This is so moving. She is the songbird.

A great cover of a great song. Enjoy!

Here are some pictures from one of the shows that we played with Wilco. It was an amazing time and these are some great photos. Thanks for taking them and posting them Chris. We played 3 shows on October 4th, 6th, and 8th as the opening act for Wilco and each show was a great experience. The guys in Wilco are incredibly talented and incredibly nice. We would be grateful for the opportunity to open for them again.

Revealed: The identity of the BBC’s latest star | the Mail on Sunday – This is amazing.

jose gonzalez music – really great songs. Very reminiscent of Nick Drake but original.

Audiopad – This would be really cool to have.

I have wanted to set my pc up for recording for awhile now but like everyone else that wants to do it strictly as a hobby, I don’t want to spend a lot of money. I had looked into getting a pci sound card for around $100 or so, but the only one that I found was M Audios Audiophile 2496. It looked like it would be good for what I want to do, but it does not come with any software (not even a “lite” version). I called the good folks at zzounds and after talking to a couple of different people I was completely turned around about the PCI approach and was told that for what I want to do and with the machine I have, I should look into the Alesis MultiMix 8USB Mixer with USB Audio. I am not looking to set up a big studio I am just wanting a “sketchbook” if you will. And this thing has everything that I need plus it includes a copy of the Cubase LE software which should be all that I will ever need. I can’t justify the purchase just yet but I am putting it on my wishlist and maybe for Christmas Santa will think that I have been a good boy.

Apple and the major labels headed for a showdown over iTMS pricing – Engadget – www.engadget.com

Tuesday night I saw Iron &amp Wine at the Bluebird and it was somewhat depressing. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy the albums a lot and I was hoping that the show would be even better but… The Bluebird normally has great sound but the band is touring with their own soundguy and he left a little to be desired. I think he intentionally mixed them quiet, but it made it so difficult to hear the band over the din of the room noise and the fans (of the mechanical variety not the screaming ones) that is was really unenjoyable. What was most frustrating though were the people who did not stop talking throughout the entire show. I kept wondering if they paid the same $12 to get in as everyone else. I don’t go to a lot of shows and it sucks that when I do, I can only think about the fact that I don’t go to many shows because the suck factor usually outweighs the joy factor. Anyway before I get any more negative, I did enjoy the second band, “Band of Horses”, because they were more of a rock band and a bar is a good place to see them. I enjoyed what I could hear of Iron & Wine and I hope that the next time I see them it is in a club with seating or a theatre of some sort. Ideally I would like to see him around a campfire, but I will settle for the theatre.

I apologize for not updating the past few days but we have not had time when we have had internet access. The Salt Lake City, UT show turnout was great and it was the place of our first U.S. encore. The audience was extremely responsive and a couple of people told us that they had waited 4 years to see us. The Kilby Court is a really cool club / artist colony. The club is located at the end of a street along with an artist studio and some houses. It has a courtyard with a fire pit and a separate building for merchandise. We spent the night at the the club and since it was an early show we were able to hang out, after everyone had left, around fire pit drinking a growler of RedRock pale ale. It was great to stay the night there because it made load out the next morning and we were able to take our time since the drive was not far the next day. The unfortunate part about SLC, as well as Boise, was all of the fog. They are experiencing an inversion right now and it has clouded up the cities so that you can’t see them when driving in so we did not get to see the mountains that surround SLC and that are out side of Boise.
The drive to Boise was smooth and went quick compared to the other drives. The scenery was beautiful and the towns were aptly named i.e. Snowville, and Pleasant Valley. The club in Boise, the Neurolux, was a cool club with really great stage sound. It sounded good in the room too, but the stage sound was really great. All of the people were great at the club and we drank Fat Tire beer all night. We had another early show and at 10:30 the club turned into a dance party. Earlier in the evening while eating dinner at Pollo Rey (Chicken King), we talked about going sledding, well once the dance party started we nixed those plans and decided to shake our groove things until 2am. It made the next days drive a little hard but we have pictures to prove that it was well worth it. We stayed with a friend of Kevin’s in a great house. So far if I would have to choose a place to live from the places we have been it would have to be Boise.
The drive to Olympia, WA started around 10:30 and went incredibly well. We drove through OR to avoid the mountains and made it to “Oly” as it is called by the locals, around 6pm. The club is an old garage/storage area similar to Vertigo in Bloomington, but neither the room or the PA are nearly as big. We ate dinner at a local pizza joint called Old School Pizza. It was similar to Rocketts in Bloomington but much bigger, and instead of the walls being covered with records or instruments they were covered with retro-posters. It was very hip. We had our first hardware failure in Oly with the tuning peg for the D string on my guitar broke. I was able to clamp it together that night with my capo but that was not going to last the whole tour. The show was alright but the turn out was not that great. After the show we drove to Portland where we stayed with Chris Bennett. He lives in a great house with a couple of other folks and they were really kind to us. Everyone had a bed and it was dark and quiet so we could actually get some sleep. It was nice to have a day where we did not have to drive. We got up and milled about without any sense of urgency to get on the road and it really relaxes you. The day started with breakfast and then a trip to Chris Bennett’s studio called New Space. It is a great little gallery in the front and a darkroom and photography studio in the back. He has some pieces from Tara Jane O’Neil in the gallery. We then headed across the river to downtown Portland where we hit the most awesome instrument store in hopes to get my guitar fixed. We were successful and the guys there were really cool and super helpful. I could have hung out there all day. They had so many pedals and guitars and amps in this little space. I played a couple of Tremolo pedals and found one by FLIP that was really nice sounding but I was not ready to spend $159 for a pedal since my guitar was being repaired and I hadn’t paid for that yet. Donny and I hung out there long enough that they finished my guitar and it was only $30. They did not have the exact same kind of tuning key but it is a close enough match for now. If I ever want to sell the guitar then I’ll change it out. We left there and headed to Jackpot Records where we all managed to pick something up. I got the Fennesz Cd “Endless Summer” and the girl behind the counter must have thought Donny was cute because she gave him a stack of CD’s for free. Go Donny. We headed up to the club, Doug Fir’s, at 5 for sound check. The club turned out to be the most posh awesome LA meets the Black Lodge from Twin Peaks type place. A sound engineer designed the acoustics of the club so it sounded like a studio in there. The show went well and afterwards we headed over to a cigar bar for drinks and a cigar. That is where I wrote all but the last few sentences of this post. I will try to post more soon.

Last night we played in Denver, CO at the Larimer Lounge. It is a great club with a great group of people running it. The crowd was really very responsive to both us and Chris Brokaw so the long haul from Des Moines, IA was worth it thanks to the crowd. The show that we played was really tight and Donny and Kevin are totally in the groove now. The Maulmeister even got compliments on how tight he was. The club fed us veggie lasagna which was great and helped out with the wallets. A couple of younger fans drove down from Fort Collins, CO and weren’t able to get into the show but we all went to a coffee shop down the street and hung out with them there for awhile. Thanks to Matt and Brett for making the drive even though you couldn’t get in, sorry. We are fortunate enough to know someone here with a comfortable apartment who was willing to put us up for the night with hot showers this morning. That Rules. Now he is making us breakfast for our long haul to Salt Lake City, UT. Thanks, Corey for hooking us up. More to come.

We are in Lawrence, KS and just woke up. We stayed with this guy that Dan knows from doing some recording with him in the past. I brought an inflatable air mattress and it has turned out to be the best decision by far. I actually feel rested now. Our first show was last night at the Jackpot Saloon and it went well. Not as many people there as we had hoped but enough to make it worth the 8 or so hour drive from Chicago. We are off to Des Moines today and Denver tomorrow. If anyone happens upon this and wants to come see us, check out our tour page at the Early Day Miners website.

I was browsing the iTunes music store and I found this iMix (will open iTunes). It is the top 97 (87) songs of 2004 from the radio station that I listened to all through high school. I already own some of the songs and I am thinking about owning a few more. It is Christmas you know.

Well it has been quite a while since my last post and it seems like a lot has happened, so I will start by mentioning that I am posting this using the w.bloggar 4.00 Beta1 tool that was released on 7/7 and it is awesome. I am able to post to multiple categories and it also has custom tags entry for those personal class or id tags such as the one that creates the drop-cap on this website. I only see one problem right now and that is when you publish a post, close the application, and then open it again it opens the last post from the saved local copy, even though it was already posted. The old w.bloggar would save you post locally until you published it then when you opened the application after the publish it would open with a new post. I haven’t used it too much yet but I think that I might be able to set that up in the options section.

Now for updates with me (not that anyone is really concerned or interested). My wife has been throwing up ever since we got back from our week and 2 day trip out west. This past Monday she was hooked up to an I-V for two hours because she had become so dehydrated. She has been better about drinking water but she is on moderate bedrest for a couple of weeks. Since she is in her 10th week and everyone says that it is usually only bad during the first tri-mestser, we are hoping this will pass in two or three weeks.

Also on Monday I received the telephoto (2.0x) and macro/wide angle (.45x) lenses that I ordered from ebay for my Canon Powershot A70. I have not had a lot of time to try them out yet but I did get a chance to use them that night at a show we played with The Race at Second Story that night. I will post some pictures from that later (they are on a different computer). The show went really well and it was so fun to see the boys from The Race again. Their new album “If You Can” is super good and I recommend all to run out and pick it up. You will be most happy I’m sure.

On Tuesday I attended the funeral of a co-worker who died from cancer. His wife appeared strong and together, and that may be because the two of them were able to talk about his passing several days before it occurred. He had been sick for about a year but everyone thought he was on the road to recovery and suddenly within a week he degraded.

The next day I ended up working extra hard on an application that I have been involved in for about 3 months now. I needed to get so much done that on Thursday I came into work at 12noon, went home for dinner around 7, and then came back at 10pm and stayed until 8:43am on Friday. I got most of what I needed done on Friday but I still needed to test the e-commerce credit card verification part but I will do that this weekend and Monday. I was so beat that I ended up sleeping the rest of the day away.

On Thursday I received my copies of the 37Signals, “Defensive Design for the Web” and Dan Cedarholm’s “Web Standards Solutions”. I have not had much time to get into the books but what I have been able to read they both are going to be great. The web standards book looks to be really great because it also discusses proper markup. This is something that the other books I’ve read don’t focus on.

The hardest thing I had to deal with this week also happened on Wednesday when I got a call from my Mom who filled me in on my fathers condition. She said that I should come home soon because he’s so bad that we don’t know how much time he has left. He was diagnosed with Parkinsons about 3 to 4 years ago but he was still able to get around some. For just about the last year though, he has been in a nursing home. About 3 weeks ago he was still able to talk and he was smiling but when I saw him today he couldn’t talk, he barely opened his eyes, and he was barely able to swallow his food. His quality of life appears to be completely gone. Seeing him made me think even harder about the decisions that we make and whether or not I want to continue my work in the world of IT. I never receive the fulfillment from creating yet another web application as I did when I worked as a carpenter and was involved in improving peoples homes. I also don’t do anything physical anymore and that has been really hard on me. I am not good with time and trying to add something else, like working out, to my day is just too hard. I still haven’t come to my conclusion but something will have to happen soon and definitely before the little one comes along. Well this was quite the pouring out of the soul and I apologize for any boredom that may have occurred during the reading of this post but I needed to get it out.