Practicing on Tuesday Night I noticed and awful buzz on my steel string guitar. It was worst on the G string. From about the fourth fret to the seventh an awful twang had developed. I had noticed it getting worse, but it had really gotten bad over the last week. Sounded a bit like my guitar was morphing into a strange ethnic instrument with a buzzing drone. I tried a few solutions myself on Tuesday night to no avail, so a called Bob Altman to see about an emergency repair session. Luckily, Bob had time on Wednesday so we stopped by on our way out of town.

Bob noticed right away that the the neck had moved a bit and we tried to locate the source of the buzz. It was hard to pin down sometimes seeming to come from the neck and sometimes under the bridge. After some trial an error and removing some electronics from the guitar it became apparent that it was in fact the neck. Some fret work was in order A full re-fretting and planing of the neck would have been the best, but that would have taken a couple of days. Instead, Bob found the offending section and filed the frets there. After a few shots at it and about three hours later, the problem started to clear up.

Bob has also been building a new guitar for me and I got to see some of the progress. I am really excited about the new one. It will be a parlor size, with a classical width neck, same as the current model. The neck will be slightly thinner and the headstock will be shaped a little different too. The last guitar that he built for my friend, Mason, turned out great. Probably his best yet. Can't wait to hear the mine once it's finished.

Tonight we're playing in Black Mountain, NC near Asheville. After lunch and a warm up we'll hit the road.

A spring dusting blew in yesterday. Nothing stuck to the ground, but it was a sight to see. Plants are flowering and leaves are out on some of the trees. The contrast was stark. Gray snow clouds, with bits of sun, and blue sky poking through. Snow flurries dusting over new buds. A battle between the old and the new. The inevitable victor and loser already written.

Anyway, I spent the rest of the day checking files from our mixes and downloading them to files. I'll burn a CD and send them of to Nashville today. We'll be recording and mixing next week after a few more gigs. I am very excited about recording at Hilltop and trying a new workflow.

We just finished watching the movie "Once", which was recommended by our friend Daniel earlier in the week. It's got a quirky homemade quality, which helps to convey the subtext, which is that the best music is about honesty. A human connection.

I saw a bumper sticker the other day. It said "Don't Delay Joy". I think it's true, but easier said than done. Something to aspire to, today. It's easier to say I'll be happy when I get this, or when I move there etc.. One thing I took from the movie is that even though the characters were ambitious, they were satisified in just knowing each other, and the joy at creating music...and being together. Enjoy today:)

I leave you with a deep thought from Pink Floyd and a clip from the movie:


“Long you live and high you'll fly and smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry and all you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be.”

Carnivore? Herbivore? Professor Piggy takes a look.

The buds are starting to pop. Bradford pear tree's are in full bloom. They are the first to go around here and they let out a pungent aroma as the pollen takes flight. Today we headed into ATL and Jenn had her bow rehaired at Stephanie Voss's violin shop. We killed some time at Borders and Whole foods while we waited for the job to be done. Nice to get out of the house first thing for a change.

Now I am waiting for some files to transfer to my Mac tower and then we'll transfer some condensed files for mixing. John Nicholson at Hilltop studios will be mixing these. The process was so much easier on the "lift" album having John do the mix. Also, having another perspective can be helpful. I mixed our first two albums and it was a nice shift working with John on the last one. We'll also be recording tracks for our next album at John's studio. I am looking forward to a change of pace and handing over some of the engineering responsibilities.

We'll make some of these recordings available in our next quarterly download. We also have some downloads available now at our page on ReverbNation. Mailing list subscribers have access to the exclusive tracks.

We've been catching up on our netflix queue in the last week or so and have lucked out with some great movie pics. Here some of our favorites. The titles link to Netflix.

Battlestar Galactica - We don't have cable or watch much TV so we never caught this series on SciFi. A great series. The writing and acting is great. It also has a lot of interesting analogies and abstractions as they relate to our current society. Here's a clip with Dr. Gaius Baltar, as he's being tortured and questioned by the Ceylons (Lucy Lawless). The Ceylons were created by man and the relationship is interesting in that they seek destroy mankind and at the same time seem to have a deep desire to be loved and accepted by man.



The New World - A new interpretation of the story of the first settlers to the New World and the story of John Smith and Pocohontas. The story unfolds slowly, but like Battlestar Galactica makes some thoughtful analogies to our current society and the paradigms that we currently live with.



No Country for Old Men - Another Cohen Brothers classic set in west Texas. Here's a scene from the movie. Interesting that they didn't use any score that I remember. Most of the tension of the scenes are built by using the natural sounds of the scene, in some cases they seem to be amplified (boot steps, wind etc..).

The Music Biz continues to change daily. The latest talk are of Apple offering unlimited free downloads bundled with the purchase price of an ipod. If true, that's a major paradigm shift by the biggest player in the digital music business. Nobody but Apple seems to be pleased with this, so far. Will music eventually be free? How will this affect the recording industry? How will it affect the concert business?

Read the latest at : Hypebot

Bob Lefsetz offers a possible model here: The Epic Pass

I came across this quote on myspace a little earlier.

"It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness."

Apparently, this one became widely know after Adelai Stevenson, used it in an address in his praise of the work of Eleanor Roosevelt. It also had root from Chinese proverbs. Here are some other Chinese proverbs. Food for thought:

“Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand.”

“Be not afraid of going slowly; be only afraid of standing still.”

“Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up.”

“He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever”

“A wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows public opinion”

“To know the road ahead, ask those coming back”

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it...

Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate....

Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out hate; only Love can do that.

Dr. Martin Luther King

It's easy to think your right. Until you realize it's all a crap shoot. Hope is such fragile thing, something we all try to constantly renew. Once one path dwindles, we're off looking for the next best thing. I suppose being "burnt out" is when you feel you've traveled all of those paths in pursuit of your goal and begin to lose hope that a new path will take you anywhere different. We all need a little success along the road to renew our hope, to strengthen our faith in what we are doing.

In my late twenties and early thirties I began to question my own values and faith in the world. However, nothing shook my faith more than being "witnessed" to by someone from another religion. I didn't see that one coming. Sure they had some good arguments based on their holy book, but none of it felt like the truth. It never added up. And when posed with questions based on fairly basic logic. The answer always seemed to come back to, "just because...the book says so." Wow, this sounded a lot like what I had heard my whole life regarding my own faith! After this encounter the spotlight was of course turned on my own beliefs, which also crumbled under the same scrutiny. Being raised to believe a certain thing wasn't good enough anymore. Anyway, Truth and the essence of spirit isn't ultimately about religion or dogma, and I think most people feel that on some level or another.

And "What is truth?" Maybe that's a more important question. I laugh as I write that that because I remember the same question being posed to me by a former music agent. Of all people. Everyone likes to think that they are right. Christians, Muslims, Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Democrats, Republicans, Conservatives, Progressives, Peace lovers, War Mongers, me, you...you name it. Hell, there are even dogmatic Buddhists!! Anyway, inspite of all the answers offered out there, the world can still be so whacked, this constant struggle for money, greed and power and everyone seems to be locked in the race from the ruling class to the plebes.

The older I get though the more I realize that music...my music anyway...can't be controlled by these values (for better or worse). It's not mine to control. It never has been. For me that's a truth, I have faith in it's power and it offers me a bit of hope somehow. A pure connection to something bigger. It's something I constantly need to seek in my own musical practice and prayer, just to try to feel normal. In many ways, that's also what the beauty of Montana represented for me when I first visited many years ago. The sheer grandeur and beauty transcended anything that could be controlled or manipulated. The land and the place itself was a truth, without need for explanation or defense. I think that this type of truth will always be the essence of inspiration.

I leave you with a quote from one of my favorite musicians:

“You can’t make your music good. You can’t try to be good. You can try to be present and you can try to remain open so what is going to speak to you can speak through you.” - Michael Hedges

We've just posted a download of "Canyon Breeze" on our ReverbNation page. This is an early recording that we made while it was still in the demo stages. I like the feel of this mix though. The full download is only available to list members, so if you are not on our mailing list yet, we hope you'll consider joining. Our next download will be our version of Another Brick in the Wall by Pink Floyd. We'll be recording the new version in Nashville in April. We'll release a new download to list members each quarter.

Canyon Breeze Download

Canyon Breeze is the last one in the playlist.

Saturday took us to the Douglas Theatre in Macon. This was our first time playing in Macon. The Douglas is just a block or two from the Georgia music hall of Fame. Macon is really steeped in a rich music history. Lots of acts had beginnings in and around Macon from the Allman Brothers and Little Richard as well as the early days of Capricorn Records. We opened for Missy Raines and the new hip. Missy is a great bass player and a well established name in bluegrass circles. She has put together a great young band out of Nashville. The crowd was more than receptive to our music and was a great introduction to the area. We're looking forward to playing in Macon again. Glenn, the sound man, did a first class job and it was a great switch from the technical stresses from the night before. Afterwards, we headed over to Joe Cullison's for pizza and beer, which was fun, but we forgot about the time change so we didn't get to bed until really, really late... Here are some pics from the theatre.

You don't normally expect cold weather in South Georgia, but on Friday and Saturday the cold weather really blew in. On Friday, we played for the Savannah Folk Society and stayed on with Hank the promoter at his beautiful home on Tybee Island. The crowd was very receptive and although we had some problems with our sound gear, we were able to get things up and running to start the show on time. It always causes a little extra stress though, when you have to deal with technical issues leading up to a show. The gain on our in ear monitors was overloaded too. Although there is a limiter which keeps the volume to an acceptable level the overload caused a lot of distortion, which I wasn't able to fix immediately with the outboard volume controls. I took out the ear buds and everything sounded clean in the house, but in my in ear monitors it sounded a bit like an avant garde Ozzy Osbourne concert. Savannah was gearing up for the St. Patrick's festivities and the town was buzzing. Here are some pics from Tybee Island and Savannah.

Try your hand at the 'cello challenge game' at the Berlin Philharmonic website. Good Luck!!

CLICK HERE

My sister asked me once " Doesn't your agent help you promote your career?" Well, yes and no. Booking agents primarily book gigs, and that's about it. The manager, which is really the quarterback of the team, helps to create overall demand. In short, they take care of the day in day out tasks, that really facilitate the artists vision and help to bring the music to the people that want to hear it. Jenn and I have worked with some good booking agents, but the day to day managing tasks are things that we have split up between us, to this point. In many ways I think that has been a good thing (to this point), there's no better way to learn the music business. It's non-linear and ever changing and although there are books on the subject, you'd better read fast, because they are likely to be outdated soon.

If you are curious about the music business check out this video of Bruce Allen, he talks about learning the business and his early days with Bachman Turner Overdrive; up to his present day work with Michael Buble, Martina McBride and others. It's interesting to note that in his opinion the main ingredient for a good manager is to be passionate about what they are doing. If your interested in the music biz at all, it's pretty entertaining as well as educational.

Today we looked at some more houses in Athens. Michael Littleton at Athenstown Properties showed us a few more possibilities. We've been thinking about moving back there for some time. We narrowed our choices down to about three. We also saw Michael Stipe downtown. He had a crew of cameras in tow. Maybe filming something for VH1?

Were usually in and out quick. Too fast to get your bearings or soak in much. It was nice to change the pace this week. Three days in Florence, Alabama for a music residency and concert at the end of the week to help raise funds for the school orchestra program. Daniel Jamison, conducts the orchestra and teaches guitar at Florence Middle. He also plays cello AND guitar! I was impressed the passion and commitment he brings to his work and that community is certainly lucky to have such a dedicated teacher.

We also had a good time teaching and performing for the students, but I think what struck me was just being around the students. It's easy to forget what it was like in middle school and high school (and for a lot of us it's probably something we want to forget! :) Something we hear over and over that sounds a bit trite is "Children/ Youth are the future". I thought about that a lot this week and some of the different things that means. What future will they build, based on our ideals. What reality are we creating now? I suppose, that (adults) don't know or really give it that much thought. We mostly accept that "this is the way it is. There is nothing I can do to change the world". In working with the students this week, I realized they haven't reached that place yet, their eyes are filled with hope, innocence, excitement about their future and their place in it. Sometimes it's the things that go unsaid that are the most inspiring.

Here are some pics from the week.