I want to introduce you to Mr. Jonathan Lowry. He is the engineer/co-producer of my record and is an honest to God rock and roll genius and all around good guy. He, along with Jack Cornell and Terry Anderson, has somehow managed to make me sound like I know what I'm doing on this record-and that's pretty damn near impossible to do.
This past weeekend was, once again, a stunning experience for your humble narrator. I blew into the 919 on Friday afternoon, knocked out vocal tracks on 3 songs. Got up the next day and followed the band to their gig in Asheville. After a 4 hour drive and they set up, I followed those crazy bastards into town, where we took in about 6 innings of the local Double A ballclub's("The Tourists"...I'm not kidding!) night game. Then they hustled back to the gig, with about 15 minutes to spare before they were due to go on. They, ofcourse, nail the performance, then go stay at some woman's mansion in the middle of nowhere while I crashed at the hotel.
I then got up the next day-drove back 4 hours in the rain to Raleigh, met up with Jonathan and Jack about a couple of hours later and proceeded to finish off the vocal tracks to the remaining 2 songs on the record.
Just as I finished, Greg Rice (keyboard player for Terry and The OakTeam as well as for his own band, "The Cartridge Family" and for Caitlin Cary's band, "Tres Chicas")dropped by the studio at about 9pm, just to say hey. When we finished up, we decided to go drop in at my favorite watering hole in Raleigh, Slim's. I got royally hammered and almost gave a rough mix of my record to the bartender for him to play over the club's system-but thank God, I was stopped by Dave Bartholomew,who knows better than to drink that demon alcohol.
Tell u the truth, I don't remember a whole lot after that-'cept for somehow managing to make my way to the airport the next day, missing my flight but catching the very next flight home to sunny, warm and breezy West Palm Beach. I'm bleary eyed, pretty damn tired but, as Dave Letterman use to say-it's a good kinda tired.
This morning I played the rough mix of the first half of the record over my home stereo system and...all I can say is...SHOOZ!! I AM ONE SMILIN MOTHERFUCKER!!!!