Tomorrow we’ll begin tracking my new album. That means I won’t sleep tonight. I will most likely spend my night lying in bed, staring at the ceiling (like I can even see that far), and praying. My prayer will probably go something like this:

Dear heavenly father, creator of heaven and earth, please, please, for the love of all that’s holy, don’t let me freak out tomorrow. I am but a lowly, sinful worm. I am chief of all high-strung killjoys. Let me not acquiesce to my jerk-faced flesh. Let me have fun, though fun is often the first to fall victim to my unwillingness to waste time even for a righteous cause. Let me let music happen. Let me not happen to music. You are the creator of music. Help me to remember that. Dear God, let my music glorify you and not me, even though I’ve been working on that one lick for two years now and it might be nice if someone actually noticed. Anyway, you get my point. Lastly, let the musicians like me. Let me be likeable. Don’t let me take any of this too seriously even though there are few things I cherish more than the gift of music. Help me to listen more than talk. And please help me to sing in tune. In Jesus name, Amen.

This week I spent some time putting together some charts for the new tunes. With one tune in particular, called The Temptress, I realized that writing out the chords made the song look quite a bit more complicated than it actually is. It’s certainly not a simple tune but it’s nowhere near as hard as these chord names make it look. Check out the pdf file here.

I finally got the needed repairs done on my saxophone and picked it up from the shop this week. It’s all back in working order now so I took some pictures. Here’s one.

Pretty huh? Word. It’s the real thing. A Selmer Mark VI made in Paris in February of 1958. I just thought I’d let you see it now that it’s been pulled out of retirement.

Angel got even older today. What a shame. As soon as she starts looking as old as she is she’s off to the curb. But until then, her secret is safe with me.

I just love her pretty smile. You had me at Daarrrrr.

Happy Birthday Honey. I love you. Fur rills.

I ordered a new computer for Angel today. Angel has developed a reputation as quite the PC serial killer around these parts, although I think her death toll and my death toll are probably comparable truth be told.

The new computer is out of necessity but I told her I’d get her a new monitor for her birthday, which is this Friday. I’ve got a 21.5″ wide screen flat-panel picked out for her and she’s rubbing it in my face that she’ll finally, after all these years, have a piece of electronic equipment that’s nicer than mine. My monitor is an old 19″ CRT that I’ve had for years and years. I’m a little miffed about that.

I showed up on Jacob Detering’s blog the other day. Check it out if you’re into that sort of thing.

Man I really need to stop neglecting the site.

The official start date has been set for the album. We will begin tracking the drums on March 14th. I’m wetting my pants in anticipation.

I took my sax to the shop a couple of days ago and it turns out that the needed repairs are much less severe than I first thought. So that means I’m only going to have to spend about 20% of the original amount I had planned to spend.

When I took the horn into the shop the repair man opened up the case, looked at the serial number on the horn, looked me in the eye and asked “Do you have any idea how much this horn is worth?” I did actually. Well, I had a ballpark guess and it turns out my guess was low, a few grand low. If I could find a buyer for the horn I would have enough money to buy myself a brand new, very high-end horn and then have enough money left over to get myself completely out of debt except for the house. That’s the truth. Any takers?

Here’s another vlog giving some updates about what’s going on with the album. I apologize that this video player insists that the entire video must load before it starts to play. Please be patient.

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Here is a link to Jacob Detering’s website. I talk about Jacob in the video if you’re wondering why I’m posting the link. He’s the producer for my album.

I highly recommend listening to some of the tunes on his site.

Here’s my first attempt at vlogging.

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I’ve been considering doing some video blogging but I wasn’t sure exactly how I was going to go about it since I don’t really want to put them on YouTube and then embed them here.

I’ve found a solution that I think is going to work. I don’t have it all figured out just yet but here’s a short video of Riley on New Years Eve to show how this player will work.

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Sometimes when I forgo blogging for a while it’s not because I don’t have anything to talk about, it’s because I don’t have the time to talk about it. If I would have been consistently blogging over the past few weeks here are the things I would have talked about.

I had my root canal this past Monday. I intended to write about it as soon as I got home but I could only type out of one side of my mouth and I didn’t want you to laugh at me. He was able to do the entire procedure in the time it takes to listen to Fortunate Son, Come Together, and Bohemian Rhapsody. I know this because I was concentrating intently on the radio so as not to wet myself from all of the skull-grinding ferocity.

There have been two days in the past week where I worked twenty of the twenty-four hours available in a day.

I hope to get some Jason Loller pickups for my Strat for Christmas.

I now weigh 199 pounds. That’s twenty-four pounds lost so far. I had hoped to break the 200 pound mark by Christmas. Mission accomplished.

Whenever I play finger-style acoustic guitar while sitting in the standard playing position my right hand cramps up by the end of the first chorus of whatever song I’m playing. If I’m sitting on my couch with my feet propped up I can play indefinitely. It looks like I’ll need to take my couch and television into the studio when the time comes. And the time is coming.

I met with an incredible producer/engineer who has agreed to record the next album. We’ve been talking a lot about which songs should go on the record and have started to make decisions on arrangement and instrumentation ideas already. I’m very excited. I’m sure I’ll be talking about this more over the next few months.

That should bring us up to date for the time being.

I went to my dentist today for my six month cleaning and check up and for no extra charge (yet) she informed me that I’ll be getting a root canal for Christmas. Yay!

It is approximately 45 degrees in my basement right now so I’ll be a teeth-chattering money’s uncle if I’m going to sit down here and write some long-winded post.

In the last three weeks I’ve lost five more pounds. So that brings me to a total of 20.5 pounds lost over the past nine weeks. I started at 223 and I’m at 202.5 now. 180 is the goal. I’m getting there.