Screaming Mimes Blog

We've been lucky in this band to be in Cincinnati, surrounded by such talented friends who make us better. A little over 10 years ago I was trying to re-enter the music world after a long self-imposed "strike" from bands and performing (and an unwelcome drought in writing) and one of the first shows I went to featured Katie Reider. I was dumbstruck and spellbound by her talent. Her writing, singing & general stage presence seemed unlike anything I had ever witnessed in this town. I purchased whatever albums I could that night and was truly inspired to new levels of my own creativity.

I met her a few months later I saw her after another show and told her just that. She seemed taken aback by my rabid fandom but was gracious. After a few more run-ins (I still remember the night, climbing down from a stage as she was getting up, she complimented my on my Rickenbacker - joy!) we finally had the chance to spend some time together when a show of hers was rained out. I took her band on a tour of the facility they were going to play and we all bemoaned the fact that the weather hadn't participated. I wanted to engage her in conversation again about what a talented songwriter she is, how emotional her voice is, how her songs continue to inspire... but thankfully we kept the conversation to the friendly and mundane. A few days later she sent a signed 8x10 of her and the band - I think she knew how hard I was restraining myself to not embarrass her.

Over a year ago I first read that Katie had disbanded the band and moved to New York... only to be diagnosed with a mysterious tumor. At first I imagined that we'd go through a period a shaven Katie, perhaps some sad months where she recovered, but then she'd be up and about and taking over the music world and I'd see her on Austin City Limits or hear her on a hit movie soundtrack and think "I knew her when"... but this isn't the way it happened. Katie is fighting for her life. This tumor has taken away her left eye, her physical strength, several of her teeth, and now it has robbed her voice. A year of chemo and therapy has led to small victories and heartbreaking changes... but through everything Katie has kept blogging and letting her fans know that she is determined to live through this. I quote from her blog:

Here we go. I have since undergone 2 chemo treatments since my last blog. Each of them required at 4 day stay at the hospital. Needless to say, I am eager to get home. I am very tired but seem to be handling the second round better than the first. The reason we went ahead with round two was because my MRI scan showed the chemo was shrinking the tumor! YAHOO. The news that came shortly after that was that I have now lost vision in my left eye. They are pretty certain it is permanent. This was hard at first to accept, but I am okay and will love looking at life one eye if that is all I have! I just want to live. SO, shrink that tumor, and lose eyes site in one eye.. worth the trade off.

Why share all this with you? Because Katie's fans have launched a website to help raise money for these increasingly expensive treatments, but it won't succeed without the help of everyone. www.500kin365.org is offering a 9 song download for $1.00. The goal is to spread this donation offer around to enough people to make a serious positive impact on Katie's expenses. And you get a return give of incredible music.

Please pass this information on to as many people as you can. Fans of music, fans of life... everyone you know... anyone who might have a dollar to spare for 9 songs and a beautiful soul.

I hope and pray that a year from now we're all celebrating the good news of Katie's vibrant health... and remembering this period as a time when we knew her when.

http://www.500kin365.org


Dave

PS: As an added bonus, shoot me an email at dave@screamingmimes.com after you've donated and I'll email you my favorite "Katie-inspired" song demo from way back when...

Wow, long time no blog. Trust me, I'll keep the ruminations about laundry to a minimum.

Think your Mimes have been hibernating? We make the greatest CD ever, release a ton of concert videos, create a penetrating and perplexing "Behind the Mask" video, and that's it? We just abandon you? Well, sorta...

We've been busy busy busy holed up in our downtown luxury rehearsal suite working up songs for our next album - and we're pretty pumped up about it. Seven are in the hopper... if you came to our Tragedy Comic CD Release show you heard two of them... they are funky, fresh, and phat. We're using some new textures & rhythms and getting into some areas that we've never explored before, which is really thrilling. We don't know what form the next album will take, but we know it's going to be another notch in the Screaming Mimes growth chart (hmmm, that gives me a good merchandising idea!).

If you'd like to hear a few of the new tunes and sing along with some of your favorites, we've got a few shows this summer that you need to keep bookmarked.

On Saturday, July 19th we'll once again sweat upon the stage at Great American Ball Park before the Reds versus Mets game. Join us as soon as the gates open at 5:10 PM and eat some good ballpark food, then stick around for the game afterwards. Tickets start as low as $7, you can order online at http://www.reds.com.

On Thursday, August 28th we'll play in West Chester, Ohio as part of their summer concert series. We'll play a special 2 hour show starting at 6:00, so bring your friends and family and join us for a great time in the outdoors in a beautiful park. Directions & more details are coming to West Chester's website.

There may be another show or two to tell you about once the details are ironed out... in the meantime we'll continue fleshing out the new material so you'll get a sneak preview of our latest greatest at these upcoming shows. Thanks for listening/reading/and watching...

Dave
Screaming Mimes

Today I pondered the significance of the laundry hamper.

As I unloaded and separated it's densely packed cotton and blended contents, I realized that I was excavating a significant record of my families activities over the past few days. There's the shirt my son wore to school on Wednesday with the hole in it that I keep telling him not to wear. There's my daughter's socks that she got grass stained as she learned to ride a bike. There's the "intimidating" schools my wife and I wore to that meeting that the school. There's my damn itchy socks that ruined my Thursday.

As I touched and sorted each piece of clothing ('round here we have a great system of sorting the main hamper into 4 sub-hampers - darks, reds, whites, lights. I can't believe it took me 20 years of doing laundry before I started using this system... I can't take credit though, the missus figured it out) memories of the week began flooding back in reverse order. Each dig into the fabric stratum revealed the goings on of the days before. Some sad, some happy... but it led to a peaceful rumination about the period and a chance to say goodbye to some of the less savory moments.

Soon they'll all be washed, dried, folded and placed back in the top of the drawer. The significance of the week's events will have been lost as their order is scrambled (and it my case the odor is removed). They'll never truly be the same again (damn pilling!) but for the most part the stresses of their use will have been cleansed and they will wait until they are once again called upon to shield us from the elements and prying eyes of civilized society.

Thus endeth the sermon on laundry.

I just hope I remember to get rid of those damn itchy socks this time.


Dave

SHOCKING VIDEO RELEASED!

SCREAMING MIMES EXPOSED!

TRIPLE X (size shirts) HOT HOT ACTION!!!

Okay, have I got your attention?

If you missed Screaming Mimes CD Release Concert on January 18th at The Historic Southgate House and you've been losing sleep (or even if you were there and you want to confirm that it wasn't all just an incredibly cool dream filled with great music) you can now relive the experience in the comfort of your own living space/office cube. Of course, we suggest that you really get the 'club' experience going and find an old plastic chair, spill a little beer on the floor, crack a window and turn on a heat lamp - just get all the senses activated. Maybe have a friend serve you a cold beverage every once in a while... then you'll be able to watch the following concert videos, courtesy of the fine folks at zStreetTV.com. And big thanks to Robert McCoy and everyone at Top Secret TV Productions and Alex & Billy from Mind Ignition for their video & audio recording skills, and Sonic Arts & The PPS Group for their audio & video post production awesomeness...

Screaming Mimes "Tragedy Comic" CD Release Concert Part I

INTRO - Twister - Superdave - Everything To Me - Happening - She's Waiting - Sleeping With The Emily

Screaming Mimes "Tragedy Comic" CD Release Concert Part 2

Only Love - SHE - Suddenly - More Than Ever - Pretty Soon Now

Screaming Mimes "Behind The Mask" Documentary Concert Intermission


Screaming Mimes "Tragedy Comic" CD Release Concert Part 3

You're The Kind of Girl - Wrong - Never Be Enough - Completely - I Don't Need Anything - The Girl Who Fell In Love - Everybody Knows

Screaming Mimes "Tragedy Comic" CD Release Concert Part 4

Strawberries & Beer - It's Not Me - Wedding Day - The Man On The Phone - Rex Dance - CREDITS


Ordering information for Tragedy Comic can be found by clicking here


Catch you on the flip side,

Dave

We had our Spinal Tap moment at last rehearsal.

Our new album arrived just a couple of hours before we gathered to begin refining and rehearsing for the CD release show. Luckily it went much better for us than those hapless English musicians... several boxes full of discs, no major issues, no "none more black" comments. Everything looks terrific. The printing looks really great and all the extra effort and cost that went into making this special is worth it. That moment when you first hold the final product (?) in your hands... wow. Indescribable. So I should just stop, right?



Let's backtrack and cover some recent news...

Redsfest 2008 was a blast, again. We closed the event out at Duke Energy Center and played about an hour... with a couple of surprises near the end. We got some dancers (thank you!) and some T-Shirt sales (thank you again!) and got to pull out a few surprises near the end of the show... The Big Show, from Cincinnati Clutch Hits, is a song we VERY rarely play, and of course Christmastime, our catchy-as-johnny-bench ode to the holiday season. Here's a bit of us rocking it out at Redsfest on youtube.
Big thanks to Alex and everyone from Mind Ignition for giving us such a nice mix on stage, Gapper for his musical contributions, and YOU for coming to see us!

Speaking of Christmas, if you live in the Greater TriState, tune in to Fox19 on Christmas morning at 8:45 AM and watch an exclusive live performance of "Christmastime" that we shot in their studios... Santa hats and everything!

T-Shirts? Did I forget to mention that? Available at our CD Release show on January 18th at The Southgate House... here's Jamie showing off the shirt in Atlanta:



Pretty sweet. We'll have ordering information on the t-shirts soon on screamingmimes.com.

But first, the CD. January 18th, 2008, is the official launch date of "Tragedy Comic". You will be able to order the CD before the show at www.cdbaby.com in a week or so. Friday the 18th we're having a huge, bigger than bigger, grander than grand CD release show at the historic Southgate House in Newport, Kentucky, directly across from Newport on the Levee. We're pulling out all the stops for this show - creating tons of video content, uncovering old nearly forgotten Mimes tunes, and debuting a few new tunes we've been working on that we know you're going to love. We've assembled hundreds of hours of interview footage, live clips, and special behind-the-scenes & making-of segments. In addition, after the show we'll debut our new video for "Superdave" - the song you've been begging for in a visual format. There will be cameras, great music, cold beverages and lots of Screaming Mimes merchandise for sale that night, so mark your calendars, book the babysitter, pry off the house arrest bracelet from your parole officer and get ready for one of the biggest shows in the Cincinnati music scene. If all goes as planned, we'll even have a bunch of cool surprises for you before, during and after the show...



So, back to that CD. After starting recording over two years ago on September 29th, 2005, with incalculable hours spent tracking the original full band recordings with Austin at the helm, Jim giving his all into every performance... Preston playing his fingers to the bone perfecting every bass note... staying up into the wee hours bent over my guitar on my solos and overdubs, Randy mixing and mixing and mixing while simultaneously laying in his guitar lines... all the nights of yelling at a microphone by myself in a dark room, trying like hell to get back into "that moment" when I wrote the song and trying to get something down on tape... the steady stream of "just another tweak" to the mix, driving Randy to the brink of insanity... contemplating dropping certain songs that we wondered if we'd ever be able to save in the mix... recording way more than we needed and making the "hard cuts" on certain songs... the joy of hearing the perfect balance for the first time... the final months of hearing all the tracks together, in order... going to Yes Master and adding the icing to the already decadent cake...

After all that, it's been worth it. Broken strings, stress, burned out ears, late nights... we owe our family members more than we can ever repay but the end project certainly reflects all the sacrifices and talent that went into the CD. It's eleven tracks long, with songs dating back to the recording of Live My Life (I was writing a lot during that album) to the night before our final recording session in November of 2006. I was writing a lot during this phase of the band, and all the songs were written with us in mind. This album also has our first band collaboration, along with a lyric writing adventure "in-the-round". It also represents a lot of the support we get from some amazingly talented people and the generous contributions meant that we had a lot more time and energy to concentrate on making the music great. Certainly nothing was more critical to this project than Sonic Arts Digital Services and all the time they gave us.

So to you, gentle reader, we hope to see you in January with Tragedy Comic in hand, listening and singing along, laughing at the jokes, wincing at the behind-the-scenes, and genuinely having as good a time as we've had bringing all this to you.

2008... I can't wait.

Dave

Screaming Mimes

Yesterday (Saturday 11/3) we gathered in the impressive cavernous Midwest Studio to shoot a video Superdave. Midwest is the premiere production facility in town - huge seamless cyc, tons of lights, dressing rooms... The Camera Department supplied the HD equipment. That's right, you'll get to see our smiling faces in all their 720i 24p glory.

Scott Thompson was Director of Photography, an old friend of the band and great guy to have on a set. Always sarcastic and surly, his sense of humor and talent kept everything moving along at a brisk, easy pace. He was ably assisted by Jake and David, who were there to set lights, run the dolly, and generaly make everything look awesome.

Deb, Riann and Leann were on hand to make sure we looked good (a true challenge, that) and all the moving parts kept moving. Deb is one of the first people I met "in the business" and has always been there with great guidance and positive vibes. Producing the shoot, particularly with so many young Mimes fans in tow, was a big blessing for us. The three of them kept the atmosphere and good vibes perfectly in tune. Leann took the photos for this wonderful blog, too!

We arrived at the studio around 9:30 (as Jim says, a great time to play rock and roll). After loading in our equipment (no amps for once, thank the maker) we set up the full band in the center of the stage against the white cyc. Randy brought a CD player with a delightful high-pitched squawk everytime you hit "play" - I think I lost that frequency that day. We all placed bets on how many times we'd hear "Superdave" - I lost count around 12.



"Okay, we rolling?"

Suddenly a hundred questions run through my mind. What do I do? How should I stand? Should I sing to the camera? Into the lens? Who am I singing to? A thousand strangers? A single soul? Do I dance? Do I move my feet? Do I smile? Are my glasses sliding off? Am I sweating a ton? Does my guitar look too low? Why is the crew giggling? What am I doing here? Do I have bagel in my teeth? What are the words? Did I play the wrong chord? Can anyone tell? Will Preston use this shot when he edits? Did I just make the most ridiculous face into the camera? And so on...

The first take was the four of us, not too energenic (it was still a bit early, mind you) playing through the song and singing to the camera. No major disasters. For the second one we were a bit more animated, jumping around a bit and interacting more. I tried not to block Jim too much but I'm not sure I was successful. For the third we spaced ourselves out a bit and Scott raised the dolly up high for a slightly unusual composition. Nice! I was settling into a zone of enjoying singing to a tiny white dot in the center of the lens. (I read someplace that the best way to look into a camera is to imagine a little puppy in there. I doesn't work for music videos, I tell you). After the group stuff was done the camera zoomed in on Jim for some "drummer-only" shots and I ran off to cool down and chug some bottles of water (those big lights get really freaking hot).

Jim put on quite a performance, singing along to the words (I had no idea he knew the song so well), hamming up his drum hits, a "raising the bar" as Randy said several times. Spectacular. Scott and his crew did several angles of Jim, high up, straight on, and from down on the floor. Very cool stuff.

We (the band) took a break as Scott, Jake & David moved in the massive green screen - maybe thirty by twenty feet? It was huge, anyway. Filming us in front of this would allow Preston to put a variety of backgrounds behind us (more on this later) in the editing suite. Randy stepped up and performed the song solo in a variety of medium and tight shots. Of course, he broke a string - but quickly recovered!

Preston got set for his instrument close ups, playing through the song and singing to the camera. Very animated. It was fun to sit back and watch the band mates really "sell" the performance - most of the time on stage I've got my face jammed into a microphone and I'm singing to the audience - I rarely get a chance to look around and see what the other guys are doing.

Next I had some instrument close-ups. Nervous about screwing up a chord or botching the guitar solo (yes, I'm the only one who would ever notice - but I'd notice, dammit!) we ran through it with Scott following my fingers up and down the neck. Preston seemed really pleased with one of the guitar solo moves I made - I'm not sure what happened, but as they said in "Almost Famous", just make me look cool...

Another cool down for me while Preston did his medium shots. Then I got back in once again for dancing and prancing in front of the camera. I was beginning to get into it a bit more, forgetting the hundreds of questions from the first take and just performing. Once in a while I would lapse back many many years to that kid with a broomstick in front of the mirror singing along to songs taped of MTV. Then I'd remember that I'm an adult now, and there's a bunch of adults behind the camera wondering what the hell I'm doing. Ah, self-consiousness!


Jim came back in for some tight shots of him singing the chorus for "Superdave", once again raising the bar. These were tight formal shots of all of us singing in that Brady Bunch style. Then we pulled out some goofy glasses for the "never gonna take these glasses off" line - the only band gag. Stacked up on boxes to form a standing diamond composition for the camera, we battled glare (my regular glasses) and sang through Superdave several times, with Preston, Jim and Randy doing a bit of synchronized performing for the chorus. Of course, standing like that wear all black, we couldn't help but break into some awful versions of "Bohemian Rhapsody". Oy!

Get down to the end, we ran through a take of my close up singing the complete song. At this point the day was wearing thin and the crew restless (we'd been going for several hours at this point) I came up with the spectacular idea of shooting the individual guitar players from a high dolly shot against the white cyc. Of course, with only half an hour left of everyone's good graces, and children reaching the end of their rope, Jake and Dave quickly got the green screen struck and put away while Scott set up for the next shot. Randy, then Preston, then me (Jim had been done in the beginning of his shots earlier in the day) - and we were done!

But not quite - Caroline, Jacob & Anabelle, some of our youngest fans, joined us for a free form dance off before the cameras were turned off. What a blast to see all the kids dancing. Great ending to an amazing day.


Requisite Rock 'N' Roll hand for all my secret devil fans.


Jim loads his drums in early-morning rocker mode.


Caroline and Leann play director & star on the movie set.


"No Caroline, don't touch that button!"


The young Mimes fans rock out.


Cooling off with Leann.


Preston shoots more material for his ever-expansive & always-comprehensive Screaming Mimes documentary.


Lucky MySpace friend Riann with her favorite lead singer in Screaming Mimes.


Preston is obviously thrilled with something Randy is doing.


Are we done yet?


Big, huge, bear-hug thanks to everyone who got us through this production - Deb & Preston led the charge and got everything connected. Preston's organization & vision kept us on task. Scott's talents were irreplacable, and for him and Jake & David to give us a beautiful Saturday was beyond generous. Riann & Leann were awesome help and great to have around on a stressful day. Caroline, Jacob & Annabelle were perfect entertainment as well whenever we started feeling tired - they were inspiring. Midwest & The Camera Deparment - we owe them a big solid. Having friends like this in the industry makes us better and knowing that we can count on people for favors of this magnitude really let's us know how loved we are. We wouldn't be anywhere near super without you guys.

Biggest thanks to Preston, Randy & Jim for making me laugh and being the best comrades-in-arms a guy could have.

Let's do it again!

Dave

PS - we've got a big surprise brewing for the main part of this video. If all the stars align and we hit our deadlines we should have something spectacular to show you in a couple months. I don't want to spoil the surprise, though... you've been warned!

Friday, October 19th2:17 AM
Randy and I left for Nashville Thursday evening, arriving before a horrendous thunderstorm in Nashville (just south, actually, at my friend Richard’s house). The sky was lit up on the right I-65 with mad scientist horizontal lightning. Quite beautiful, if a tad disconcerting. We stopped at Sonic on the way down for a quick bite. Grilled cheese and strawberry smoothie. Yum.

After some Rush & Yes singalongs, I plugged in my iPod and was blessed with some wonderful randomness. Paul McCartney, Police & B-52s – kind of a retro mix, but hey, that’s what my iPod picked. How can Fred Schnieder be simultaneously annoying and so charming, like a kid misbehaving at his own birthday party?

Richard and Cindy and their 4 dogs and 3 cats (that’s 31 legs) welcomed us with open arms as we evaded the storm. The wind blew their awning apart and Richard and I exchanged memories of bygone bands. Good fun, at least for me.

Tomorrow AM we go to the mastering house, Yes Master. I’ll update shortly.

8:44 AM
Beautiful wet morning here in Murfreesboro, about 25 minutes south east of Nashville. The storm blew all night and destroyed the awning on Richard’s gazebo, but all the cats & dogs are accounted for, so that’s the important thing. I was up reading for a couple of hours and Richard and I discussed work and paintings I had done that he had. Some blasts from the past… a painted called “Sin and Death” which was deemed too vile to hang by his family, “WWW” hanging in his office, and a strange one in the bathroom of a very simple kittens nursing. Did I really paint these?

11:42 AM (10:42 Nashville time)
After a quick fast food breakfast (eesh) and a couple of wrong turns we made it to Yes Master. Cindy’s dogs were quite sad to see us go. I tried to smuggle Muffin in my computer bag, but she would have none of it.

Jim DeMain from Yes Master met us at the door at 9:55 and warmly welcomed us… we quickly got to work. Within a few minutes he had an incredible mix working of “Sleeping With The Emily”. Jim is really responding to the musical choices we made over the past year, which is really rewarding. He seems to get the sound of the band. Very nice.


Randy is standing over his shoulder asking deep technical questions… like a kid asking questions in the airplane cockpit. Cute. “Joey, you ever seen a grown man naked?”

The bass is punching through the mix better than ever. The cymbals are creamier and the vocals are sitting right where they need to be. This sounds better than I could have dreamed.

12:06 PM
Jim is working on “Twister” now. I’m sending out mass emails about the show next Friday. Randy is happy. The dynamics of “Twister” are coming into focus.

“Superdave” is really growing as well. I’m going to run out of hyperbole for how good everything sounds. Imagine a large forest squeezed together in a parking lot. Jim is putting the space back in between the trees. You can listen to the individual sounds now.

Jim has brought a lot more definition to the bass on “Only Love”. What was a very chaotic chorus (lots of big guitars & vocals) is really falling into place. Jim is really enjoying this song, singing along to the chorus.

Listening to “More Than Ever”, Jim really responded to the various bells and whistles. Commented on how “there’s a lot of smiling in our music”. I couldn’t agree more.

I heard Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill” the other day on my iPod and realized how much influence it had on the structure of this song. I really wanted that chiming descending guitar sound on the choruses…

3:15 PM

Lunch at Baha Buriotos (or something like that). Really delicious. Fresh fresh fresh, particularly after two fast food meals. Veggie tacos and a beer.

Now we’re back to start on “Everything To Me”.

Quick. Now “Suddenly”. Really sounds big. Jim loves the guitar solo. ;)

“SHE” sounds great. Jim really liked the mix we brought in. Just punching up some EQ and a bit of compression.

“Happening” now. It’s all happening, as they say. Young groupies say that, I suppose. At least according to Cameron Crowe movies.

It’s nice hearing “Happening” in this context. This song was the quickest to mix so I’ve spent a lot less time analyzing it. It sounds pretty damn fresh. I don’t know if listeners respond to the song as much as we do, but I still love it. Backwards guitar solo, woo hoo!

This is where we wear (yikes) our Rush/Yes influences on our sleeves. Funny that’s how the trip started. To me those bands seem like really great teachers I had in school – very impactful influence at the time, but kind of irrelevant to me now. I still love their music and think of them with great affection, but I just don’t “live” their songs like I used to.

If you read back in the blog several months you find the post about this song where Randy and I had to write a brand new verse right before we recorded the vocals… pretty funny. Luckily it holds up really well in the context of the song.

4:40 PM
Last song. “Pretty Soon Now” Jim is rolling and got a great mix of this blended pretty quickly. I can’t believe we’re almost at the end of this audio adventure. Of course, album art needs to be finalized, ISRC codes need to be assigned, text IDs need to be written…


We’re getting close to the finale of “Pretty Soon Now”. Trumpets are building, gratuitous back vocals are vocaling, violins are tuning up… quite a thrill.

A few nights ago (Tuesday the… 16th?), after our photo session, Randy & I ran up to Sonic Arts and did a final tweak on “Pretty Soon Now”… we brought up some guitar on the chorus, remixed the guitar solo, brought down the lead vocals, and added a slight ocean sound effect at the very end, just to give it a little gentle pad. It’s significant to me… don’t know if the listener will get it though.

Didn’t I mention the photo session? Shame on me. Despite the light blogging, we’ve been quite busy with shows and rehearsing and Tuesday we all brought some various clothes and lights and took over our rehearsal building. Jason Bechtel and Jami Patton came in to shoot the proceedings.


We started in the dark vault of a beautiful empty bank. The door to the vault was about 9 feet tall – a beautiful ornate contraption of etched brass and steel. Exquisite. We put on some suits and looked alternately bad-ass or goofy at the camera. Then we moved upstairs to the same floor where we rehearse and found a rather neglected corner of the room for more of the same. Glaring, smiling, happy, sad… all in the days work of a rock star.

I’m getting off track. It’s been a long day already.

Jim is working on balancing all the elements together. Having gone through the songs one by one and created (“printed”, he calls it) individual files he is now laying them into a giant album-length timeline. From here he is bouncing around from song to song balancing out all the elements – volume, eq, etc… how do all the songs blend?

October 20 2:48 AM
Back in Ohio. A laborious drive uphill (does North seem uphill to anyone else?) after a fine dinner with some family and friends. Good company and good laughs.

Where did we leave it with Yes Master Studios? Jim made us a couple copies of the running order for us to review, with a promise of quickly addressing any changes we might have. Hopefully there will only be a few. After we thanked him profusely and said our goodbyes, Richard and I drove to a restaurant just a few minutes North of Nashville. We chatted about the past, future and present (not exactly in that order) - he is a great soul and his life is really good here. I'm jealous of everyone in this town who gets to spend time with him.

Randy and I listened to the reference disc on the way back - noticed some small things to tweak but overall it was incredibly pleasing. Richard mentioned that he'd like to take this disc back 15 years when I was very frustrated musically and show me what I would one day be a part of. I understood exactly what he meant... I think I would be very proud, and hopeful. Like I am right now.