*Note: I wrote this blog about a week and a half ago. Then my computer broke and I've had very limited access to internet between now and then which is why this blog covering the events of two to three weeks ago is just going up now. Consequently, some of the references to time now have a week and a half or so added to them...


I have finally reached my breaking point. After so many years of swearing to be the exception to the rule that all musicians are eventually driven to excess and substance abuse by the grueling days and sleepless nights oflife on the road, I too have falen prey: yesterday morning at a roadside gas station, I am ashamed to confess, I purchased and consumed… a Red Bull! I know this will be a let down of character to all my legions of fans (that’ll be the day!) who look to me as an example of clean living and a disappointment on the level of the time I was driven to drinking three whole shots of espresso in order to stay up all night to finish a college paper. I am obviously blazing through my twenties on a wing and a prayer to Keith Richards, but let me try to give some exposition as to what led me to such a dire place…

We left Dallas for Houston the afternoon after our show at Opening Bell Coffee. Before we hit the road for good, my dad had set up a meeting for us with an old friend of his, Claire Parr, who used to work for Geffin and now worked independently promoting artists and planning music festivals. She was extremely friendly and seemed impressed when we performed for her in her home recording studio.

Despite the fact that I have two uncles who have lived there my whole life, this was my first trip to Houston. Ricky and I played a show set up somewhat at the last minute at a place called BFE Rock Club which we kind of figured even going in may not have been the best fit for us. It was the first venue either of us had ever played where smoking was allowed inside and the band we opened for played primarily Journey and ACDC covers. I was expecting Spinal Tap to come on next. My uncles Bruce and Brian and my aunt Ilda were in the audience, none of whom had ever seen me perform live before, so that was a treat to finally get to play for them.

We stayed two nights in Houston with Brian and Ilda. Brian and Ilda have a pet wolf. Yes, it’s actually a wolf. It’s the sweetest thing you’ll ever meet—I could hardly get it to stop licking my face—and I’m told it doesn’t exactly make for the best guard dog as it’s first instinct when company comes is to run and hid. It does howl at the moon though which definitely leads to a bit of inquisition from the neighbors (to whom my aunt and uncle insist it’s just a huskie). They also have a rottweiler, a German Shepard mix and two parrots and it’s one of the parrots who is actually the attack animal. Coco the parrot will literally make off with your finger if you get too close and it has been known to trick the dogs (wolf included) into sticking their unsuspecting snouts too close to the cage.

While in Houston we visited my cousin Jerry’s bakery where we helped him roll dough for the next morning’s bread sale. Jerry offered me the chance to start a pizza parlour with him and while the offer sounded enticing, I told him that at the moment I was pursuing other career objectives… It did however lead me to have a dream that night in which I was offered the Presidency of the United States and turned that down so as not to have to give up my music career (although I was almost enticed by being told that I could build a recording studio in the White House).

We had one last Austin gig to play Saturday night at Cherrywood Coffee, our first and only outdoor venue on the tour, before leaving Texas all together, and after one last overnight stay in Dallas at Goomba’s house, it was off to Nashville. For those who don’t know, my family and I lived in Nashville (well, Franklin, right outside of Nashville) from 1994 to 2002. We left just before I started high school so while it was a place I recognized and knew well from my childhood, I had never really gotten to experience it as an adult, and once you’re in charge of driving yourself and getting your own food and such, you do notice different things than you may have as a kid.

We pulled up around 4am Monday morning to the house of another very old friend and frequent music coconspirator of mine: Robert Sebastian Mogan. I met Robby when I was twelve and he was fourteen and a mutual friend of ours convinced him to temporarily and reluctantly be our band’s guitarist until we could find someone who actually liked our music and he could find a better band. Naturally, we’ve been friends ever since.

We had four shows scheduled in Tennessee that week, but our first appearance in Nashville was at the famous Bluebird Café open mic night. I honestly wasn’t too impressed with the talent there on that particular night, but I suppose once you have the reputation the Bluebird does, everyone wants to play there! After the open mic we all drove to Robby’s friend Robert’s house…or I’m not sure the word “house” does it justice! We only saw the basement, but it alone included a movie theater, a spa, a Star Wars themed cantina, and one of the nicest recording studios I had ever been in. The four of us stayed up late, well into the next morning sharing songs with each, something that felt particular good for my soul and spirit.

Our first official show of this particular leg was the next day at a church in a town called Smyrna just south of Nashville. We opened up for the Lost Dogs at this show, a “supergroup” of four incredible singer/songwriters, one of whom was Mike Roe. It was cool running into him on the other side of the country and also cool to perform a show using a grand piano for once as opposed to Ricky’s keyboard…nothing against Ricky’s keyboard and I think she would agree with me. The crowd seemed to really like us and I dare say we made a few new fans.

After a few days “off”, we performed a show at Ugly Mugs that Saturday, a newer venue in east Nashville. The following night we played a benefit at 12th and Porter for victims of the flooding that has been happening over the past week. The whole time we were in Nashville, I saw no trace of the flooding that has displaced countless amounts of people from their homes, but everyone seemed to have been affected by it in some way or another. Chris Rodriguez, a Nashville musician and family friend whou I had coffee with that week, told me that his guitars, along with Vince Gil’s and Keithh Urban’s, and Ben Folds’s piano that were kept in a musicians’ storage facility were all destroyed. Robby, Robert, Ricky and I, the only one of the group whose name didn’t start with an “r”, performed in classic Nashville “in the round” fashion, reprising onstage what we had shared a a few night’s previously in Robert’s studio. Some old friends I had seen since I left (thanks Michael and Katie!) came out and it was great catching up with them.

My dad had set up another meeting for us, this time with Whitney Daane of Kobalt Music Group. We performed for her and her assistant in her office on Music Row. She got on the phone immediately afterwards with several contacts of hers around town telling them to meet with us. One of the wonderful things about Nashville is that industry people are everywhere and most of them are some of the nices people you’ll ever meet. They all know each other too so if one of them gets excited about something, they’re libel to tell all their friends as well. Whitney was no exception to any of the above and set us up the next day with meetings with Patrick Clifford of Ten Ten Music, Leslie Roberts of BMI and Jesse Willoughby of ASCAP, all of whom seemed really interested in our music and eager to help in anyway they could. It’s really humbling to know that so many extremely talented artists who don’t have a dad in the industry don’t even get their foot in the door. So hats off to Dad and his connections!

Our last Nashville gig was at a little Greek restaurant called Zavos on the second night of a new weekly showcase put on by Dsam Ashworth. Sam’s parents and my parents go back about thirty years or so (Sam’s dad is singer/songwriter/producer extraordinaire, Charlie Peacock) and Sam had actually been a ring boy at my parents’ wedding when he was a wee lad. Our dads played countless shows together back in the day so it seemed very “circle of life”-ish for the two of us to finally do one together. Sam is an amazing singer/songwriter and he invited me at the end of his set (well I kind of invited myself!) to sing Roy Orbison’s song “Crying” with him. After the show, Ricky, Robby and I hit it off with the bartender, David Gehrke, whose day job we came to find out is drumming for the ultra groovy band, the Silver Seas. Everyone we met who had help to offer us was offering it, which was extremely encouraging and inspiring. We got very little sleep that week, but our nights and morning were full of conversation, music and every thing you could want out of a tour.

We met again the next morning with Patrick Clifford who had with him to listen to us Robert Ellis Orrall, another great singer/songwriter and old family friend whose sons I had gone to middle school with. It’s always nice to play for someone again who hasn’t heard you since you were fourteen!

We had a long drive to Virginia that day as our stopover point before heading to New York so naturally in typical Ricky and Adrian fashion, we didn’t leave Nashville until 8pm to make the eight and a half hour drive that with stops and all got us into Charlottesville, VA around 6am the next morning. The sunrise we drove towards into Virgina was quite apparently the same one that had inspired the whole bit about “purple mountains majesty” and you really couldn’t blame the original English settlers for wanting to conquer a place so beautiful. We slept for four hours on the floor of an apartment set up for us by a girl named Kirsten who I hadn’t spoken to since third grade but who recently reached out through Facebook wanting to know what she could do to help with the tour. Then at 10am it was time to hit the road for New York. This is when the Red Bull happened.

Quite a bit has happened since all of this… Between my computer breaking and not having access to much internet, I’m a little behind on blogging. More to come soon...

The more you travel the more you recognize scenes in movies. We watched "There Will Be Blood" a few nights ago and recognized the scraggly terrain as being somewhere between the dry netherlands of southern California, Arizona and New Mexico and the motel we stayed at in El Paso, TX looked just like the one that Anton Chiguhr shot up in "No Country For Old Men" which was an extremely comforting thought...! The sky is so much bigger in the desert. It's amazing how much civilization clouds our horizons. The people who used to live in this land believed and still do believe that the mountains were sacred and it was hard not to feel the same way passing by these giant natural monoliths that seemed to resemble ancient faces laid to rest.

Our first "last" of this tour was when, on our way out from my house, Ricky realized that she had forgotten a few things and so we stopped by her house to pick them up before officially hitting the road. It was weird thinking that this was literally our last chance for almost two months to go back for anything forgotten. We made a two day stop in Nipomo to visit Ricky's famous Grandma Rene in the hospital. She was an extremely sweet lady just as Ricky had described her over the years.

Our first official gig of this leg of the tour was in LA at a small joint near Venice called Cinema Bar opening up for Adam Marsland and his band. Adam is a great songwriter but he and his band are also one of the best cover bands around. After Ricky and I played our set, I guested with them on "Thirteen" by Big Star. We stayed with my Aunt Becky that night and then got up early the next morning (well early for us) to leave for Scottsdale, AZ right outside of Phoenix. The venue, Pranksters Too, was in the middle of a shopping center surrounded by a 99¢ Store, a Fresh and Easy, and a Planned Parenthood. Location, location.... The audience included a total of one person when we started our set but had multiplied by eight by the end of it! Now that's spin for you!

We stayed with Lucas that night whom we'd met off of couchsurfing.org and who kindly made us breakfast in the morning before our long drive to El Paso, TX. Someone who had been advising me on touring before I got started told me that a lot of touring musicians don't even play east of the Mississippi because everything is so spread out that it isn't cost efficient. I could see what he meant, but the beauty of the landscape we passed made up for it ten-fold. The gig in El Paso at the Hideaway Lounge was great. There was a good sized crowd that really seemed to like our music. One audience member invited us to be on her college radio show the next day. I've discovered on this tour that I really enjoy being interviewed on the radio. It's a really fun format to get to talk about all sorts of stuff.

We were supposed to stay with another couchsurfing.org contact while in El Paso but they ended up flaking on us so we checked into the aforementioned Coral Motel. El Paso felt way more like being in Mexico than anywhere in the US. Ricky and I were two of the only Caucasian people I saw anywhere. We played in Las Cruces at an awesome little performance space called Equinox owned and operated by a 23 year old woman named Jasmine. She brought out a great crowd for us who received our music very well. We were entertained before the show at the Mexican restaurant next door by an amazing mariachi band who charged $5 per song performed. Hey, there may be something to that...! One of the opening acts for our gig was an artist named Justin MacDonald who put his voice and acoustic guitar through loop and delay pedals to create an ambient sound that I could only compare to the second side of "Low".

While in El Paso, I received the tragic news that one of my favorite singer/songwriters, Will Owsley, had taken his own life. Owsley, as I knew him, the moniker under which he released his albums, was an old friend of my dad's and one of the greatest unknown power pop artists I'd ever heard. I got his first album when I was in sixth grade and probably have listened to it about once a week ever since. I got to meet him a few times and I even wrote him recently just to tell him how much his music meant to me but sadly I guess he'd come to a point where he couldn't see that life was worth sticking around for. I wish the whole world could hear his music. He was really that good.

We had our longest drive yet the next day from El Paso to Austin. It is said that they like things big in Texas probably because they can relate to it. Texas is huge! We passed a pickup truck with horns coming out of the front and another truck towing a tractor that said "Manly" on the back...as if people needed reminding! We stayed with my cousin Larisa and her husband Jason. I got to meet my new cousin, their daughter Elodie who at two years old is already a Beatles fanatic! Start 'em young is what I say...

Austin reminded me a lot of Nashville at least aesthetically and culturally too. It was definitely a southern city but also had its own freak flag. It was cool to be in a city that was so much about music. I wish we would have gotten to explore it a bit more than we did and we may get our chance this weekend.

One of the highlights of the tour so far for me was getting to see my old friend Paige. Paige and I have known each other for probably eleven years or so and when she lived in LA she used to come up to Sacramento pretty regularly and play shows with me. She sang on a few songs on my album and I've always felt our voices had a really special blend. She moved back home to Texas about five years ago and we haven't seen each other since. Seeing her on Tuesday and catching up was really great. We had about two hours to pull a set together of old and new songs which of course included a lot of "well...I guess we'll just wing that part!" but it was also cool how much we remembered and that our voices still sounded great together. The venue was pretty empty when we played but we had a lot of fun. Hopefully it will be less than five years before our next gig together!

Ricky and I made the three hour drive to Dallas after the show to my grandpa's (or Goomba as he is affectionately known by his grandchildren). It has been more than four years since I was last here and it was great after a week or so of sleeping on strangers' couches and motel beds to finally be somewhere familiar. The Dallas gig we played tonight at Opening Bell Coffee was awesome. We played to a packed house and got one of the best responses we've gotten all tour. We just about sold out of all the CD's we had in our briefcase!

So that brings us up to the moment. We play Houston tomorrow night (or I guess tonight by the look of the time). I'll leave you now with way more videos than you could ever want.

Here's my tribute to Owsley. This is my cover of his song "Class Clown". This song has always made me pretty emotional but especially now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_YtxzIFHTE

Here are some videos of Ricky and I on the road. Pure indulgence. Don't watch these if you don't...in fact don't watch these at all. Skip these all together:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Yf-kXbLadY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeilRyvdYhk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylS2DSu6ez0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7-LGzaaL84
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1vaqmdg_ug

Here's Ricky performing at Momo's in Austin:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLnu7jnMF-c

Here's most of Paige's and my set at Momo's. As you'll hear by the applause, the room was obviously packed...;0) :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OIY32fcI8A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuNiC5YUmms
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mti97JfhDoo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bfs_vCVG4w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlmKaN6p1BE

Here are a few videos from tonight at Opening Bell:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wNu9shJics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgWw0ELjV9Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DW2Rzk26PAY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fasg2xWN6tY

"Bunnies are as tasty as they are cute!"

Three guesses which one of us is responsible for that heinous quote...! I'll never tell...

Well I suppose you have to stop doing stuff in order to have time to write about it. I've had the whole week at home before we start this thing up for real which you'd think would have given me plenty of time to rest up and write a new entry but when you've only got thirteen shows lined up in a month and a half of traveling...well, there is no rest! I've been emailing probably close to fifty venues a day and maybe one out of all of them will write me back just to tell me that they can't do anything for me. It's like finding a needle in a haystack looking for gigs literally everywhere in the country which has accounted for and will account for some of the strange routing on this tour so far. This is our first tour and I'm basically asking venues to take a chance on two out of town artists with virtually no fan base outside of our hometown, so I've pretty much been taking whatever venues have been willing to take us. It has and should continue to make this tour a lot more interesting...!

Let's see where did I leave off...?  We've been having an absolute blast! Caitlin, Ricky and I are three of the strangest people I have ever come in contact with and the feeling is mutual between us which is why I think we enjoy each others company so much. We drive each other crazy at times but there's no one on earth I'd rather be doing this with. Only we would think each other was funny...!

The first thing that needs to be said is that we have been meeting the most incredibly gracious people on this tour. A huge shout out needs to be made to the Grace family, Craig Leve, Max Wood and Ricky's Uncle Carson for all being gracious enough to host two musicians and one musician's girlfriend for a night or two or three. We've been made to feel like family by everyone and it's great to know that we're making some awesome friends that we can look forward to visiting next time around.

The city we ended up spending the most time in was Seattle. Any ideas about Seattle being this gloomy and rainy place that made everyone want to kill themselves were totally vanquished by the beautiful clear spring day that greeted us there and remained for the extent of our visit. We played our first show in Seattle at a burlesque club called the Can Can opening up for Max's band (Max hosted put us up and put up with us for our first two nights in town), James Lanman and the Good Hurt and excellent power-pop band who included in their set an excellent cover of the Beatles' "I've Just Seen A Face". Ricky and I and the other guys in James's band had a good laugh trying on the bizarre costumes in our "dressing room" which was apparently used for all the shows held at that particular club and was full of full-bodied animal suits, masks, goggles and objects that in the context of a burlesque club we really didn't want to know what they were! Caitlin had a photo shoot that day and was supposed to be dropped off at the club afterward but instead was left at the wrong place without a cell phone and Ricky and I had to go on a detective hunt through the city to find her (okay maybe I'm making it sound a bit more dramatic than it was)!

It was strange having the next two days with no gigs as we had just played the past four days straight. Ricky and I both were going through gig withdrawals cold turkey and even the open mic we did one of the days was not enough to satisfy our fix. Luckily we were staying with an incredibly nice family, the Graces, who couldn't have made us feel more welcome for the three days we stayed with them. Stephen and Wendy used to know my dad way back when and were both heavily into music and photography which worked great for us! They had two daughters around our age, Skye and Stephanie, and Stephanie acted as our official tour guide of Seattle showing us the best thrift stores and the best place to get popcorn drenched in truffle oil which is actually quite delicious! She even took Ricky and I (while Caitlin was at another photo shoot) to have a fish thrown over our heads at Pike Place Market which is apparently what you're supposed to do at Pike Place Market. The next gig we played that week (also at a burlesque club--we're finding our niche!) was probably the best one of the tour so far. It was in an actual theater which meant no espresso machines going off throughout the show, where people sat in rows doing nothing but watch music and it was actually pretty full for our set. We got to play for close to an hour and a half straight and the crowd seemed to really love it and when the audience is into it, it definitely helps me be more into it as well. We left Seattle feeling like we had gained another home away from home.

The next evening we played a house concert in Eugene at the home of Craig Leve, the radio DJ who had hosted us on his show the week before. It was the first house concert I'd ever played besides the ones I perform for myself in my room at least once a week. It ended up being a great gig though; Craig had managed to pack his living room with enough classic pop lovers to ensure that we'd make at least a few new fans by the end of the night. And I finally got to upload a ton of new music from Craig's vast collection. Looking forward to discovering Gene Clark, Burt Bacharach, Gram Parsons and Nick Lowe among others....

We had scheduled our Eugene gig sandwiched between our Seattle trip and our Yakima gig because we had been told that Yakima was in southern Washington and not too far out of the way. In fact, to our slight dismay, we discovered that Yakima was actually a full 5 1/2 hours away mainly through uninhabited woods no less. While that was intimidating in theory, the drive itself proved to be the most rewarding one of the tour so far. Lush green plateaus and mountains lined our highway path which ran a tightrope between an aging railroad track and an ageless river. Waterfalls could be seen whispering their way down the sides of cliffs and hawks and eagles soared overhead, silently chiding how primitive our human attempts at speeding through this sacred landscape were compared to theirs. It's interesting because while the big cities of Portland and Seattle are what make it onto the map as the great epicenters of culture, there was absolutely no way to argue that their relevance to this world even approached the grand natural splendor that surrounded us on our car ride through the supposed "middle of nowhere"...or the outskirts of everywhere! The gig in Yakima ended up being probably the most ramshackle one of the tour. I think Ricky and I both tripped over a cord or messed up a lyric or just burst out laughing at some point or another through every song. It was a fun show though and the two highlights for me were getting to sing "Don't Look Away" with Caitlin for the first time on tour and hearing Ricky's softly finger picked nylon string guitar coming through a guitar amp we could not figure out how to turn the distortion off of! After the show, we went to dinner with the Autumn Electric who had also played on the bill and another audience member who gave us a broken saxophone as a parting gift!

We drove back to Portland that night; I don't think we got into Ricky's Uncle Carson's house once not at 5am! The next morning walking back to the car after having breakfast with Ricky's aunt and uncle, we happened upon a girl sitting on the sidewalk playing the most amazing accordion music and singing her heart out. She told us that she had joined the circus a while back and had fallen in love with an accordion player and was now busking to raise money so she make the trek to be reunited with him and receive "the most important accordion lesson of my life". You can't make this stuff up!

It was strange driving back to Sacramento that day, partially because it was hard to remind ourselves that this was only the end of the first little tour warm up trip and for how unfamiliar it felt to be in a place so familiar, something we all felt as we drove off the Laguna Blvd exit after a week spent in unknown territory. We still had an encore trip to make, and the next afternoon (now with Amy on board..as if one photographer wasn't enough!) we piled back into the van for a trip to one of my favorite cities, Santa Cruz, to play at one of my favorite venues, the Abbey. The Abbey is attached to Vintage Faith Church which is where I attended during my year I spent at UCSC. It was strange thinking that if I had stuck around, I would be graduating this semester.... The evening church service before our show featured some guest musicians from Korea (I didn't get if it was north or south) who played some amazing instruments, the names of which regrettably my tongue is not dexterous enough to pronounce. The music was like nothing we'd ever heard before and their rendition of "Amazing Grace" with the rest of the American worship band was beyond haunting. It was a hard act to follow, to say the least.

Our last show of this particular leg of the tour was in West Hollywood at the Cat Club the next day. Besides the people who had actually come with us in the band, this show had a total of two audience members, a record for this tour! Haha... Thankfully one of the audience members was my old friend Anna who I went to middle school/hippie school with in Nashville and who had been at probably one of the first gigs I ever did. The other audience member was a musician friend of Ricky's who plays keyboards for everyone and their mother in LA and we had a great time hanging out with him over Mexican food after the show.

And then it was over..for the week that is. We dropped Caitlin off in Merced on our way back up to Sac. Caitlin will be joining us in New York at the end of May for her birthday, but I sure am going to miss her between now and then. I'm a little nervous but mainly incredibly excited to take off tomorrow afternoon to tour for an entire month and a half. We still have quite a few holes to fill with booking shows but hopefully those will all fall in along the way. Anyway, I'd better get to my last night of sleep in my own bed so I'll leave you with a few pictures from the trip.

So I was half way through writing this eloquently composed journal entry about our touring exploits when my computer malfunctioned and deleted the whole thing. I'm never able to just immediately start over and rewrite the whole thing so I had to give it 12 hours or so before trying again... A few things I've learned so far on tour:

*When buying a toothbrush, do not pick the cheapest one they have at Walgreens. A sufficient amount of toothpaste does not fit on the bristles. Consider yourself worth the extra few bucks and buy at least the $6 toothbrush as opposed to the $2 one.

*When packing the van, put the musical equipment on one side of the trunk and the bedding and everything else on the other side instead of everything on top of each other so you don't have to unpack everything to unpack anything.

*Always always make sure the box of cheerios you've brought along with you in the car is completely closed before you start driving!

Ah what pearls of wisdom you pick up from just 96 hours or so on the road. I've probably only spent about 14 or so of those hours sleeping so needless to say, I'm a little bit jumbled but hopefully my brain can work in a linear enough fashion to give you a feel of what we've been up to the past few days....

Portland was amazing! I could totally see myself living there someday. We spent most of Thursday afternoon exploring the Hawthorne Blvd area which reminded me of Pacific Ave in Santa Cruz or Telegraph Ave in Berkeley only somehow seemed even more hippie-ish if that's even possible. Our gig that night was at a gelato shop called LeGong, supposedly for the large gong that hung on the wall accompanied by a mallet and the instruction to please strike it, cozy enough to barely fit the twelve people or so who showed up to watch. The show was set up by my old friend Brian who I had been in the winning Stairway to Stardom band with back in 2001 when I was 13. He mentioned beforehand that he had a gift for me which turned out to be a backpack guitar that had been signed by all the members of our Stairway band, Soul Pop Symphony. Very cool gift. The show itself was fun and a good way to start things off. Ricky and I are by no means hipsters so playing to a crowd full of them can often be intimidating but I think even they appreciated a set full of music that they didn't have to "get" but could just enjoy.

After the show we drove two hours south to Eugene for a radio interview in the morning. The radio host did more than just host us on the radio but actually hosted us at his house for the night or what was left of it by the time we arrived. The room we stayed in was covered wall to wall with CD's that were almost weirdly in tune with my tastes and it was all Caitlin and Ricky could do to convince me to spend the night sleeping rather than uploading music onto my iTunes. The interview itself was lots of fun. I haven't done a whole lot of stuff on the radio but I've always been told I have a face for it...;0)

We drove up to Portland after that to regroup ourselves and get a few more hours of sleep in at Ricky's uncle's house and then it was off to McKenna...where ever that was! I didn't have too high hopes for this gig as nobody we had mentioned it to so far on the trip had even heard of the city. We drove for what seemed like hours in the woods and after passing one too many "Bear Crossing" signs, I was about ready to turn back. Luckily we found the venue soon and it ended up being great. The owner had actually filled the place with people anxiously awaiting our arrival. Besides the keyboard stand all but collapsing in the middle of the set, the show was awesome and went over great with the audience. One guy in the front requested a Bob Dylan song and when I asked which one he'd like to hear, he replied, "Ring of Fire!" Hmmm....

We explored the Ballard area of Seattle the next day which was filled with coffee and curiosity shops. We spent some time in a guitar shop and it's very hard to get a 12-string out of my hands once it gets there. I was exhausted by this point so by the time we reached the gig in Tacoma that night, I was pretty beat. The show still went well especially on account of our five-year old "groupies" who danced at the front of the stage for Ricky's entire set.

So that's the tour so far in a nutshell. Of course a video is worth a million words. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6kocXj2gYQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j64vcRu4Wnw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXeOnfjcs1s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ETBOiZHvu8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7-QqCzib9U

Hello!

Well, it was as I predicted that I don't think the fact of going on tour completely registered with me until about an hour after passing Arco Arena in Ricky's big white Town and Country it's seemingly endless capacity, like Mary Poppins's bag, filled to the highest degree possible. We had planned on leaving by 10am yesterday morning--no easy feat for couple of 22 year old's whose normal sleep schedule is 3am-3pm--but then Ricky called to tell me that her drivers license and ATM card had been stolen, an unfortunately timed event in a hard week full of unfortunate events for Ricky. Caitlin and I were packed by noon or so and then spent the rest of the beautiful spring day on my front porch learning harmonies (check out our version of a classic Neil Young song that I posted yesterday) and watching hummingbirds flutter their wings at seemingly a million miles per second hovering still in one spot. Ricky finally arrived around 6, emotionally drained and ready to crash in the back seat after a week of very little sleep. It was not the best foot to start the tour on, especially leaving at a time guaranteed to put us at our destination close to sunrise, but once we were on the road with Sam Cooke, Patsy Cline, the Kinks, and Tom Waits cheering us on from the car speakers, we couldn't help but be anything but exhilarated to be finally on our way to Portland on the first day of this tour we had been discussing and planning for so many months. It was my first time driving for ten hours straight but besides my hands feeling as though they had started growing roots into the steering wheel by about hour 5 or so, it really wasn't nearly as fatiguing as I had expected; I have a bit of a talent for staying up until 5am doing nothing but listen to music! We arrived at Ricky's uncle's house around 5:30 and that's about the last I remember before waking up on a futon in an upstairs room overlooking a shady rain drenched street around 1pm, ready to explore Portland. I may try to post something later, but I suppose it's about time I officially started my day...! :0)
Peace,
Adrian

Happy New Year!  Tomorrow I go into David Houston's studio to finish off a track I've been working on for what seems like eons.  Three things left to do...  First is a new lead vocal from me.  I've been taking vocal lessons for the last couple of months (something I'd been swearing to start for the previous six months or so...oh well, better late than never) so I wanted to take another crack at it with my new mad phat skillz!  Second is to put on a new background vocal.  I had done some harmonies myself a few months back which sound okay, but this song in particular will benefit will have a few different voices on it.  So my old friend Natalie Gordon will be coming in to lay those down.  Last but not least is a violin part.  Originally I had conceded to just using a string sample to do the string parts, which is never my favorite route to go, but seemed to be the most efficient way to go at the time.  Predictably, they sounded fake so the next thing we tried was going totally in the fake direction and replacing it with a mellotron patch.  That sounded a lot more bearable but the end, the song needed real strings and tomorrow it shall receive real strings!  It will still need to get a final mix afterwards, but you will hear this soon, oh yes!

In the meantime...Mark Twain writes in Letters To The Earth: "Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong and which course is patriotic and which isn't.  You cannot shirk this and be a man.  To decide it against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may.  If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country-- hold up your head!  You have nothing to be ashamed of."  End quote.  All good and fine.  I think any free thinking citizen would think the same but what he writes next is very interesting: "Only when a republic's life is in danger should a man uphold his government when it is in the wrong.  There is no other time."  This is a curious notion and one I'm not sure how I feel about.  Should a republic's life be defended even when it is gravely in the wrong?  This could be seen as a matter of choosing to lose a battle in order to win a war, deciding that the republic in and of itself is more good as an entity than it is wrong on a particular issue.  Twain however states this as a rule rather than something to be taken into account on a case by case basis.  Would Twain have applied this to Nazi Germany or even the US in the time of Vietnam?  Would Twain allow that not every republic's life is worth saving?  The two deciding factors for me would be the heart of the republic itself, and secondly, what the alternative would be.  Take the United States for example.  I am very patriotic about the idea of the United States even if it was never actually intended to be a reality.  An ideal can begin as a lie but if those who believe it outnumber those who concocted it then it has the potential to become the truth.  On the other hand, the intentions of the United States actually carrying out these ideals may be far from pure and it might do us good for someone to come along and "civilize" us...just who the new "civilizers" were make a big difference as to what side I would be on!  What do you think about that?

In other news I'll be playing my second ever show in Los Angeles on January 21st at Genghis Cohen.  Joining me and also performing her own set will be my good friend Ricky Berger who I don't hesitate calling a musical genius.  If you're reading this and you live in the LA area, please come out!  I'm looking to move down there in the next few months so it'd be great to meet some new people!

Anyway, that's all for now folks!
  Peace,
     Adrian

Wow this journal thing has been collecting dust for a while now...  Tomorrow is a day I have been looking forward to for a while now.  Opening day for the studio!  Which studio?  THE STUDIO!  The studio at which I will be recording my next album!

I don't think it has a name.

But two people who might be even more excited than I am about tomorrow are Bruce Spencer and Mark Harmon who built the studio...with their bare hands!...., the product of close to a year of hard work.  I knew Bruce and Mark when I was a little kid and then didn't see them again until very recently when they very graciously offered to record my next album for me as the kick off project for their studio and the label that they're going to be forming in conjunction with it.  The label actually has a name and that name is Blue Limit.  Maybe they'll let me name the studio.  We shall see...

Most importantly it marks in many ways the restarting of my "career".  I've kind of been at a bit of a standstill for the last....oh I don't know....period of time.  My last (and first) album came out over two years ago.  I don't currently have a band to rehearse with.  I'm doing some solo gigs here and there but not really seeing a whole lot of growth in that area either.  It's been a frustrating period, but what's been maybe hardest of all has been the fact that I have this pile of songs that I've been sitting on that just keeps growing and growing and I haven't had much of an outlet through which to share them.  I mean performing acoustically is great and has it's own charm to it and is definitely something I really enjoy doing, but when I really think of where my songs are ever going to be best represented it's in the studio where I truly have a limitless palette to work with.  Starting this new album is going to be amazing, for me at least.  I really want to make something great!  That's not an arrogant or pretentious statement; I just want this next album--or anything I put out for that matter--to be my best work.  Anyway....the actual starting of the album may still be a few weeks away, but this grand opening of the studio that's happening tomorrow (or today actually...look at the time!) is a big milestone that sort of marks the start of this whole process.  It's just been way too long since I've worked on any sort of recording project (besides one song that I actually already finished for the album over the past year....more on this later).  I almost feel malnourished or something, like I haven't eaten anything nutritious in a long long time or like a vampire who hasn't tasted blood in many nights....okay now it's sounding a bit weird....but I think you get the gist of what I'm saying.  Or maybe not.  I'm just excited!

In the meantime, I am still playing shows and just trying to improve on everything and anything that has to do with this music passion of mine which I so audaciously hope to make a living off of some day.  I've been breaking out the old electric guitar more lately and trying to get more into that.  I actually sequenced all the Beatles tracks I have on my iTunes onto one playlist and put them all, bootlegs and released stuff alike, in the order that they were recorded and have just been listening to them in succession.  There aren't a whole lot of artists out there worth doing that for, but the Beatles are definitely one of them.  I'm actually in the beginning stages of planning my first ever tour for the beginning of next year once recording is finished.  It will probably just be a California tour and I'm thinking I might just hit colleges.  If you go to college in California and would like to have me perform, please let me know and put me in touch with whoever it is that runs that sort of thing at your school!

That's it for now.  I'm going to try to start updating this thing more often.  I always say that, but I'll definitely give it a shot.  I'd love to hear from anyone who reads this, any thoughts, or questions, or comments, or anything....just something to let me know people are reading!  Talk to you later.
  Peace,
    Adrian

And shoes!  And canoes!  Okay...  I'm sitting on the porch at the new house I'm renting a room in and it seems as though Fleet Week has begun.  Fleet Week is a big air show that happens every year in San Francisco where these Blue Angel fighter planes fly over the city, sneering in the face of Newton and giving the local birds an lifelong inferiority complex. 

Needless to say, it's a very loud.

This post, composed on the 68th anniversary of the birth of the patron-saint Lennon, is mainly about how there's actually not a lot to report for the month of October.  That said, there's actually quite a bit that I want to inform all you readers out there (all two of you) on.

Strategy....  We're probably going to start doing less gigs.  Sounds like a good plan?  Here's the reasoning for this.  One of our biggest challenges has always been getting people to come to shows.  I don't know what the source of this problem is but what I've noticed is that we've been tending to schedule these clusters of three or four shows all within a few days of each other which doesn't allow for much time for individual promotion for each one. 

What are new strategy is going to be is planning maybe only one show per month in a certain area and finding the smallest venue possible to do it in.  The goal then would be to concentrate that whole month on promoting just that one show with the ultimate outcome being packing the venue...even if packing it means only bringing in twenty people.  Once we can bring in twenty people, we'll find a venue where packing it would mean bringing in forty people, and so on and so forth.  This is going to mean increasing visibility in local music rags, both online and off, and also guerilla marketing techniques such as spontaneous performances all around San Francisco.  Keep your eyes out for us in the BART stations in the coming weeks! 

Eventually what we want to do is put together a street team of people who are interested in helping us get the word out on shows and just the group in general.  Let me know if anyone is interested in lending their talents and time to this.

And ultimately, I'd love to hear feedback from anyone reading this what we could do to make you want to come to more shows.  Or come to shows in the first place.

Our next show in San Francisco isn't until November 8th at Brainwash.  Maybe we can make it into a post-election celebration/mourning (I suppose some of us will be celebrating and some of us will be mourning).

In the meantime, I've entered a song once again in the OurStage competition this time in the NoisePop category which will give winners a shot at playing the NoisePop festival here in SF which would be very cool.  Go to www.ourstage.com, go to music, and then scroll down and click on the NoisePop 2009 category.  Two random songs will pop and you'll be asked to say which one you like better and by how much.  Choose one and two more will come up.  Eventually my song "Clown Review" will show up.  Playing NoisePop would be a huge step forward for us.

I'm hoping to start recording demos soon for a new album or a new something.  I don't know how long it will be before I end up doing a new album.  I don't fee like the first one has reached it's potential audience yet.  I also don't really want to record another album until I have the resources I need to really make it great.  It's frustrating because I have probably enough songs for about three albums stored up.  I'm going to start making Garage Band demos of some of the songs and maybe I'll post them on here....if you're good!

I think that's about all I've got for now.  I'm reading a book called "Zen and the Art of Motorcylce Maintenance" which is something of a classic and is an amazing book.  I highly recommend it!

Peace,
   Adrian

When I first put up this website, one of the first things that I decided I wanted on here was a journal of sorts or blog if that's what they're calling it these days which would be my way of connecting with people through who visit this website, and post news that was not necessarily newsworthy enough to send out in an email, but just day to day stuff that may be of curiosity to anyone who would happen to be visiting the site.  Also, it's a great way to excersise my writing skills in a format other than an homework assignment essay!  Alas, a year and a half at least has passed since my last post!  It's not like I haven't had much to talk about either.  Countless potential blog topics were passed by in favor of...whatever else I happened to be doing that day/night besides journaling on my website.  So here I am a year an a half after my last posting, vowing once again to keep this thing up!  But this time at least I'll have help...!

Where to begin....  Back in fourth grade when I was ten (it's weird to have memories that I can say were over a decade ago...totally not used to that yet!) and still living in Franklin, TN, I remember going table to table in the lunch room at Harpeth Academy asking each and every person whether or not they wanted to be in my band.  Most kids just gave me dirty looks and went back to eating lunch (I was never very popular in elementary school to say the least!).  Others would look at me dumbfoundedly and then kind of mumble, "Well I took piano lessons for a little while..." to which I replied, "Great you're in my band!" and moved on.  By the end of the day I had about 9 people in my "band"!  Three of them ended up sticking it out enough to play with me at the annual school talent show a few weeks later.  We were called the Wave Riders.  Later in middle school, I got together with a couple of musician friends of mine I knew from church (one of whom was my life long and counting friend Robby Mogan--check out his music at myspace.com/theisabellaorchestra) and we actually got it together enough to practice about once a week and play the every so often school or church picnic or talent show or any other sort of event.  I played the drums in the band and sang lead and even in those days was a bit of a slave driver when it came to getting the arrangements and chord charts to my songs down perfectly.  When I moved back to Sacramento just in time to start high school, one of the first things I set about doing was putting a band together.  I was attending a performing arts charter school so I figured finding bandmates wouldn't be too difficult.  Unfortunately it proved to be very difficult and aside from a few short lived projects here and there (the best of these being a Crosby Stills and Nash styled trio of singer/songwriters called the Gathering) I grimly accepted the likely future of being a solo artist, at least for the time being.  I think my initial reluctance to that path was that in all of my songs, I always heard in my head complex arrangements that I didn't feel like could be translated efficiently by a solo artist.  My dad reminded me that despite whatever I felt like I was missing, the audience only heard the song as it was presented to them and, if it was a good song, would be able to enjoy it without feeling like it was missing anything.  So that's what I did for the remaider of high school: lugged my acoustic guitar and my less than trusty keyboard to coffeeshop after coffeeshop and played alone.  Over that time, I built up a very large repertoire of original songs and got comfortable with the stage (or lack thereof at most venues), but still there was that gnawing feeling that it just wasn't all that it could be.  Most of my biggest influences were and are bands or at least singer/songwriters backed by a regular group of players (a la Elvis Costello and the Attractions, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, etc) and the one man show just wasn't cutting it for me as far as what I wanted for my music.  In the meantime I was in the process of making my album; at least in the context of the studio, I could flesh out all my ideas for the full band arrangement I had always intended for my songs.  The album ended up being something I was very happy with but it increased my longing even further to be able to perform those songs in their full arrangements live.  Finally upon moving to San Francisco a year ago, I plunged full force into the task of assembling a band.  My primary strategy?  Craigslist!  My secondary strategy?  Craigslist!  All romantic ideas of meeting my ideal artistic soulmate at some equivalent of the Wooten Church Fete were put aside, as I posted ad after ad on that venerable list of Craig.  The wording changed, the tone changed, the requirements changed....I don't even know how many people I ended up auditioning. 

And then all of a sudden, after about eight months of this, it just sort of happened...I had a band!  One after another they just sort of filed in...first this quiet 18 year old kid with rings on his fingers, driving a mercedes benz, and whose idea of a guitar audition was to play "Perfect Day" by Lou Reed...then this enthusiastic, energetic guy with blonde not quite dreadlocks who first showed up at my house with a flute and really strange looking and sounding drum which I soon learned was a brand new acoustic instrument from Switzerland called a Hang drum...then a girl, fresh into town from Grass Valley to study animation at the Academy of Art who set about looking for a band before even finding a job and who once bought herself a pony completely with busking money....and finally a drummer, the sixth one we tried out and who believe it or not was actually learned the songs before coming to his audition!  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Jimmy Niven, Daniel Tucker, Nicole Ridgwell, Josh McBee, and yours truly, collectively henceforth known as the Coincidence!

All that is to say I feel like things can really begin now.  I feel like everything in my musical life has led up to this point where I now have a band that is fully capable of translating my ideas into performable realities and that can take on an identity of its own.  We're definitely still growing as a group and getting our feet on the ground--obviously that's expected at this stage in the game and hopefully will never stop--but the band really is sounding great, certainly beyond what you would expect from a group of young adults who've only been playing all together for a little over a month and who all found each other on Craigslist.  Perhaps most importantly, the personal dynamic is amazing in this band.  We couldn't be more different from another and probably wouldn't have thought to have anything to do with each other had it not been for music, but we've managed to really bond over the time we've been together and are quickly figuring out that it's the differences between us that make this band truly something special.

This space is for you to get to know us.  Sure I'll send out emails to let you know about all our upcoming gigs and releases and whatever other "headline news" we may have going on.  But check here if you want to find out what happens to us in real life when we're not onstage pretending to be rock stars.  For example, those of you who get my emails will know that we just played Hotel Utah two nights ago.  Those of you who frequent this journal page would then find out that after the gig got out around 1:30am Daniel, Nicole, Nicole's mom, and one of Nicole's housemates actually spent the next two hours wandering around downtown trying to find a bus or a taxi to take us home!  No taxi wanted to put five people and lots of instruments into their vehicles so we eventually had to call one in.  Or...I sent out an email a few weeks ago announcing our first out of California gig, the Off the Grid Festival in Eugene, OR.  The journal entry would have then gone into great detail into getting lost in Wolf Creek in the middle of the night looking for a gas station and Daniel mistaking a statue of a man with an ax as a real person.  Or how after two days of not showering, on the way back from the festival we pulled over to the side of the road and went swimming in the river.  Or the guys we met at the gas station on the way up who gave us free muffins and Gatoraide and prayed over the trip.  Stuff like that.  Also, I'll just ramble, as I'm good at doing, about just current thoughts I'm having about the band, about music, and just about life in general.  Hopefully I can get the others to post from time to time as well so you can get to know them as well.  Anyway, this was a long post to say not too much, but I just thought it was time to officially announce the new band, and promise that this space will be from this point on kept up to date.  Alright well that will do it for now...
  Peace,
    Adrian