What a great weekend!  Friday I got to meet up with one of my best friends from growing up in Memphis, and we stayed up 'til about 4am, catching up on old stories and everything that's happened in the 8 & 1/2 years since we've seen each other.  Saturday I went out to Yazoo Brewery and The Dynamites' show at Mercy Lounge, after which I got to briefly hang with my old friend Charles "Wigg" Walker.  Sunday I was back in the studio.  Ok, now I need a break to recover .

Last night we met up at The Colemine to do some more vocalizing on the remaining tracks.  We started off with "The Optimist" and "To the Son-of-a-Bitch Who Stole My Car Stereo", two new songs we've only just started playing out.  Success!  I'm pretty pleased with everything we came up with, including Larry's wonderous bass harmonies on the breakdown section of "Otpimist" .  Next up, we took a bunch of passes on "Damn 19" - we've been playing this song live for about 2 years now, and we had an interesting revelation last night in the studio: the key's too damn low.  I hate having these sorts of revelations; well, actually I like the revelation, but the timing stinks.  Why couldn't we have decided this when we were originally tracking it?  Why couldn't I have realized this at some point over the past 2 years when we were performing it?  Why couldn't I have realized this when I wrote the damn thing?!?  Regardless, we made the decision to retrack the tune in a different key.  I'm going to play around a bit and see what's still comfortable on the resonator yet more "up" in my range.  So it kinda feels like one step forward, two steps back, but overall I think it'll be an important change.  Damn.

I came home around 12:15am, thinking I'd mess around with "Damn 19" a bit and play with doing it in G - damn the neighbors, right?  Right.  Upon turning the lights on in the kitchen, I found that the light cover had fallen down and was hanging by one side.  Hmm.  Oh, that's why - there's water everywhere that obviously leaked through the fixture.  Sweet.  Oh, and there it is, extending into the living room and coming through the ceiling fan.  Great.  Somehow the upstairs apartment had managed to start a leak that covered my kitchen, living room, and both bathrooms.  Fortunately nothing truly important was damaged - some bills floated away, but who needs them anyway, right?  So I walked around, finding new puddles and soaked carpet for a while before finally deciding it was time to start drinking.  Beer?  Check.  Now about that key change... 

Needless to say, I'm a bit frazzled still this morning (frazzled - is that a word?  It is today.), but I'm feeling like we did make a bit of progress even though we'll have to retrack "Damn 19".  The drum track is super solid, so we'll just redo everything else from there.  What the hell?  At least this way I won't be capo-ed at the 5th fret and lose half of the range of the guitar.   

j

Southern Funk 'n' Roll for all mankind...