Travelogue #2

The last couple of days have been a blur, in the best possible way. Here's some things that are poking out of the blur:

Had some great visits with my folks. Went to see them Thursday morning and had a nice time sitting around catching up. Then Friday night Jeannie and I went up for dinner and my brother and his wife and daughter came out, too. Was good to see everyone.

Also, once again have really enjoyed staying with Jeannie's parents. I'm beginning to feel very comfortable around her mom and dad. What a nice change.

Got to poke my head in and say hello to Eric Elz. It's nice to know where someone will be even when they're not at home. Also nice to not have to say hello to anyone else at SLUH. I hope that someone signed the bathroom sign-in sheet after me so that I don't have to clean it up if it's trashed. I swear I left it nice and urine-free.

I started and finished my Tom Waits Reader. It made me think a lot about music, how I feel about music, and about what kind of music I want to make. I love Tom Waits, I wish I could be like Tom Waits, but I just don't think I have music like Tom Waits' inside of me. That being said, I would like to make sure that some of my songs are a little rough around the edges. Also maybe one day really playing with my voice when I'm not worried about disturbing the neighbors.

Something else that made me think about music: the band at the wedding tonight was pretty damned awful, mostly the singer. It's like he took every wedding band cliche and decided that that's exactly the kind of wedding singer he wanted to be, and he did it without irony or self-awareness. Or tact. Or talent. But anyway, the thing that I was thinking about was that the guitar was turned way down, so I could really just hear the bass and drums and the singer. It made me realize how important a good rhythm section is to most pop music, and how most of my songs don't have a good rhythm section. But I also think that I'm more interested in the guitar sounds than I am about the rhythm section. It's just who I am. So I'm going to be conscious of what my 'bottom end' is doing, but I'm not going to stress out too much about it. I would like to play around more with my drum sounds (something I've picked up from the Tom Waits book, I think) and the guitar sounds (something I'm always trying to do.)

Rich, I was so sorry to hear about your grandpa. I hope that you have a good (probably not the right word, but you know what I mean) trip to Decatur.

On a different note, my wife looked very hot in her bridesmaid dress. I also like her haircut. And I love her very much, and not just because she's hot.

I can't wait to hang with the Schluetermetz'. We have much to discuss. That sentence would be more fun if it was, "We have much to discus." Like the thing they throw at the summer olympics. Goodnight.