June 21st, 2014.

I’m super-proud of Mosno’s new concept album “Novella”. The packaging is stunning, the booklet that goes with it is beautiful – and I’m incredibly proud to have been involved in th erecording and engineering and mixing of it. It’s been a pretty amazing journey and the end product is every bit as worthy as the entire two year quest to get there.

And suddenly we’re East Bound. Route 70 definitely continues to levy a romantic hold over me. We’re finally going to be able to give it a more thorough working over this fall, but we’re still not going to give it a full East to West run… our autumn trip will involve dipping dramatically south before climbing back up and roaming that most Lovely of mid-America interstates…

We’ve been slowly working bookings, massaging the maps. My earlier optimism of how easily things were coming together for September and October was unwarranted, but it’s coming along. We have one really cool opportunity that I’m extremely hopeful for, but I should probably look only sidelong at it. This short little trip has been a lesson in Murphy’s Law, and the moment we call the universe’s attention to anything specific, something goes awry – whether it’s an easy drive, an easy walk, good timing or the fact that internet connectivity is surprisingly painless or that the weather’s surprisingly beautiful.

We’re actively NOT discussing anything on the path ahead of us at the moment. We’re allowed to discuss things off to the side of us, things that we’re not actively planning to use or people we’re not going to see for a while are fair game, but drawing the attention of the universe to the path ahead of us has been a guaranteed recipe for traffic jams, close shaves and freak thunderstorms.

From left to right – Spyros, Mosno, Sahffi and John Fell performing at the Novella CD release at Teavolve in Baltimore, MD. Not only did I engineer the disc, but I also got to run sound for the CD release. Front row seat for me!

So most of you know that we’ve been doing some thinking about adding a drummer to our sound. The reasons for this are varied – some of it just comes down to the fact that I’ve always wanted to, some of it is sonic fatigue of sounding very much the same way for the past five or six years – some of it’s concern over filling larger spaces without Rowan on stage with us – and a lot of it has to do with listening to Artem Bank’s ilyAIMY remixes, which give us such a ROCK and METAL persona that I started hearing drums in my head again. Well – we tried to line up a couple of different things and I ended up chatting with about five different drummers. Out of those, Pat Klink rose to the top – through his passion and his history with us. Pat, of course, is primarily a member of We’re About 9, but is a great rock drummer as well – he hasn’t shown that off a lot though and when I asked him to come and play some things with us I was surprised by how excited he was to do it. Now – I mentioned HISTORY with us as well – I’ve known Pat for a LONG time, since before ilyAIMY and We’re About 9 had both formed up – and above is a setlist from before Heather was in the band where Pat played drums with us at an event called Colleen’s Naked Groovefest. He had it in his drum case… not only is 50% of the set songs with Audrey Engdahl, not only is it an old-school setlist (hand drawn and amusingly anecdoted) – but it’s a reminder that he also joined up with another band that night : Pat Klink on drums and me on bass backing DiHybrid Cross doing Rage Against the Machine covers. I think the heads of some We’re About 9 fans would’ve EXPLODED that night…. On the setlist include such things as “guess which ilyAIMY nipple this is”, the reminder to me to switch to electric guitar for a couple of songs, and the warning not to feed Pat lest he become a giant, fanged-rat beast.

We’ve been through Columbus, OH a LOT and we’ve NEVER had traffic like what we faced in the past 48 hours. I guess it should’ve been on our radar, but betwixt the World Cup and Columbus Pride main streets and arts districts alike were overrun and packed. I think we probably added about three hours to our drives simply sitting in traffic waiting for people to GO. We took longcuts and short cuts and inconvenient detours. I guess this string of superstition might’ve actually started Tuesday afternoon as we were making our way to my Board and Brew open mic : the “easiest” path betwixt House of Musical Traditions and the good parking for TBAB involves cutting across the University of Maryland’s campus, which so far, every week has involved a road closure. Last week we had to find our way via maps and GPS. This week we left more time, but there was a well-marked detour to guide us this time – which had ALMOST delivered us to our destination when we fell afoul of a commuter bus marked “TRAINING” that had failed to corner properly and run itself up over the engine block of a little sedan, blocking the intersection after a long, windy two lane road that was tight and awkward…

All because I’d said to Kristen “wow, this is a LOT easier this time”.

Sigh. You just don’t EVER talk to it.

Thursday was a bit brutal. What should’ve been a six hour drive was elongated by another hour and a half thanks to construction on route 70 somewhere shy of Zanesville. We thought we were clever, getting off at an exit that was simply… stopped. Not stop and go. Just stopped. Miles of back up – what HAD been almost two hours of leeway in which we’d be able to go check into our hotel, relax and chill before heading to our gig rapidly diminished to the point that we had to go DIRECTLY to the gig – and there’s not much out there that’s more exhausting than being in a car for over seven hours and then playing a three hour bar gig. Going from such forced stillness to such frenetic output is rough – and ALL of us are still coughing out the remnants of our colds – Wednesday night Kristen even said “I think I might’ve dodged it” and work up Thursday sneezing and hacking – by the end of the night we were simply BEAT.

Heather and I took the first weekend in June to go run around Frederick for a couple of shows. We also just got to run around town together – something we’ve never really done with Frederick. This is what Heather got for her trouble.

So – in Frederick we did an outdoor thing at a mall, then a late night bar gig – and then Friday, June 6th found us at Beans in the Belfry playing a deconsecrated coffeehouse church. Very fun show – very beautiful. Reformed? Very hopeful.

Thank you SO much to our friend Adam who hooked us up with an incredible hotel deal – so that after the gig we just loaded up and drove 15 minutes or so to a comfortable room that… that was also behind a wall of construction and another detour and a brief moment of getting lost and having to make an illegal u-turn (I think ALL u-turns are illegal in Ohio) – at which point we finally arrived and go in and spend another fifteen minutes as the woman behind the counter can’t find our reservation, asks if we’re “the people from next door”…

It turns out that the hotel we supposed to be at was across the parking lot, but they’ve overbooked and booked us rooms on THEIR dime at THIS hotel, but they’d given Heather’s name rather than MY name… it all worked out for the best – we got two rooms rather than one for the cost of NONE – but I think I was just too exhausted to entirely make sure of what was happening to us.

Thank you beds. Thank you thank you.

So, Heather had kittens. Not organically, of course – rather – her house spontaneously generated 6 kittens under the porch. Because we can’t resist kittens, there was much feeding until a local-do-gooder was able to take them to a good home. For a brief period of time, there was a shining center to the universe – and it had six heads.

*Kristen checking the beans at The Board and Brew in College Park, MD. I like that you can sniff individual roasts!*

Yesterday it was time to get up and get out (noon o’clock check out – thank you thank you again!) – and settle into a local Starbucks to get a LOT of work done. We’re just about ready to break camp and go to one of our favourite spots for lunch – but that’s when the most hellacious thunderstorm ripped through town and gave unto us a mighty deluge. Every time we think it’s safe and start packing up… well, the skies inform us that we are staying put. Finally there’s a moment when the rains lighten up enough for us to make a run for the car – and to once again get slammed by traffic. This time it was all Pride traffic, though we didn’t know that at the time. There was an accident ahead of us to boot, but the additional volume was all festival traffic, plus Friday craziness – it took us over an hour to go the twelve miles to Da Levee.

I swear I actually play shows – just no-one ever takes pictures of ME. So it’s when I take a break that you get pictures of Heather. I should just start photoshopping myself in. Above – Heather performing at Beans in the Belfry in Brunswick, MD.

*Just some Rock’em Sock’em Robots hanging out at the Board and Brew in College Park, MD wondering when the place will finally be open!!!*

But once we got there we got to meet up with our dear friend Eric Nassau in that rarest of all situations : just hanging out! Nope, not playing a gig together, just doing lunch. We took him down the street to La Chocoholique and forced fancy sweetnesses upon him. We strolled the streets for a bit and admired all the rainbow trappings of Columbus Short North at its most fabulous and then hopped back on the road over to our next hotel room – beautifully within walking distance of our night’s venue.

The World of Beers are interesting conundrums. They’ve spent a LOT of money on very nice sound systems. They’ve got a decent stage area, well-lit, kind of out of the way, over everything – but a good place to be, not taking up any floor space and once people know where to look, visible to the whole room… Live music is part of their identity – and there are great monitors up in the musicians’ staging area, so you feel like you’re huge and loud and well-audible – and it’s not until you leave your partner upstairs and go and listen to her for a while from the floor that you realize that the house volume is generally low enough that you’re relatively inaudible.

*Back on the road again – ilyAIMY on the move on the way to Columbus, OH. I-70. Dangerously close to the native habitat of the wild rob.*

Meh, they keep the bar at a comfortable volume level so that people don’t have to strain to talk over you. But they pay well, and a lot of our fans like it there so who am I to say what’s good or bad about it. We have a good time and don’t have to lug a PA system in and last night we had a good turn out of our own fans which always helps a lot. Even some friends from Findlay who’d decided we were worth a two hour drive (I agree with this sentiment)… we hung out for a while at the bar and we were close enough to “home” that Kristen, who was still feeling poorly, could just walk back to our hotel while Heather and I still worked the room.

*we have NO idea what this thing was, but we kept passing it and it kept…. looking at us….*

Heather playing her heart out at the World of Beer in the Brewery District here in Columbus, OH. Absolutely exhausted, it was a 7+ hour drive to get here, and then a three hour bar gig right after? What WAS I thinking?!?!?!

There were no mishaps there, noon check out again, 24 hour Starbucks in the lobby, friendly locals – though a notice slipped under the door informed us that there was a fire drill scheduled for noon – since that’s basically a good time to be out anywho we figured that didn’t effect us too much.

If only I could’ve slept. I think I was probably up till around 3am. Restrung my guitar. Lay on my back and stared into the darkness listening to the women breathe. I guess that sounds creepy.

This morning we got up, got our coffee, walked to the local Trader Joes and got on the road. We just crossed the Pennsylvania line and we’ll pass through California soon. It’s a long time since that had emotional weight, but it’ll be nice to see it again, even if only from the highway. I wonder if that treehouse is still there…

Rage Against the Machine is roaring, the engine’s purring and we can’t tell if the overcast is coming at us or catching up with us. We’ve got a Dogfish Head in our future and Matt Nakoa awaits us. All. Hell. Can’t stop us now!!!