cocooning

now playing: james taylor, “london town”

i was leaning toward remaining silent today until this song came on:

“when i grow too old and dull to rock and roll
i’d like to hold on tight to you, darlin’…

and when my fires have all burned out
i’d like to think i could still think about
the things i used to sing about
when i was spending all my time alone
by myself and on my own
seldom seen and quite unknown….”

i’ve heard from a few people that i used to play with during the course of the past week, and have gotten myself a little psyched about the prospect of being in a band again – i heard from quin, the hammond player from stone road, and from charlie degenhart about the prospect of putting a band together for gigs around christmastime (which i’m working on at the moment) – i’m trying, right now, to remember the last time i played in front of people as part of a band, and i’m drawing a blank. i’m playing with blake at a private function of some sort this weekend, which will be fun. hell, i may just play bass for the whole thing, based on how rehearsals went last week – because we have a drummer for the show, and it might be kinda splashy and thin sounding if i switch back and forth between bass and other stuff…so i guess the jury is still out on what my role is for this gig. honestly, it doesn’t matter much to me – i like playing blakes’ stuff so much that i’d probably stand there with one of those little plastic eggs and sing harmony if it came to that. same thing with charlie.

blake actually came out to viva this past wednesday for one of my happy hour gigs and sat in with me for most of the show – it was a little muddy, running us both through my little amp, but it was a lot of fun. more fun than standing there for a couple of hours by myself and not knowing how i’m being perceived. when there’s more than one of you, you can at least play off each other and enjoy that, if the crowd isn’t necessarily interested in what you’re doing.

speaking of charlie – now that i’ve gotten the studio back up and functional to the point of being useful, i found a bunch of solo acoustic demos that charlie had given me ages ago…some of the songs on the demo made it onto his april’s fool EP, and i had started – at about the time he gave them to me – working on adding tracks to them after i’d imported them into the PC. i found the tracks i’d done, but immediately dismissed them and decided to try my hand at adding parts again, now that i’d evolved to the point that i had with equipment and know-how. i got started with the one song i was most familiar with from having played it, “our crooked roads”. i got rid of the old canned drum track, and started from scratch with nothing but the vocal and guitar. i added a bass part, a lap steel part, a twelve-string guitar part, an electric rhythm part, and started putting an electric lead part on it before i got distracted by the clutter and moved on to other stuff. i’m gonna finish it up when i get the chance to get those baffles moved into the house and set up in the second room.

i want to try to get pictures posted by this weekend, too.

i guess the thing that i’m noticing – about myself – that’s starting to make me nervous is the whole cocooning wave that’s broken over me since i started this studio rennovation. the studio project, coupled with football and the baseball postseason, has made it damn near impossible to get me out of the house. and this is a very new phenomenon – literally just a couple of months ago, it was near impossible to find me at home at all. i want to take the easy way out and declare that to be the source of my craving for “at home time” and leave it at that, but i think that it might run a little deeper than that.

i think the actual truth of the matter is that i’m actually enjoying being at home with nothing to do on the weekends.

i do think this to be short-lived, and it does have the feeling of a phase that will pass in time. it’s somewhat conflicting, because i do want to get out and start playing with a band in front of people again – but considering the things that have been on my plate since the theatre runs ended last month, i haven’t been in much of a rush to do so. i’m finding that i’ve been very content to be at home with the family, working in the basement, watching tv, and generally just being in my space. i think i have the trip to maine to blame for it, to some small extent. it certainly showed me where the brake pedal was on the floorboard, and it’s been nice to be able to feel that figurative plastic under my feet of late. because of some personal commitments that i’ve made regarding the work to be done in the studio once it’s up and fully functional, running the way i want it to be, i still feel that sense of unfinished business regarding the work that’s yet to be done…but i feel like i’m a lot closer to the finish line than i was just not that long ago.

i’ve been debating whether or not to post works in progress on the site – not sure what the benefit of that would be, other than to allow others to monitor progress on the record…but i’m sure i’ll eventually talk myself out of that.

i doubt it’ll be hard to do.