Dave's Road Journal

Hello. It's been a while so I figured I'd type for a while and see what happens. We're in Atlanta--it's just about three months for me now. The transition down here turned out to be a lot harder than I imagined when we were laughing at the adventure ahead. The pizza sucks. For a while I wondered if we were going to end up back in Chicago, but it looks like we're going to stay in Atlanta for a while. In a way it's funny to me that we're here because years ago I was writing a song about coming down here. I might try and dig that out of the archive sometime and see if it was actually going to be any good--usually when I bury them they should stay there... As far as music goes, I do have this thing I keep playing again and again and I have a chorus and pre-chorus thing...I think. Anyway, I've got a couple sections written and maybe it will turn into something, but I'm going to overthink it so it's slow coming. My studio is getting down here next week so maybe I'll work on it. Who knows...if I DO actually finish a song I see free music releases in the future....

Have a safe holiday!

This is kind of surreal to write so it may seem scattered. Right now as I write, there is a very large "For Sale" sign in my front lawn. I think the post it's on is bigger than the mailbox. The sign looks sturdier than my mailbox. It's not going anywhere. We are. My family is moving. And not like we were in Schaumburg and now we're in Orland Park or Naperville or something. We're really moving as in about 800 miles closer to the equator than we are now. Well maybe not quite 800 since we're moving a bit east, too. But we'll be closer. No more Chicago winters. No more Chicago. It has been a hard decision, but after a lot of time my wife and I have decided to leave the land I've lived in since birth. It's wild. At some point in the next two months we will be calling the Atlanta area home. So it looks like that band thing we were working on isn't going to happen right now. Maybe something will happen in Atlanta, but I'm not going to say anything anymore until a gig is booked. Thanks to everyone in the Chicago area for supporting my music and the band(s) I played with over the last ten years. I will miss you all.

I find it both interesting, yet incredibly frustrating that as you get older time seems to move faster. I remember as a kid how twenty minutes seemed like a lifetime or more, and now twenty minutes seems like it's rarely enough time to do much of anything of substance. I don't think it should be that way...

Point is, I thought we would have accomplished a lot more this year by this point, but it hasn't happened, yet. I spent most of March being sick as my son spread the plagues he picked up at daycare so nothing much happened. Last weekend I was in the studio pseudo-engineering and producing a project for some friends. It got me really itching so hopefully soon there will be new songs and maybe some live dates to go with them.

If you haven't been to my MySpace page, go check it out. I'm blogging over there a bit, and new music will probably show up there first.

I spent the day moving my studio into our rehearsal space. Seems that the two should probably be one. Next step is to start working on demoes of some of the new songs. I'd really like to do another record this year. I'm not sure we'll get that far, but I just feel like making some new music. I'll get it out there one way or the other. Plus I really want to get a recording of Still Shines the way we did it a few weeks ago. It's probably all in my head at this point...

The most likely place you'll find any new music is over at my MySpace page. Make sure to add me as a friend! I might also start blogging there, too, even though I have stated I would not... For some reason the whole "I'm listening to ... now" seems like a cool thing to use.

I don't know what took so long, but I am officially addicted to Death Cab for Cutie. I will follow you into the dark.

I'm continuing to chip away at my "catalog" of songs with the band. I'm still not sure if this is going to be "my" band or if this is going to be a new band altogether. Either way we're starting with the stuff on Falling Off the Merry-Go-Round.

Something really clicked with Still Shines over the weekend. I wrote the song about 8 years ago. I remember it was a really cool thing because people were singing along from the first time we played it. That had never happened before so I thought it was pretty cool at the time. But then over the years I think whatever spark that song had that got people singing sort of faded away.

Last weekend was the first time in a long time that I was really digging the song. Don't get me wrong, I am happy with the way it came out on the CD, but this past weekend made me want to go record a live album just so that I have an excuse to put it back out there. The band was in the zone. It was way cool. I'm going to try and start recording these rehearsals so that maybe if something cool like that happens I can post it here.

More soon....

We rehearsed last weekend. It was the first time playing some of my songs in a very long time and longer still with a band. There's still a long way to go with things, but there was something that felt really cool kicking in to "Better in the Morning". Gerbitz lit into the song on drums like we had just played it yesterday. I'm still feeling things out so we shall see what happens. Felt pretty freaking good, though.