June 12th, 2010.

A windfarm in northern Indiana. I was stunned by the sheer expanse of these things, huge white propellers stretching as far as the eye can see. Unfortunately I’ve heard it’s not as effective as it’s supposed to be and I worry that it was built swiftly and visibly on a highway out of political expediency rather than intelligent design. Snert. Intelligent design.

The weather is acting up. I don’t like 90 degrees – and the humidity is disgusting. Stepping out of the house this morning, my glasses covered in condensation almost instantly, and every time we’ve gotten out of the car today, my skin swiftly covers with a feeling of clammy moisture as all those water molecules race for something cool to cling to.

I thought these murals were Photoshopped images simply done for the [adult swim] bumps in between shows! They’re REAL! This one was spotted as we were making our way to an open mic in Chicago, IL.

Last night’s show in Columbus, IN was full of difficulty. On top of a much smaller draw than I’d been hoping for we kept having elusive tech issues. Crackling that was first evident in Heather’s guitar swiftly spread to the rest of the system leading to a bunch of different tests and hypotheses… at first we thought it was Heather’s Ovation’s jack, but then we could hear it with her Tak. So we thought it was the cable…. But it seemed to happen with other cables… could it be the channel? That could well be the worst-case scenario as it would be difficult to dismantle and repair… nope, swapping channels didn’t solve the problem. We swap more cables figuring that maybe it was a problem with ALL the cables that had gotten wet at the Red House show – but then Heather spent some time playing MY guitar and the crackling was still there…

As we were driving around Chicago, watching gas prices rising inexorably past three bucks a gallon, I was perhaps not entirely surprsied to see BP stations steadily advertising prices 30 cents less than anyone else. With the public relations disaster they’ve brought upon themselves being unable to fix their mistakes, it’s hardly any surprise that they service stations themselves are being struck hard. I understand that this doesn’t effect the company itself too much, but the black eye to the brand has helped to drop their stock prices by more than 40%. When capitalism is the only vote we’ve got, I’m glad to see the company threatened in the only way they’ll pay attention to.

I guess the real best problem to have been having would’ve been a single bad cable, but this is probably the second best: it turned out to be a loose connection in the auxiliary jack I’d wired into the back of the speaker. It means that it’s my soldering that’s failed, but on the other hand it’s a connection that we don’t actually have to ever use very often, if at all.

Still – it’s always disconcerting to have an issue that’s so hard to track down, and though I Love the Columbus Bar, it’s one of the most difficult spaces to troubleshoot. In order to listen to yourself you have to run down a flight of narrow-enough / steep-enough-to-be-a-ladder style stairs, listen for a bit, then climb back upstairs to make adjustments..Tricky at best. Potentially dangerous if you’ve been experimenting with fine bourbon.

Speaking of which: Willets Bourbon. Wow.

Three sets that ran long because we wanted to make up for lost time. The transmission to our online audience (37 people tuned in, thank you!) died just as I was asking for requests for the third set because the wireless cut out, which was sad – I felt like we were

After a long and horrible drive into Chicago, IL, Tim of Might Could got us to one of his favourite open mics in the area at the Gallery Cabaret. Beautiful bar / art gallery with a decent stage and an enthusiastic audience. Good times were had.

finally going to redeem ourselves! There was someone tuned in who I don’t think had ever seen us play before, and as with all my old, old friends (she’s someone I knew from college), I want to give them a really GOOD impression of what I’m doing now, not simply grainy images of us trying to figure out problems that weren’t even coming through on the broadcast.

Le sigh. It was the first night I felt totally comfortable with the new guitar, at least. I think everything’s finally tightened, and though I find the electronics still to be pretty awkward compared to the Alvarez, once I get totally used to the EQ on it, perhaps I won’t need to fool with them as much.