My pal Lis caught REM in Scotland this weekend at T In the Park. She writes about the festival here with her usual wit and flair. You should go read it.
On a side note, I don't believe Lis was born when "Pretty Persuasion" came out on Reckoning. Just a guess. I wonder if they played that like they did in ATL . . .
I'm sitting here eating cold, leftover chicken nuggetty things of some sort, nursing a killer headache, and trying to figure out where the first half of the Summer went. Actually, I know where it went: it's scattered among little league baseball parks around the state of Georgia. My eldest son's all star team won the Dizzy Dean 10 Year Old Division B State Championship last week, thus concluding a baseball Odyssey that really started in February when we began the regular Spring season. It was an incredible, fun, humbling experience to watch these kids build the trust and stamina and friendship it takes to convert individual skill into a state championship.
But baseball is not what I meant to write about here. There are a few things I've meant to blog about but just flat-out haven't. One was a show I did on June 28th at the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany. If you were there, perhaps you will agree it was just one of those shows where something indescribable happens and the whole becomes much greater than the sum of its parts. Mickey Harte talked about this phenomenon in his book Drumming at the Edge of Magic as if the performers and the audience get caught up in some sort of spiritual vortex, participating together in a transcendent experience that neither truly controls.
That's a bit of hyperbole for my little corner of the creative universe, but the night was nice, and there were two absolutely fabulous opening acts: Barbara and Brandon. And my new friend Ron sat in here and there with a slide guitar, and Barbara played Jembe on "101 Degrees," and I just played what I felt like playing, and everything just rolled along. It was the kind of show that makes you want to quit your day job and just throw your fate to the wind. Until you remember that house payment and how you still have to feed and clothe and educate those three kids!
Speaking of great shows, the week before, on 6/21, Shelle and I saw REM at Lakewood Amphitheater. Holy Rock and Roll, Batman! What a show! They played 28 songs for the hometown crowd, and it was just absolute pure energy from start to finish. We had great seats with a good view of center stage, and the show was so good we didn't even mind so much paying $10 for crappy beer. There was a great mix of material from recent albums and old records, including some kickin' cuts like "Driver 8," "Rockville," and "Pretty Persuasion." Highlights included a hugely amped up version of "Harbourcoat," "Fall on Me" with the ex-Smiths (now Modest Mouse) guitarist Johnny Marr, and a beautiful acoustic "Let Me In" with mandolin and three guitars as well as organ (perhaps I loved that as much for hearing Shelle next to me singing harmony as for the performance). Really, though, it was a show of highlights.
On the recording front: I got bupkis. Nada. We haven't done any because we've been too busy with baseball. I have, though, been working on some new songs and making some scratch demos using a neat little digital recorder I borrowed from my neighbor, Dennis. In that same vein, I'm excited to be collaborating a bit with a MySpace friend Heather Fowler. Heather is a very talented writer -- novelist, poet, short fiction author -- who made the "mistake" of expressing an interest in my songs and in songwriting. A couple of emails later, we were swapping melodies and lyrics on our way to a co-written song.
And finally, one more note: My good friend Bud Buckley has had a couple of songs at the top of the Internet charts in the UK. Man, that just blows me away! You can go vote for him here at the Loneboy store. Let's get him back in the #1 slot!
