It’s been friggin’ forever.  If you missed me, I’m sorry.  If you didn’t - WHY NOT!?!?!? : )

First, my band has finally finished their album.  You can listen to some sweet new tracks at our MySpace page.  You can check out the fine artwork (by our good friend and former band member, Josh Hardy) on Facebook.  The album “drops”, as they say, on November 21st.  If you’re in the southeast you should come to our totally awesome release concert at New Brookland.  If you’re not, you should pick up a copy (or seventeen) as a Christmas gift for a music lover you know.  The details for how to buy it will be available on the MySpace page on the the 21st.

Movies. I’ve watched a healthy group of films since the last time I wrote.  Here are the best:

Slither - A hilarious horror film.  An SAT example could be Slither is to Monster Movies what Shaun of the Dead is to Zombie Movies.  Completely entertaining and worth your time.

Twin Daggers - If you like terrible martial arts films as much as I do the you will love this.  I haven’t laughed out loud this much at a film, not to mention when I was by myself, in a long time.  Available at your local Redbox.

Music.  For those of you with an email that ends in .edu you should check out Ruckus.  It’s great if you spend a healthy amount of time at a computer and you like new music, two categories I happen to fall into.

TV on the Radio - Radiohead meets Prince and probably a ton of other bands.  So much variety it’s hard to describe.  But it’s good.  Very good.
Amanda Palmer - Her solo album was produced by Ben Folds and she has an amazing story posted on her website … and the music is pretty good too : )

Fleet Foxes - Spiritual successors to the Beach Boys.  Lots of harmonies and reverb but no cheesy copy-cat songs.

Other. 

My sister-in-law’s blog is totally awesome.  Which means I get in on the ground floor when she starts her own brand one day …. HA! : )

Derek Sivers sold CD Baby and made a mint.  He’s taking that money and using it to help independant musicians become more successful.  He might look a little funny but he is totally admirable and has some great advice.

And one day soon I will post the final beard pictures : )  The wife ended up liking it so much that I kept it scraggily for a good while after.

This past week we passed a great benchmark in the beard timeline - the half-way mark. It’s hard to believe (I say this to you who don’t think about it every day like I do) that it’s already been almost 4 weeks (tomorrow). But it has. I do have one small confession to make: I shaved a little off the mustache. Some unruly facial hair was driving me absolutely crazy and since the lip hair (really corners-of-the-mouth hair) isn’t essential to a glorious beard I buzzed it for my own sanity.

In non-beard news, we will be laying down the vocals for the album in the coming week. We’ve finally finished about 99% of the editing (for the instruments at least) and started on the mixing. It’s shaping up to be one great sounding album. I can’t wait for everyone to hear it. We’re also coming close to having a release date and album title. I will keep you informed on both of those bits of information as well.

Here are your long awaited beard pics. Since my beard photo creativity has plummeted (some might say “never existed”) feel free to send me some ideas. Keep in mind that I have to take the pictures with the camera on my MacBook so exotic location shots are fairly out of the question : )

Day 19

Knoxville smile

Day 20

Forgot to take the picture while I was actually awake smile

Day 21

Forgot again smile

Day 22

Getting too lazy to take a different picture smile

Day 24

Pretty in lavender smile

Day 25

My headphones are way bigger than yours smile

I love to read blogs and keep up to date on certain topics (tech, music, film, etc).  I also love sharing information that I find with my friends, hence a signification portion of the motivation behind this blog.  The school year always manages to throttle the life out of my blogging and steals some opportunities to share really great stories with all of you.

So in the interest of continuing to feed you the things I find and love I am going to start using the “share” button, located on so many blogs, to bring you the info through facebook.  As of yet I haven’t found a button that will let me post links directly to this blog … but one day.

This is not the death of the blog but rather a kind of “blog vacation” for the school year.  If you don’t have a facebook account: get off your high horse and sign-up.  We’re not impressed with your digital abstinence.

There are many, many things that I wish I had time to write about.  Unfortunately, these days it seems that I only have time to drop a nugget and run off.  So here you go.

Radiohead has released the stems (mixes of specific instruments or groups of instruments in a song) to the song “Nude” from their recent album, “In Rainbows”, exclusively on iTunes.  With this kind of release, not surprisingly, is a remix competition.  The submissions can be viewed at radioheadremix.com.  I know it’s Radiohead but, having some experience remixing, I’m surprised that there have already been 212 submissions considering the stems were released yesterday.  Do people really have that much free time on their hands?  I’ve only listened to the most popular and, while it is interesting, I’m not that impressed.  Hopefully the Radiohead cult can crank out something more creative and gripping.

Also, there’s going to be a GarageBand file released on the 11th.  The site isn’t too clear on what exactly is going to be in the file but if you download all the stems you’ll get an access code on 4/11.  Curious …

Well, the crazyness of the tour is over … for now.  There were so many good memories along the way that it’s hard to do a thorough recap of everything that happened.  I’ll start with the last few shows and work way backwards.

Charlotte was amazing, thanks to the overwhelming support of our friends.  It seemed like everyone we knew in Charlotte came to support us including Chris, Meg, Alan, Brent, Heather, Justin, Jonathan, my Mom, Jillian, Erin, Joseph, Jason, Katie, and Wes.  It was kind of like an Anderson Reunion of sorts.  It was great to catch up with everybody and play in a new venue.  Our opening group, Alex Radus, also showed out some great talent with their soft jazz stylings.  What a sexy voice that man has.

Our next stop was the Preservation Pub in Knoxville on Friday.  We had some loyal supporters come out for that show as well (Rhonda, Sarah, Matt, and Stephanie) which made it worth while.  It was another new venue but we really loved it.  The sound was fantastic (thanks, Darrell!) and the people were pretty attentive and responsive considering most of them were there to socialize, drink, or eat.  Because of a small misunderstanding we ended up playing our longest set (two sets, rather) of the whole tour but something about the impromptu nature of it inspired everyone in the band to put on an awesome show.  We had improvised solos at the end of songs, different versions/lyrics to a few songs, and an all around “rocking” time.  Also, Dustin Hammond opened up for us and had one of the coolest and unique song stylings that included mouth trumpet solos and yodeling.  Plus he has an awesome beard that puts all other beards to shame.  Rock on Dustin.

The last show of the tour was at the Go Bar in Athens with our friends from Union.  Though we didn’t have the same numbers that we did at other shows we still had a great time and got our first chance to rock out under a disco ball.  It was a fun way to close out the tour.  We also got a chance to all ride in one car because Union let us rock out on their equipment.  It was the first time we had ever ridden together for a show and inspired us to try to commit to getting a trailer of huge van so we can do it more often.

A short recap of my favorite non-music moments: playing some sweet xbox 360 (courtesy of Jamie and the Rameys), crossing 100,000 miles in the trusty Malibu, our extended rap sessions, pranking Sam while he was on the phone, the video tour diaries, becoming “The Fire Tonight”, bringing down the maturity level every time we entered a room, the hospitality of everyone we stayed with (Russes, Martin’s, Cox’s, and Havey’s), watching drunk people, and many more.

Some of my favorite performance moments: pulling off a Radiohead cover set, rocking out for the first time to “Fast Song”, playing to our biggest crowd of fans yet at McGee’s, playing for our friends in Charlotte, getting people to turn around every time we played “Pay the Waitress”, playing in a foil covered room, and everything else.

While I should probably save it for another post, we did brief sandwich tour as well covering Subway, Firehouse, Publix, Main St Deli, and a few others.  For vegetarian fare Subway was actually my favorite.  Feel free to comment with your favorite sandwich experiences.

The tour was a great experience and, I think, taught us a lot about ourselves and our band.  While it wasn’t always fun and games we did have a fantastic time and are committed to making some awesome rock music together.  We look forward to seeing everyone in the near future at one of our upcoming shows.  Also, I have attempted to tag everyone that I remembered coming to a show in this note so if I left you out please tag yourself!

I don’t understand why people doubt the validity of horoscopes.  They’re obviously true.  Here’s mine from the Murfreesboro Pulse for September.

As far as love goes, you feel more serious.  Uranus has you sketched out about work.  Everyone seems to be prodding and poking you in all the wrong ways, by try your best to remain collected and nicely tell everyone to back up off your sh*t or else you’ll get crazy on them.  Make sure your wants and needs match the stamina you are willing to provide.  Ambition only takes you so far; stamina is what leads you through.

Obviously, this was written by some dirty-minded little middle schoolers.  But it’s still funny … and true.  My anus has me sketched all the time, man.