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12 Apr: Atlanta

12 April – Dogwood Festival (Atlanta, GA)

It was a great day, really. I haven’t played the Dogwood Festival since I was in Radiant City, which would be… 1997, I think? That seems right. The weather was great, we loaded the van and made the long, long drive to Piedmont Park. Well, really it’s only about 20 minutes away, but we hit traffic at the exit ramp and it took another 30 minutes or more to cover the last 2 miles. Somehow I managed to squeeze the behemoth into the parking area and we loaded the gear into the golf carts for the trek to the stage. We were in a tent which I hadn’t expected. I think it was actually a little warmer in the tent than it was outside but it wasn’t a big deal.

It turned out Sugarland, the band that played after us, had canceled, so they were extending everyone’s sets. We went on a little later and added some songs we hadn’t really been prepared to play to the set. Still, they all came off well, I thought. Plus, the crowd stayed after the announcement that Sugarland wasn’t appearing, and continued to stay after we started playing. There were also a lot of people I recognized there, local musicians I know plus friends, fans, and even the family members who had tried to make it to the Cleveland show. Rob Gal magically appeared in the front row near the end of the set and I pulled him up to play on “Hitchcock Blonde,” which I thought went well. After the set I went over to the merch tent and talked with some people, which I am really trying to do every time. My very own part-time stalker gave me a mix CD, which I mention so that any other potential stalkers will know how far they’re lagging behind. Then it was back on the golf carts to the van.

It was nice to do a van trip that didn’t last a week.

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the side project, day 2

Day two and things are still going well on the mystery side project. Another skeleton of a song came together with relatively not much effort. We talked about the direction and how we were going to go about this and decided to keep coming up with these skeletons each visit, working on some lyrical ideas, and then once all the songs exist in some form getting them down as rough demos. At that point we’ll flesh out the lyrics and figure out how we’ll go about recording them and who we might have in to play on them. He also floated the idea that if things keep moving so well maybe we would do an entire album rather than just the EP.

It’s a very different process from how I usually write and I’m glad… It’d be nice to change my habits and be able to write more frequently.

Still, however, no band name.

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rehearsing and recording

Last night I rehearsed with Chain Poets, an Atlanta band I’ve known for a while. We’ve talked off and on about doing something together but plans always seem to fall through. I have gotten up on stage a couple of times with them; once on the spur of the moment to do the middle part on “Creep,” the other time a planned cameo to do “Telephone Line” and “No Matter What.”

This time we’re working up a particularly ambitious little number and it was surprising just how well it started to come together in the first rehearsal. I get to use my vocoder pedal again; I’ve only ever used it live once and that was years ago. I also will be attempting my first guitar solo ever. Seriously.

Just like every time we get together we talked about doing an entire night of ELO covers somewhere… I don’t know that it will ever happen but at this rehearsal we ended up running through about five different ELO songs just off the cuff. Just rehearsing the song (on my birthday, no less) was fun, whatever else happens.

That same night after rehearsal I went by Eddie’s Attic to record a song. The owner had a death in the family and the club had decided to shut the music room down for a night and asked a bunch of musicians to come by and record a song live for a compilation CD for him. I couldn’t think of anything of mine that is particularly uplifting, so I went and did “Don’t Dream It’s Over.” I think it went well. it only took a couple of tries (because I forgot the lyrics the first time, but it turned out the soundman wasn’t getting the sound he wanted anyway, so it worked out). I should get a copy of it and will post it if I do.