Well, some of you may already know.  Starting around February of this year, I have decided to put my "band" aside to pursue a project which I have much more confidence in foreseeing a finished product with.  Yes, I have decided to pursue a solo project which will I hope will conclude my anthology of the best of Downhill Supercruiser and include some new material as well.

Unfortunately, sometimes money really does expose peoples priorities and the band collective decision to purchase recording equipment did just that.  Near the end of last year, the remaining three of us decided that we would split cost in purchase our own recording equipment.  Having looked into our purchasing options, I was able to figure out that we didn't need to buy on credit and everyone was pretty much in agreement to just go ahead and buy it now.  Thinking we were all wanting to get things going quickly and ready to put in the money immediately, I didn't hesitate to invest a good portion of my own money that I didn't really have (thank goodness for credit cards) thinking that the rest of the guys would be able to give me their share (which at the time was less than $100) before I would have to shell out my bank account to the credit company.  Well, that's not what happened.  Basically, the credit card statement came in and, fortunately, I had some unexpected income turn up that allowed to pay everything off myself.  So, THREE months go by and only one person actually remembered about offering to pay their share without me even mentioning it, but by that time I was pretty P.O.ed about the situation.  Unfortunately, the situation finally nailed the truth of the dynamics of Downhill Supercruiser, and I had finally gotten fed up with it.  Basically, from the very beginning it has always been about my time, my efforts, and my money that would be the source of progress for this band.  It was never a collective effort.  Of all the gigs we've ever played, practically all of them were set up by me.  All the merchandise, the CDs, the stickers, the shirts, the web site hosting and design, domain name registration and maintainance, promotion, and motivation were practically coming from me and everyone else pretty much just rode along.  I think I have made myself very clear several times that I was tired of having people riding on my efforts to acomplish their "careers".  I finally said enough.  If I'm going to put any effort in this, it should be to pursue my career, not someone else's.  I know that sounds selfish, but I finally decided that I need to think about what it is that I want to accomplish in my life and start going for it and quit waiting for everyone else.  So, I decided to just own the stuff that I bought and forget about expecting the rest of the guys to chip in.

Another confirmation I got was just recording the scratch tracks for what was suppose to be the band's demo.  I layed down not only my drums, but also the guitars and bass tracks.  After really thinking about it I finally concluded that these were not "scratch" tracks and there is no reason why they should be re-recorded.

Yeah, sometimes you get to the point where you're tired of wasting time and you just want to be able to finally say that you've completed something.  So that is my goal.  I don't know how long this is going to take me, but I am sure that I will happy to finally say it's done, here's a CD.

At this point, I don't really care to be in a "my own" band.  I'm busy with gigs with Mushpot and Justin Francis and recently my friend just asked me to play drums for a musical theater gig at Fullerton High School.  And I'm getting a chance to just practice the drums on my own and start building up my library of rhythm.  I'm also working on recording music for my wedding and that's taking up a good portion of my time as well.

So, in the meantime, I'll be posting drafts and progress of stuff and hopefully in the next year, I will have an official release of a Downhill Supercruiser full length CD.

Thanks for the support.