Here in Auburn, there are blue lights flashing through the closed blinds yet again. Seems to be getting harder to pass a night without a visit from the APD light show starring Auburn's finest and some poor sap just trying to get home...
I'm surrounded by boxes and all sorts of loosely stacked items. The basement is near empty, except for the cables that I brilliantly laid under the carpet and within the walls.
The studio computer, and a couple un-racked pieces of rack gear, sit in bare-bones form upstairs in the "spare" bedroom. (I like to think of it like a "spare" tire- I'll be glad it's there if anything ever happens to the real bedroom..) A semi-functional recording studio, but not exactly convenient.
The Corps of Engineers has pre-emptively stated that they may have been crying wolf a bit on that whole The-dam's-gonna-wash-out-and-flood-the-valley thing. There's been a revision on the estimation of possibility for catastrophic flooding.
All the same, I think I'll keep my gear boxed and ready, you know, just in case.
I had thought I was entering a dry spell composition-wise, but the ol' bug bit me again a little bit ago. I guess it felt that the sifting process for the next record needed a little disruption. And to convolude things further, I've been dictating and singing into the old Sony cassette recorder in lieu of its larger, digital cousin that's sleeping in the spare bedroom.
This is all part of a grand scheme that I am unaware of, to put all my ideas on different media, in as many different places as possible. When completed, the project will resemble either a snuggly warm flannel patchwork quilt, or perhaps a salad containing roast beef, lard and donuts. I'm actually cool with either way.
Synapses in the ol' melon are being tested and it will surely be remarkable to bring her home in one piece...

But regardless of all this, Silverhands is rolling on. I've not been playing in Seattle much at all since returning from Iowa this August. I've found myself a bit out of the loop, but probably considerably healthier (physically, at least) for being a bit of a homebody. This reclusive spell has been mostly by design, and with enough time to ponder and focus, a guy can find a lot of other things to do (namely, the full-time job of keeping a thirty year-old vehicle rolling under its own power) but eventually fall hard back into the guitar again. I was teetering once again on the brink of abandoning all things six-stringed and fronting Silverhands from behind the Rickenbacker bass, but I think I need right now to venture into another bout of one-man-show before the repressed Silverhands bass player (me) shows up and sits me down and tells me how it's gonna be. (that would be with drums. and amplifiers)
That'll be a glorious day when it comes, but it's a gonna hafta wait.
I've become quite smitten with a solidbody that Leo built a few years back. Country melodies are tumbling out, I've stepped out the land of waltz for a bit, and even started toying with a polka. I better give Dallas a call.
The Kay is patient with me. She knows the second fiddle slot will be only temporary, as it always is. When the time is right, I'll tune up Chicago's finest laminate archtop and tie a magnet to her, and we'll pick up where we left off.

now, where were we?

Really, a fella goes home for a month and a half, reunites with his best chums from way back, plays an all-night show at an iconic country music venue, and then has nothing to say about it? Seriously, it is September the fourteenth for Christ's sake.
The month of July was the coldest and rainiest ever recorded in Dubuque county (that's one county to the north) It didn't hamper our gathering and playing though- we spent many a night out on the back porch at Grace's amongst the evening's recently expired tobacco butts and countless brown bottles who had been freed of their burdens of ale. With myself keeping (setting) the pace on my Powers or 'mills, and all of us picking at the scraps of pork gristle or cold sauerkraut left in the pan.
When faced with a month and a half in familiar territory, you can easily forget that your time is limited. Often times things could, and were, left in a fluid state, rather than cleaned up and made presentable to fit within the preconceived notion of the song.
-And then right in the middle of it all, we tore it all down and trucked out to the Mooney Hollow Barn and I got to play all night with all my friends. Leon Kilburg was the only man to call to open the show. He was the voice of the barn's house band back when I was knee high. BJ played the drums of course, only this time I got to play the bass. My uncle John stepped up and played the old familiar country tunes on his trusty Fender pedal steel, and Steve filled in the tasty licks on the Strat.
After the shit-kicking was over, Esmé pulled out the Martin and Steve did the same while Dan tickled the ivory-colored plastic. It was the only set of the evening that I wasn't on stage for and that's ok, because I can honestly say that a few of my current favorite songs fell out of Esmé's pen, and I'd rather just listen to 'em. (even though she didn't play one of them...)
The out-of-townies (Starlings) let me and BJ mess with their set. You really had to be there to appreciate how easily this drummer found the groove and made me able to slip back into these tunes that I hadn't played bass on for a few months. Nevermind the fact that he'd never once played them before that moment himself. We even had Steve up at the end of the set to jazz up "workin' on a building" -it was lovely, unrehearsed madness.
Then Silverhands played. I picked up the guitar and I made those guys play for an hour and a half. We had John back up on steel for some requisite ET, and Dan was at the keys for the last few tunes of the set. There is no more fun to be had than playing with the likes of these folks. BJ was a rock (a rock that swings real hard) and Esmé was a locomotive. The rhythm was the kind of thing that I can't describe to them, but they always achieve nonetheless. Steve was, as usual, a lessonbook of unexpected melodic explosions, and an explosion of expected perspiration in a six foot circle all around him. The hot licks don't just slide out of that guitar, you gotta bust your ass like you are baling hay in August to coax out the expressive interjections like Steve can.
After the show (when they'd run out of Schmidt and a move to Hamm's was required) we all gradually slipped out and home and I was quite pleased.
Next day, Joy and Tom hit the road a couple times for back west to Polk, and I put my brain back to the task at hand- hitting upon the crest of the hill we'd been on with these tunes. Our first week rehearsing had brought some fabulous new ideas for swing and accent, as well as melodic intros and interludes. At the gig at Saints Rest in Grinnell, I heard Steve playing the tunes at a new, different level. I was thrilled. It was the best delivery of the new tunes that we'd had yet. Three days later at the Mooney Hollow, I could hear where things were heading.
I think great records are sometimes a matter of simple logistics. Things coming together in the right place and time and being able to immortalize a theme without beating it into the ground. Our situation at the time had us peeking over the brink of the songs -how they inevitably were going to sound if we gave them the liberty, while at the same time realizing that the time we had left was simply not going to allow it.
I am often prone to changing horses (several times) in midstream. And I don't even like horses.
We still hung out most every night. We filled every digit on my hard drive with sweet takes that I love dearly, but I was left wrestling the question of which take, which flavor, was the final album track going to be built off of. Because you can only put out one "album" of a particular set of songs. Sometimes when a record has a long enough life for people to be interested in those sorts of things, re-issues appear with alternate takes on them. But until then, only the band knows what cool things could have been done but were forsaken for some reason or another.
So the Caravan made a last gasp trip back west with all the gear and gave up the ghost a few weeks later. What was left of her life was paid out by the ton, and she sits in a row of similar bodystyles and era right now...
I was in love with the possibilities that I had in the can this summer. Still quite optimistic while I was setting the studio back up down here in Auburn. Right now I have an album's worth of recordings that make me grin ear to ear when I hear 'em, yet seem to suffer from an extreme case of inaccessibility. I can make records solely for my own enjoyment all day long (I do) (sometimes I make up to five copies) but that's not the point of making albums with Silverhands. The point is, I wasn't really ready to leave the place we were as a band, geographically, or mentally. Hitting the west coast without them and knowing I still have a lot of work to do was a king-size monkey-wrench in the emotional flow of happy record making.
Well friends, it ain't always a party. The business of making a name for one's self often makes for keeping the happy face on during times of distress and tedium. I was simply not able muster up the spin to describe where I was with the album project, and the band in general. Luckily I was busy enough playing bass for friends to keep me feeling fulfilled as a working musician. The hard questions sit in front of me now- I can keep things on hold until I get back to Iowa and we can pick up where we left off, I could start things over and make a much more stark record, and I could bite the bullet and play my own bass out here and put together a band...

For the time being I'm gonna go with leaving the location on my profile set to Teeds Grove, Iowa, and playing a solo show tomorrow night in Seattle. We'll see where that leads me.

No shit,
Mike.

I had purposefully made no concrete plans for yesterday & today, due to the potential for evidence of the need for more practice showing itself at our gig Wednesday night out at Saints Rest in Grinnell.
But I gave the band a couple nights off.
Now I ain't saying we were anything like what you'd ever call "polished", (if that was my goal, I'd be playing with a different band...) but on Wednesday night, we pulled out everything we had and played it interestingly enough, and lively enough, to make for what I think was a damn good show. Before playing I was concerned due to the fact that we'd not played some of these tunes on stage in over a year, and most not ever. I could go on, but I don't want to continue to keep being incessantly and constantly redundant and repeat myself in every blog I post...
We all felt good about our show and we wore out all my dubbed cassette copies of all The Band's records on the three hour drive back east. We dropped Esmé off in Walcott, where we had met her, at the "World's largest Truckstop" -where the only souvenir I picked up was an RC cola for the last smelly hour of BJ, Mike & Steve bonding time.

All the gear sits in a large pile on the dining room floor right now, waiting to be hauled out again tomorrow night. Or probably in the morning. I hope to do a live recording of tomorrow night's show at the Mooney Hollow, so set-up could easily take all day.

This is all that I have to say right now about the state of things. I felt the need to tap out something, probably due to the idle hands of anticipation, but actually have a bit of work to do still. Most of it is in my head.

If you are in the area tonight, tune in to Denny Garcia's Midwest Music Makers show on 97.3 up in Dubuque. You can hear us holler through a few tunes in a tiny radio booth with no headphones or monitors. I'm sure it will have its own unique charm.

see you tomorrow.

Well we got about five tunes in the can, instrumentally anyway. I'm sure there'll be plenty of deliberation and re-deliberation on how they will be treated vocally. The rest we put the brakes on so we could practice up our live show, the first of which will occur today.
As we worked through the tunes playing live, I was pretty happy with the way they started sort of changing, and I think it was a good idea to wait on recording the ones that we waited on, as they all seemed to mutate a little from where they were, and for the most part I like where they ended up even better.
The band has been super-accessible, coming up here around four nights a week, which is appreciated and admirable -especially for a working man like BJ who is putting in another forty hours on top of it all, and Esmé, who drags her Pontiac all the way up from Rock Island. So we decided to give our ears (and our livers) a break yesterday. With the time off, I suddenly realized that I'd been here a month and hadn't yet gone fishing.

I called up my Dad and we got the boat in the water and ran it out on the slough where he and Faron and I sat until we had a dozen fat catfish. Faron never put a pole in the water but I believe this is mainly because he didn't want to have to help clean the catch. It had been a while since I myself had put a blade to a fish, but I got it done. It was a good day.

Today we take the show on the road, and then come right back, but on the road no less. I'll see if I can fit all the gear we've been using in the back of an old Dodge Caravan, which is the transportation of the moment for the band. I still can't believe how accomodating they were last year when I asked them all to climb into to a Datsun pick-up for trips to Minneapolis, Des Moines and all over hell. I am pleased to be able to offer them a considerably more comfortable ride out to Grinnell this afternoon. I am looking forward to that thing that happens when a band first plays some new tunes out in front of people. The old house is a wonderful audience for our practice sessions, but sometimes tunes don't ever really get their edge until they leave the comforts of home.

So, two live performances, that'll be it for us this summer. If you want to see us, you best get your ass out tonight at Saints Rest in Grinnell, or Saturday at the Mooney Hollow... I don't yet know what'll happen with the two days in between, but I've got a lot of family to see yet. Then Saturday should be busy from about the time the sun comes up. There are many questions to be answered yet, such as- am I really going to try to carry a Wurlitzer up the stairs of the barn? and- will I be able to get a steel player on board? and- will I remember how to play the bass?...

I just got word that a couple of 'birds just touched the ground out towards the other end of the state. I've been looking forward to their arrival, I would play bass for the Starlings anytime, anywhere, but to play with them in an old barn in Jackson County is something I would not miss out on for anything. I hope a few things happen this weekend that are not planned.

So, in the meantime, it'll be one more cup of coffee and I'll go...

See you at the shows.
-Mike

I've been working on some bits & pieces, overdubs and vocals, preliminary mixes, and things of that sort, along with all the other things that have to continue to occur in order to continue existing. This weekend will feature a (hopefully) far-reaching McDermott (and Clark) family reunion just around the corner from Andover at my cousin Lee's house. I hope to see some folks I ain't seen in a bit, and do some documenting of the tales that aren't as well known as they should be.
After that, it'll be wide-open Silverhandsing until the end of July.
We headed on up to Dubuque yesterday, all four of us, to tape a bit for Denny Garcia's Midwest Music Makers radio show at the studios of KGRR 97.3. I was optimistic about the amount of gear we could fit in the smaller-than-I-remember studio room...
The city of Dubuque has the street in front of the studios completely torn asunder, so I confidently put the loaded van in a diagonal, convenient, and quite illegal position back behind the building. BJ opted to just play his snare to save on floor space, and we tucked the amps for the bass and the Strat under the desk. We were quite cozy indeed.
The same old pair of SM7s were all that was needed to pick up the band, one was positioned somewhat near my face, and the other roughly toward the amps, while we whipped out four of the tunes that'll grace the next Silverhands album. Then it was a bit of interview with Denny, and some general catching up, and we were off. The big difference between this show and most others is the way it is assembled- while I'm not usually a particularly lively interview subject, when doing live-to-broadcast performances you always leave the studio with an impression of how you presented yourself. Not always a satisfying one, but nothing is left to wonder about. On a taped show like we did yesterday, one must put all his faith in the show's producer to showcase the intelligent things that were said, and perhaps edit out the rambling nonsense and inside jokes. The segment will air on this weekend's show (or perhaps next) and we'll see how cool we sound...
What was great about when it was over was that our van hadn't been towed away from the "space" that I had sort of forgotten that I'd left it in, and we could head down to Murph's for a quick round. Pam was cool enough to let us hang some promo for our Mooney Hollow gig in her bar. Murph's, obviously being a Catholic bar, stocks only Jameson's for an Irish whiskey. We've been leaning more toward Bushmills back at the house, (which Steve has a tendency to shorten to 'mills, -as in "they got any 'mills?"- which is of course better than the alternative, but still always hilarious to me) however I did just fine with a Jameson's and the fellas with a Harp.

But meanwhile, back here at the house as I mentioned, I've been doing the little odds and ends that I can do by myself, and some things that are stretching what I can do by myself.
I've become quite fond of one of the empty upstairs bedrooms for its natural reverb and overall cooness and decided to take a couple vocals up in there, which involved running much cable and headphone extension and the like just to make it possible, to say nothing of trying to set a decent level while being nowhere near the mic preamp. Being one's own tape-op in a situation such as this requires a lot of trial and error just to get youself in a position where you are recording a signal with a usable level, to say nothing of sound quality, or quality of performance. When I was satisfied with all my settings and headphone level, I would then have to hit record on the computer downstairs, leaving myself plenty of lead-in time so I could leisurely saunter up the stairs and resist the urge to take multiple steps at a time, or otherwise run up them, as I discovered the first few takes I sang sounded a bit winded in the first few lines of the tune. The room is wonderful and unique and totally worth the fuss of not just singing in the living room/control room. The old house opens up a lot of possibilities that I don't have down in my little pine box in Auburn, and aside from out here being where the band lives, that is one the main reasons I decided to move the recording of this album to Eastern Iowa.
It is still feeling good to be here, though Faron cares less for the huge booming thunderstorms that shook the house this morning. I'm looking forward to seeing some old friends next week, and tonight I may see what's shaking at the Thresher grounds in Miles, you never know who you might run into, so it may be a good place to be.

Mike.

I'm sitting at the dining room table, with the drums and amps sitting behind me for an afternoon rehearsal with the band. I've finally struck all the recording mics on the drumset, pretty damn content with the basic tracks we've gotten for eleven new tunes. There'll still be a couple more that we'll need to record with a slightly different configuration, but for the time being, we need to see if we can play some tunes in a live show type setting, and a reduction of cables across the floor was looking to be a good idea.
I've got a few minutes before the band gets here, and I figured that I might have the time for doing them the favor of taking a shower, or I could see what I have to say on the blog. So this is the thanks they get...
I really can't say enough about the way they've been playing the new tunes and some of the takes we've gotten down. I seriously can't wait to get this album done. I'm almost irritated by the fact that we have to take time that could be spent recording and use it up for a rehearsal. Everything starts to sound different once it's been rehearsed.
But rehearse we must. Our first public peformance this summer will be on Denny Garcia's Midwest Music Makers radio show on 97.3 KGRR up in Dubuque. Thanks to Steve up at the station, we'll be cramming into the radio booth and filling the greater Dubuque area airwaves this weekend, and as of right now, we've yet to really get to work on any kind of harmonies and vocals and such for the whole band. So we've got some work to do.
I'm pretty sure we'll have a good time though, it's not like we're pitching hay. Work that allows you to have a drink of beer every three and a half minutes is not what you'd call hard labor. -I picked up some Monty Python's Holy 'ail this morning, I haven't sampled it yet but I have no qualms about giving money to people who produce a quality product, even if that product is not necessarily their beer...-
Speaking of beer, I was up at BJ's place on the evening of Saturday last for the event of Leon Kilburg stepping behind a microphone. Making the event all the more eventful was the arrival of my Uncle John McDermott. And he brought his gear. To warm up, BJ called out the tune and we set to jamming on the 'Dead's "Me & my Uncle" (oh, the irony) with John whipping out the steel. He made claims of being rusty, but we heard nothing of the sort.
I hadn't played with John for quite some time, and I probably wasn't yet an uncle myself the last time I saw his old pedal steel. It was great to hear and a blast for a couple McDermotts to play "Walkin' the Floor" with the Kilburgs and Haferbiers. With John And Leon both bieng alumni of the original Mooney Hollow scene, they were both familiar with a few tunes that were new to me, and probably even had Steve searching the nooks and crannies of his grey matter for a recollection of. So all in all, it was yet another learning experience for me in the basement floor of the Kilburg house.
Just like most nights, those few people with sense in their heads headed on home for some sleep at a reasonable hour, while the rest of us continued to put our tired throats and fingers to work. Three things in particular that struck me in the Sunday morning portion of Saturday night were: when Esme picked up the Martin and sang a bunch of her tunes, I got to play bass for her. I'll be the bass player in her band anytime. Then when BJ, Esme, Dan and Jesse backed me up on some of the new Silverhands stuff, it was all loosey-goosey and fabulous. I caught myself in the rare, but more recently common occurence of smiling while singing- not as "part of the show", and not just because I was having fun, but -much like my last Seattle show with Sam & Julian- because I simply couldn't help it. I wanted to put in about fifty solo breaks so we could keep coming back to the chorus again and again... And then later, when I was sitting near the big fire out front, Jesse picked up my guitar and played it through the PA for a half hour or so. I'd never heard my guitar in such capable finger-picking hands before and enjoyed being a spectator to its lovely tones.
Then I slept for roughly three and a half hours and got up to see my brother Eddie off on his voyage back to Seattle. It was good to have all my brothers back in the same place for a couple weeks, and good to be able to prove that I alone have supreme dominance over them all on the Go-Kart track. At least until next time.
As for me right now, I feel sort of like a scuba diver that just came up for a new tank of air. I'm really in my own world out here, and feeling quite a bit of distance from all things West-coast. I'll be seeing a few friends from back that way before the end of next week, but in the meantime, I need to catch up on some phone calls and hear some voices that I miss. We're closing in on the halfway point of the allotted time of this stay on the County Line road, so from this point out, I'll probably be in between "really finding my place out here" and "missing the shit out of my friends". I caught myself referring to King County as "back home" on several occasions. I am a man of two worlds....

Until a later date,
Mike.

It seemed like a longer, more tedious drive than most before to get to the river- which I'll attribute to my failing eyesight and fog and herds of deer. But here we are, with all components intact and the deer population unchanged.
The day was Saturday when the Mississippi was first sighted, around 5 pm. My first call was to BJ Kilburg to see what was shakin' on this Jackson County Saturday night. As luck would have it, he was to be playing down at the Mooney Hollow barn that very night, so my evening plans were made.
I gave Esmé a call and she swung up from Rock Island with Dan to haul me up to the barn. Faron chose to stay at my Dad's place to unwind from the long road.
I walked in and talked to Kevin, the owner, and ordered a glass of their best whiskey (Crown Royal). The band started up and by the second tune the folks were out two-steppin' and a bar employee was sprinkling talcum on the floor. It was just what I needed to see. After a bit, Steve & Carol showed up, then BJ's wife Shawn. Just when I was thinking I had seen everyone I could expect to see, Leon Kilburg himself showed up and took the stage for three songs.
At this point I looked at a clock and realized it was not yet 11. It was a pretty good first six hours home, to say the least.
Since that night, I've put the studio back together at Grace Parsons' old house outside of Teeds Grove. We've got some drums set up, and some cables run. This is where we're gonna live and work until the end of July, with a couple special occasions in the meantime.

Until there's news,
-Mike

I don't.

Hitting the airport tomorrow morning bright & early for the rendezvous with Michael, Greg, Ben & Kimo down in the city where I first met the '75 Rickenbacker 4000. I've most surely taken the long road there. In every way.

I miss many people, and I will soon be missing a few more. For a few weeks anyway. Looking forward to sleep and regular breathing.

Geez.
-Mike.

It was a busy week that it was. But in between the rehearsals and sideman-ing, a couple of Silverhands appearances popped up in the last week. The first being up at Conor Byrne once again, for the big show on Willie Nelson's birthday, I got to bust out the old Guild and tune her way down, then whip out a few of my all time favorite Willie tunes. All the cool people were there of course, and the evening progressed as you would have expected the present cast of characters to play it. In hindsight, the nap I took on Friday afternoon which ended around 8 on Saturday morning seems to make a lot of sense, and shouldn't have surprised me a bit.
Then Saturday was the real big show. Silverhands at the Tractor Tavern in nearly full-band form, opening for the Cash'd Out show. Julian was with me once again, playing the leads on Les Paul & dobro, and we also had Sam Jansons rocking a tiny drumset. It was hands-down the most fun I've had playing a Silverhands show out here on the coast. We played an eleven song set (containing only two songs from the debut album, and a whole lot of new stuff) with lots of energy (fast).
I felt like Joey Ramone with an acoustic guitar. At this show, the frontman had the easiest job and probably had the most fun. With Sam keeping the steady rolling rhythms going, I was at liberty to let the guitar ring, hang, or drop right out. All the things that you can't do while you're playing the bass, and I took every opportunity to appreciate this fabulous luxury. It keeps me looking forward to getting back into the groove with the band back home.
My voice also held out just long enough to last through our set. So now with no live singing obligations for the next two months, I don't have to spend so much time worrying and pampering my throat the way I've been having to. I can get a little dehydrated or have a cup of coffee without fearing the consequences. I'm gonna start mainlining espresso directly into my vocal chords with the biggest damn needle I can find...
Well, anyway, after we played, we sliced our way through the packed house and caught Cash'd Out from the bar side/merch table. These guys have got their show seriously together and the tone of Kevin's Tele is monolithic. They are the coolest guys, and I've got to thank them for the opportunity to play in front of a sold-out Saturday night crowd.

Sunday I put down the Silverhands mantle for a bit and pondered the preceding evening as the last show in support of the Silverhands debut album. When I hit the stage with this again, we'll be on a different page.
I began my next month of mercenary work by going out to see my own two mercenaries playing in some of their other projects. First, Sam was playing in Fremont, impressively blasting out the rock. Watching Sam Jansons in rock-mode is a joy that everyone needs to see. Like a clock, that is kicking your ass.
It seems that you can never actually catch two shows in different parts of town on the same night, but on this particular night Sam's show started so early that there was even time to get some sushi before heading down Ballard Ave to catch Julian playing the ol' Les Paul standing at the back of the stage. It was quite good timing, and good times. Then home. I won't be bugging those guys to rehearse any Silverhands for a while, but of course, as soon as I have nothing in the near future to practice or prepare for, I find myself picking up the guitar more eagerly and often than usual. I suppose that's the way it goes.
I'll still be busy the next few weeks as the bassist for Michael Vermillion, playing and preparing for a week-long tour down the coast -which I may or may not keep you posted of. It depends a lot on if anything remarkable (or repeatable) happens while we're on the road.
I'll keep you posted on developments toward the voyage home as it approaches.

-Mike

I am obviously itchin' to get rolling in earnest with the new recordings. It is quite unlike me to be exposing songs, or versions of songs which I consider to be "unfinished" to the light of day, but here it is... I present a "demo version" of Too late for leaving. I use the term demo only for lack of a better word, because I don't believe this will be the final recording of this particular tune. It is bound to take a much jauntier path before it is committed to disc.
This version was worked up and demo-ed out mid-summer of last year. I must give many thanks to the one and only Karalee Phelps for much assistance in helping this particular concept come to be, as well as a few others. And while I still love the song in this incarnation, its existence in this form is something I may not attempt to duplicate. First, because ain't nobody sings like Karalee. Just try, I dare you. And second, because I had multiple paths in my head for this song to go down from the beginning, and I'll likely not spend a lot of time re-pursuing it when I've already pulled off a reasonable performance of this version.
So in a way, I'm putting out an early version of a song that you may hear later, and in another way I'm laying to rest an idea that may have seen its zenith with this take. We'll just have to see.
Either way, I hope you enjoy. If you do, perhaps I'll dig up some more rough tracks that I can allow myself to show to the world.

Mike.