful. Making sure you get everything you need, not just the basics of clothing toiletries etc, but the cords and technical stuff. That is really the tricky part making sure that you have all of the cords and gear. We have downsized a bit lately, but we still have a six space rack unit ( heavy!) and then instead of bringing a pedalboard I pack all of our pedals in a small suitcase with the cords. It is pretty heavy, but still lighter and smaller than the pedal board case. Things always get a bit stressy around here trying to get it all set. Unfortunately, just as we got everthing packed and set out we realised we had one extra bag...whoops:) Tomorrow well get up at 4am and head out to catch our flight at 6:20.

We watched an interesting movie the other night. Actually, it was more like a lecture. The premise was a "conversation between God and Buddha". Deepak Chopra was doing that part of Buddha. I forgot the other professors name, but anyway, they would introduce basic philosophies and then compare the the similarities and contrast. The most important fact was one of the basic tennets of the Buddha, which was basically that all human suffering was caused by not knowing the true nature of reality. (I paraphrased).
There were a few other tennets but they were all subservient to this basic one. I find this interesting because it is an idea I have been thinking quite a bit about lately, not only from the personal perspective , but also from a societal... even global one. In essence we are all in a constant process of creating our realities through our thoughts and ultimately actions. Of course, we are all dependent on one another too, since we're sharing the planet. We all have different perspectives based on our culture, thought patterns etc. To some extent these shape our world and the one around us. I remember seeing an inscription in the wall of the statehouse in Jefferson City, MO, that relates to this concept. It read: "Ideas rule the world". -- I guess we should all choose carefully.

Ok, well enough 'deep thoughts' for today.

We just got back home from our gigs in FL. We had a blast at the Marion Theatre. The staff was totally first class and audience had a great energy. We look forward to playing there again.

We spent the day driving today down to Ocala, FL. I had some fingernails trouble this week and have been experimenting with playing with shorter nails. It has it's pro's and cons. Pros are that it makes playing in the steel string a little easier and you can really dig into the strings with out fear of breakage. Cons are that it is a little harder to get tone colors on the nylon string, however it has forced me into a slightly different hand position which seems to be a little better. I'll keep experimenting...

We have had some good opening gigs recently at Rhythm and Brews in Chatanooga. We have met some cool folks there in Chattanoogie and look forward to going back in Nov. to do a full show. I've also enjoyed working with Doug the sound engineer, he has filled me in on some new approaches to our live sound, which I like. Last gig we tried running six channels to the board. (One for each cello, guitar mic, guitar line and stereo out of the looper.) This worked well, the only drawback was that one of the lines came loose from it's socket so we lost part of the cello for one track. Unfortunately that seems to be a shortcoming of that particular mixer. Once I work that out, I think this will be a good way to approach the sound in certain venues.

We recently added our version of "The Wall" (Pink Floyd) to our set. It is a work in progress and is still evolving quite a bit, but we're both having a lot of fun with it. We've been in a bit of a Pink Floyd phase recently and rented The Wall (movie) on netflix and even watched the Wizard of Oz with the Dark side of the moon.

I stumbled across this speech yesterday by Steve Jobs of Apple. Inspiring and a great perspective to take on life.

We drove out to Zion National Park from Atlanta. I always love driving out and seeing the landscape change little by little. We took the high route on the way out passing through Kansas City and on through Colorado. We've begun to memorize certain exits for food stops. As vegetarians, we have a few favorites. One of mine is BD's mongolian grill in Independence, MO just outside of Kansas City. (It's a kind of do it yourself stir fry.) It's a chain and I hope it will spread, but so far this is the only one that I've been to. Unfortunately we didn't get to stop there this time because it was only 10 in the morning, but I was tempted to make it an early lunch:)

We drove into Sprindgdale, UT(Zion Park) in the early evening and there was a full moon as we entered the Canyon. The full moon cast it's bluish light across the canyon. The Sandstone walls of the Canyon reflected the light and cast shadows creating other wordly effects.

The concert was outdoors at the Dixie Tanner Amphitheatre and was a beautiful backdrop. We were happy to see our friend Brian Hall. We met Brian last year at Apple Farm, NJ near Philly. It was a residency and Brian took us to all of the schools where we played for kids in schools from rural NJ to inner city Philadelphia schools . Anyway, it was nice to have a familiar sound tech for the show and after a few snafu's we got it all going. It was a great experience for us to play out doors with the cliffs in the background.

Here are some other pics from the park. I'll open a flickr account soon, but for now I'll post a few here.

-Jon

After our gig at the City Stages festival in Birmingham, we woke up early and loaded up the van and headed out. We were going to Charlotte, six hours to see Jean Luc. Jean Luc Ponty that is.. Each of us had known about Jean Luc Ponty, the great jazz violinist before, but a few months ago Jenn rented a DVD from netflix call "The Rite of Strings". The DVD features Jean Luc Ponty, Al Di Meola (guitar) and Stanley Clarke (bass). The music is a fantastic blend of jazz with classical and world elements. It is both intoxicating and addictive.. We probably watched the video fifty times before we sent it back to Netflix. (Then we bought a copy of our own.) We had been watching Jean Luc's tour schedule for several months and were excited to see the Charlotte date added on a few weeks before his tour. The date was in a small club called the Jazz Cafe. I called as soon as tickets were on sale and we were able to get seats in a front table right in front of the stage!! I don't think either of us had been this stoked to see a concert in years.

As we walked up to the venue we saw Jean Luc and some of the other band members outside the tour bus signing autographs and talking with some fans. Jenn was able to chat with Jean Luc a bit and get his autograph on a music book. We headed in to get set for the show. The band put in a fantastic set. It was a bit surreal being this close to such legendary violinist. All of the musicians were fantastic..bass, keys drums and percussion. The music wove together seamlessly and seemed to be effortless. The set ended with a drum & percussion solo. After that the band performed an encore with, "New Country", one of Jean Luc's hits and one of our favorite tracks!! Wow! What a great evening and one we won't soon forget.

We just got back from a great run of gigs. We started last week with a return trip to Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square PA, just outside Philly. We played two shows the crowds were great and the sound was fantastic. (Thank you sound engineers!) We have some video of the concert, and I'll post some more of that soon.



Last weekend we played at the Riverbend Festival in Chattanooga. We were really psyched about getting the chance to do this gig. I must say though that we were a bit nervous right before the set. We were playing between two bands and were nervous about how the crowd might react to our music in this environment. Well, it couldn't have gone better. The audience was so enthusiastic it just revved us up even more. Dr. Arivn Scott played percussion with us and it was a ton of fun. Thank you Chattanooga!! We look forward to coming back.

We finished our run with a concert in Spruce Pine, NC. Deep in the mountains, of western NC, spruce pine is a small quaint town. Our concert was a fundraiser for the Carolina Theatre.

We had a great time at WSU in Pullman. The staff was so courteous and professional, and the crowd was awesome!! (Thanks guys!) We also had fun in Hermiston but unfortunately had to work through a technical problem with the sound system before the show. Luckily we got everything straightened out in time. We are now back home in GA trying to play catch up. This usually involves sorting through mail and trying to figure out what stinks in the refrigerator!! :)

Jon and I are in flew out to Washington State today for some concerts here at Washington State University and in Oregon.
The weather was suprisingly mild (especially compared to the last tour up in -12 below MN and Midwest!) and I enjoyed the sunshine on all the rolling snow covered hills on the drive from the Spokane airport to Pullman. Besides the rolling hills and sunshine, one thing I always enjoy finding when we travel out West, is this very unique beer called "Fat Tire' New Belguim Brewing. I've never found it in our home town, and today in the corner market I picked up a new brew called "1554 Enlightened Black Ale" an it's brewed w/ real chocolate and caramel in addition to the malt. They say it's from named after the oldest dated reference to the recipe for the dark brew. Wow! Back to the year 1554. I imagine plenty of scholars, artists, musicians (well lots of different people) have been inspired by it before me! Don't they say that Beethoven's favorite meal was Mac'&Cheese w/ Dark Beer. Hmm...might be mine too w/ this beer.
I'd like more folks to enjoy this great beer and maybe help me bring it to the South! Check out the website for New Belgium Brewing in Fort Collins, CO:

http://www.newbelgium.com/index.php



Maybe if I help the company get it's beers popular in the South, I can get a free T-Shirt from them!
Cheers!
Jenn

Somehwere along an Iowa road, the LoNg-Shortbus finally landed:

ATL to Minneapolis to start the tour. The weather has been COLD. This is easily the coldest day to day weather we've ever experienced. Temps have been as low as -15. Here are some pics: