once again, i somehow managed to let a second consecutive summer pass without seeing a single red sox game, either on television or at fenway. this is kind of a big deal for a native bostonian who actually went to one game of the '86 series. no, not that game.

but, the good news is a huge amount of great projects kept me really busy.

i left off last time with a little teaser about a project, which, as everyone has probably surmised by now, was the new rustic overtones record. rustic is a pretty important band for me, personally. my band played with them when we were in college, around the release of "my dirt." i did the pre-production for their major label release in 1999, and shortly after, when i moved to brooklyn, i would go to just about every show to cure my homesickness. i've been fortunate enough to work with just about all of the guys in their other projects since the initial demise of rustic, so it was an honor they asked me to produce their first new material in almost a decade.

we did a few brand new songs, and a few songs from the back catalog that we felt were worthy of another swing, and along with a few unreleased tracks from the arista / tommy boy sessions, we had ourselves a record.

needless to say, its been a great success and the guys have been absolutely killing all summer, selling out just about every showw they've done, and selling a whole bunch of copies of the little record we did.

Lost Conscience, a metal band from the Brunswick area, came in and laid down some pretty scorching... well... metal. not sure when they're releasing it, but it was some pretty heavy duty stuff.

my old friends lansdowne came back for their new five song ep, "burn this for your friends." when we fist recorded together, about a year and a half ago, the band was really new, and were retrofitting jon ricci's solo songs to their instrumentation, but months on the road and collaboration have turned them into a bona fide band. and the proof is in the pudding: smartpunk.com is charting their release at 16, a day after its release.

dead season, who are still selling a ton of records at bull moose, almost a year after their first full length release, came in to start tracking stuff for their next release, and i believe they snuck a single to WTOS...

my old friend adam flaherty came in with his new project, the sea captains. hard to pin down, but reckless pop abandon wouldn't be inaccurate. we did three songs, but my favorite may have been the song they tracked on their own, "you were wrong," which is the crazy, almost ragtime collage... you'll have to check it out. chuck from dominic and the lucid played drums, and corey from sidecar radio played bass.

i'm jsut winding down the mixes of the new seekonk record now (in fact, jason and dave are on their way over for what may be an eleventh-hour overdub). its gorgeous, as usual. the guys from seekonk are also doing well with their other venture, freakshow fx, a line of boutique guitar pedals. jeff tweedy of wilco has been using them... i'm psyched to get my hands on some soon, too (hint, hint...)

i suppose its fair to publicly announce that i'll be moving my operations effective january 1... darren and i are setting up shop around the corner from where we are now... try as we did to land in downtown portland, the real estate gods didn't smile on us, and it would have been just too dang expensive to build out, so we're renovating a barn as i write this... hopefully i'll have pictures and progress reports as this progresses!

i've already got some great stuff lined up for the new joint, including new releases from joshua madore, pete kilpatrick, and the holy boys.

over and out!