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.

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.

Being that I’m such a huge fan of the notion that music has absolutely zero monetary value I thought I’d pass along a really good album suggestion. Derek Webb’s album “The Ringing Bell” can now be downloaded in its entirety for free. All you have to do is sell out five of your closest friends. It’s worth it, I promise. If you like The Beatles (and who doesn’t, you commie) you’ll probably dig this record. I’ve talked a little bit about Derek previously in this post.

Here’s the page you need to find out more.

Today was our second day to weigh in for the weight loss thing we’re doing at work. I’ve lost six more pounds. So that brings my total to 15.5 pounds lost so far.

That’s all I got. I need to get upstairs. Busy night.

I’ve spoken a little about the orchestral piece I’m writing and I figured I’d let everybody hear what I have so far.

Click here to download a clip of the very, very far from even close to being anywhere remotely near finished recording.

I have no idea when this song will be finished. It won’t be any time soon. I do know that. Writing and preparing this kind of music is an incredibly lengthy process and I’ve got a bunch of stuff I’m working on for the band that is taking priority over this right now.

I originally thought this sounded like a hymn but the more I work on it the less it sounds like a hymn. I do have a couple of lyrics for it but I don’t know if it will end up having vocals or not. We’ll see how it progresses.

The working title is Sola Fide.

Over at Digg there is some sort of top 10, or top 100, or top 3.14 greatest-whatevers-of-all-time list posted about every ten minutes. So I thought I’d do my own.

This is a list of the top 100 greatest guitar tones of all time – starting at number seven.

Weighing in at the bottom of the list is Eric Johnson’s tone on “Cliffs of Dover.” The reason Eric comes in at the bottom is because Eric bleeds phenomenal tone and when you display phenomenal tone on every single song you’ve ever played everyone starts to hate you for showing off.

Number six goes to The Edge for his tone on U2′s “One.” This was quite a departure from his normal Vox+delay thing and it was a great one for sure. The dark and muffled approach is not easy to fit into a radio Pop song.

At number five we have the world-renowned “Brown Sound” of Eddie Van Halen on the song Panama. The bridge of this sucker is where this tone sounds the best. It’s like cinnamon toast with a side of sand paper. Yum!

At number four is Stevie Ray Vaughn’s tone on his cover of “Little Wing.” This is the most compelling argument to date for the fact that God made fingers. Pretty much every guitar player on the planet has gone through a phase where they try to re-create this tone and no one has ever gotten even close.

At number three is the fuzzed-out spookiness of Daniel Lanois’ tone on “Orange Kay” from the “Sling Blade” soundtrack. This tone coupled with this style of playing is so incredibly attractive to me. It’s beauty cannot be overstated.

At number two is Joe Walsh’s tone on The James Gang’s “Funk #49.” This intro gives me chills every time I hear it. There are few things more wonderful than the sound of an amp on the verge of explosion.

And finally at number one we have Paul McCartney’s tone on his song “Jenny Wren.” My jaw has never hit the floor faster than when I first heard this song on my studio monitors. Producer Nigel Godrich should win a Grammy every year for the next 100 years just for capturing this song in such unbelievable detail. So, yes, an acoustic guitar beat all the electric guitars in this list. Maybe that makes me a sissy. Or even worse, a Dave Matthews fan. But this is the essence of guitar tone.

So there you have it. My top 100 list. Yeah, so, maybe I missed one or two. Maybe! But I’m hungry and I really don’t want to spend the entire night on this mess. So back up off me.