weekend off- what a concept

well, sort of. this weekend has been pretty full. tonight we're playing at uncommon ground and yesterday we practised (the singing was easier and better than i expected- we both have monster colds right now and sound like shit) and went to see dianogah play at the empty bottle. it was really good. we managed to fit in a generous amount of loafing time still and watched two discs of 'big love' episodes. we also got a drum part recorded and finished another track. i think that puts the running total at about six maybe over the 24 tracks. hopefully we can get some more work done next weekend.
it's been so nice to have a few days off- i don't know if i'm ready to go back to the hectic craziness again. the coffeeshop has to reopen eventually. i guess tonight i'll try and go to bed early and just call the coffeeshop at 6:30am and then there we go. it'd be nice to get ahold of my first paycheck there too so i can get all debted up again. woohoo!
i bought a new distortion pedal the other night and ordered more microphone stands. once i get those things i will be able to finally record a song that i've had planned for ages- the vocals have been finished for it for about a year ironically (the vocals are usually done after the initial tracks are laid down, but since it has a loop i'd done a really good instrumental version of it at stefanie's parents' house back in august of 2005- we used that to record the vocals) and as soon as i get the distortion pedal i can record the whole thing pretty quickly and then splice the vocals in and bang zoom- new track! this song is called 'plainstorm' and was written back right before we left portland and the lyrics were written while we were driving back to kansas city. when we got up to leave twin falls as we were driving through wyoming we saw a storm really far away. once we were driving through denver we saw the storm a little closer and we couldn't figure out if we were following it or it was headed towards us or what. once we crossed over into kansas and realised we had to drive the rest of the way through the morning we could see lightning bolts, but we still hadn't caught up with it yet. i had stefanie take a bunch of pictures of it with the open shutter speed on the camera. the pictures turned out super weird. i'd tell stefanie to push the button, count in my head and then tell her when to release the button. some of the exposures were as long as a minute. eventually we caught up with the storm after we drove through some dense fog that it left behind for several hours. during this time stopping to go to the bathroom became a problem- none of the gas stations were open. at one gas station we decided to just pee behind the building and as we were peeing we got attacked by a massive swarm of junebugs that we hadn't been able to see until it was too late. i think i was finding dead junebugs in the van for months after that. next i had to pee in a field as the sun was coming up through the fog in atchison (i think- maybe it was abilene- a bit foggy now). this is when we took these pictures that will make up the 'down to sleep' artwork-
looky
looky looky
it was a pretty surreal way to end an already supremely strange trip. who's excited to do it again?
sadly, we do have to make such a trip again- we're going to go on tour to get to my dad's 60th birthday celebration in california in september. we didn't really want to fly as getting out to the location (it's in seadrift, which is about 20 minutes drive west of san francisco) would be quite a production. we'd also been discussing the possibility of driving up to portland to play some shows and visit since i haven't been back to visit since we moved. there are some things i'd like to do and i'd like to enjoy hanging out there and not having to worry about anything there- it'll be more fun and leave me with a better aftertaste for the place. we could probably play at the artistery and i wanted to try and play on the 'what's this called?' show as jim (the guy who does the show) is so awesome and plays nearly everything i send him. we also discovered that if we drive up to seattle we will be able to drive home faster than we could from portland. this path would take us through spokane so we could stop off and stay with sarah for a bit- who never gets any visitors because spokane is even more isolated than seattle or portland. yipes. factor all of this in and the fact that we could probably get a show in l.a. and play there again as we probably won't get another chance for another three years.
my desire is to get a string of college dates to get us down to l.a. and pay for the tour since we'll have to rent a car for the entire trip. college dates are a bit demeaning i've heard, but they also pay really well. since there's not really anything between here and l.a. going down that way then i figured we should at least play some shows on the way that will pay well as pretty much anything else we'd book would be demeaning anyway. i should get the logistics started.