I have this new tune tentatively titled The Dog Seed Shuffle (don't ask) that I have about 90 percent in the bag now and I'm really happy with how it's coming along. It just came from out of nowhere and once the thing got out of the starting gate from my head to the strings, the song started writing itself.

It's incredibly Kottke-inspired, one of those happy bouncy things I picture him playing with his eyes shut and feet bouncing all over the place like he does when he's gettin' his groove on. There's no better moment to catch him in than when he's doing that - it's so fun to watch him disappear into his playing like that. The past few years I've gone to see him he's stood up in lieu of using a chair (for ergonomic reasons, I think I remember him saying) and I sort of miss his bouncy chair feet, but Leo is Leo and Hell, I'd watch him play even if he were lying down behind a curtain!

So anyways, back to the writer's block thing: I know exactly how the beginning and end will go, however come to a dead halt about halfway through the middle and it's driving me nuts. It goes from happy and bouncy into a slow waltz type of groove and then the train tracks stop there. Probably because I'm trying too hard to force it out - I have that "new song" high and want to play it over and over, but then every time I get to that middle part, poof. No dice. ACK!

When I'm in the process of writing a song, I listen to it in my head nonstop when I'm in the car, at work, in bed, until it's complete. This can go on for days and sometimes weeks at a time (the worst one was a song I just finished that I started writing 8 years ago.. now there's some writer's block for you!) I'm sure the missing link in this new one will come to me, and usually when that happens it's at a time where I have no guitar around to try it out on. I have a real problem writing my ideas down when this happens because although I was trained and raised to read music, I don't like to mix that with the music I write as that tends to suck the life out of it. I like to pay more attention to the shapes my fingers make on the fingerboard and let my ears and heart guide me than worry about what chord I'm playing or wasting time scribbling lines and dots on paper trying to make it look pretty. Not to mention almost everything I do acoustically is in non-standard tuning, which can make transcribing a real bitch.

So.. yeah. I don't even know why I'm here typing this. Just venting, I reckon. Hopefully I'll have this song done for my Dunn Bros. show and be able to belt it out as my first song of the night just to get it out of my system.