Well, I am sorry that there haven’t been a lot of posts recently – and it’s not because we’ve been home and there’s nothing happening. I guess a lot of what’s happening though, it isn’t really Journal stuff. Whether it’s the private romantic adventures of Valentine’s Day or the more intense struggles going on around me, it’s stuff for my friends and family, and not really something I want to share on a big public forum.
At the moment, Heather and I are hanging out in the DC Metropolitan area, bouncing between my parents’ house and Rowan’s place and College Perk. We’ve been working on new promotionals, the new studio album, booking for the spring and summer… all sorts of stuff on the ilyAIMY front, and then the rest of our Lives is being hungrily devoured by the aforementioned friends and family. I Love it. I’m exhausted, but it almost feels like a vacation, just to be able to see certain people…
The mysterious box – we passed this on the Beltway and we have no idea what could’ve been in it. We fear it may have been a mysterious Ark. Or something.
Monday night was Valentine’s Day… Tuesday morning we got up (late) and slowly made our way over to Rowan’s place to have a band meeting.
Now, with previous incarnations, there seemed to be many band meetings – every practice turned into vast discussion, but Heather and I are ALWAYS talking business, and I think we’re so focused on what the two of us want and plan and desire that we often forget that we should really be including Rowan and Sharif in the process. Monday night we corrected that. There was a lot of “what do you want” and “how do you feel”… budgeting and scheduling and idea-flinging. All of it was really positive, and most of it was exactly what I thought, it’s just that I wanted everything said outloud.
Basically, yup, we all want to be rockstars. Something like that.
We started working out our ideas for the new studio album, started working out the tracklist and the physical way that we’re going to pull it all off. Heather and I sometimes forget how hard it can be to integrate people’s work and school schedules into things – for us it’s pretty much “are we booked? Nope? Ok.”
It was a good meeting, though we never got around to playing any music, I think we were all kind of relieved just to sort of hang out and bounce ideas off of one another.
So – can we raise the funds to do a studio album? And past that, can we find the time to do it this spring? I’m hopeful but a little bit frightened. We’ll see how things work out. We try our hardest, and then try a little bit harder, and then we look around to see where we’ve gotten.
Yesterday just seemed a ball of endless stress, endless lateness, endless falling behind. I bought a Breedlove from Rowan at the House of Musical Traditions… normally purchasing a guitar is a process of falling in Love and finding the money – but this was much more a matter of me having fallen in Love with a type of guitar (Breedlove dreadnoughts) and then trying to make a decision from the creatures available on the rack. It was a pretty arduous process which actually culminated in Rowan blindfolding me and handing guitars to me and having me play them.
Using that process I’ve ended up purchasing a gorgeous rosewood Breedlove AD25 which we then took to play out at Steve Key’s Stella’s singer/songwriter showcase in Alexandria, VA. There I was so rattled by its sound that we quite failed to make a very impressive showing of ourselves.
At this point, I could include some angst about music world politics and about some of the things that are REALLY exhausting me right now, but… I can’t, because that wouldn’t be… “wise”. Politically. Yeah – this is the side of my profession that I really despise.
And yet, was that different in any job I’ve held? At the Science Centre there were still people you couldn’t screw with, and working as a teacher there certainly was a Way The World Worked…. at Glovia there were internal politics that I was thankfully shielded from by the twin angels of Jerry and distance. (yeah, definately the first time Jerry’s every been referred to as an angel, as I’m sure he’d agree)… I even managed to piss off people at Borders by being too outspoken – to the point that rather than allow my CD to get up on the “Local Artists” racks, the manager suddenly decided that his was the one store that wasn’t going to carry such a section.
Power and the abuse thereof. People speaking and people not being able to take criticism. Yeah, I’m probably included in that.
Ok – I’m done bitching – and in case there’s ANY confusion on this, go see my Musicians Resource Page on Corky’s – I just don’t want anyone ELSE to get offended by my non-specificity since I’m just tired of it. I’m writing too much as it is, which is the danger of having this delightful little precipice. I through myself headfirst of the ledge of my Journal all the time.
So – we’re going to get out of here and go play the Austin Grill (thank you Steve Key for handing that one to us). Let’s go bury ourselves in our trade.
Heather’s taken on my parents’ house. Well… the Living room. She Loves projects and is having a ball sorting and moving and shifting stuff. The record so far is a piece of paper from 1989.
So, I’m folding Myxomatosis Took Its Toll (the booklet sort of neccessitates that we make it by hand) and Heather’s sorting and the cats are Loving the new places discovered/uncovered and we’re both watching old Disney movies. My Dad comes in and out as he’s been sleeping poorly and totally fails to be enthralled by either the Jungle Book OR Beauty and the Beast.
Sigh – anywho, it’s 3.04am and I’m sleepy. We played the Austin Grill tonight and it was the first time I think ANY singer/songwriter has actually caught the attention of any sizable portion of that room. It’s good to be recognized by the bartender and to see that the staff are glad to have us back. A guy came out to see us after having caught us on a local access cable show and so by drips and drabs we slowly work our way up in the world. Free food ALWAYS makes me feel like we’re up and coming.
Sleep now.
