Last night I finalized the mix CD to be played at my birthday shindig tomorrow night (drop me a line if you'd like to go). At almost 7 hours long, the MP3 mix is going to be awesome, at least for me. Yesterday evening I headed down to Best Buy to get me one of those MP3 CD players, and they had some for very, very cheap. Unfortunately, the one I bought sounds like it has a chirping cricket (or someone juggling a can of dry beans) stuck inside the right channel, and it likes to skip, oh, say, ten times a song. Ugh, I guess you get what you paid for, but this one is going right back to the store.

I'm really looking forward to my birthday party tomorrow, time to mix friends, make tacos, and welcome my brother up from Los Angeles for the weekend. I hope someone takes pictures.

Well, wouldn't you know it. You can watch online the behind-the-scenes from the filming of the Communique video. I haven't seen it yet, 'cause all my computers aren't very fancy, but I think it's only like 4 or 5 minutes long. We actually had a good time filming, and all the volunteers and tech people were super nice. Still, playing the same song for ten hours straight was tough to do.

I got myself some early birthday presents the other night (the big day is tomorrow, twenty-seven years young, baby) which consisted of a bag of CDs purchased with a record store credit slip I've had for a couple months. I took my time and shopped well, confining 90% of my browsing to the country section to get some good old-tymey music. Picked up CDs from Hank Snow, Flatt & Scruggs, and a my new favorite: Classic Mountain Songs. On the way to the register though, I stopped by the Papa M section and picked up a couple of his travelogue EPs that were released earlier this year. All good stuff.

But yeah, Smithsonian Folkways has put out some great stuff, including Classic Mountain Songs, a compilation that spans Americana genres from bluegrass and country to mountain gospel and mining songs. My favorite track is probably "Sixteen Tons" by George "The Singing Miner" Davis, a regular on WSGS in Hazard, Kentucky from 1947 - 1969. Although made famous by countless country artists, from Johnny Cash to Tennessee Ernie Ford, and widely reported as being a Merle Travis composition, many believe that Davis is the actual author. Check out the MP3 of the week to hear the song. You know when you can rhyme "soul" with "store," you're from Appalachia.

Camping was a lot of fun. Work is not a lot of fun.

So I'm sitting around the office on a slow day daydreaming of taking *actual* roadtrips. Ones like the long drive to Boise Miss Rodeo America and I embarked on a year and a half ago, the one where we got stuck on the side of a mountain with nothing but our luggage and about 5 cases of Olympia stubbies. Touring is good and all, but there's so much on the agenda (you know, playing shows, eating, trying to get to the venues on time) that there's really not much time for sightseeing, relaxing, or diddy-dallying. It's all drive drive drive drive load wait play load drive drive drive.

Don't get me wrong, I love it to death, but I need to actually *see* some cities instead of seeing the insides of some crappy club in some cities.

The camping trip was really relaxing though. Lots of beer and sun and fires and reading. Really, it was just what I hoped for.