Phew, just got back from a nice, long walk around the neighborhood. Felt good to get out of the house though since I've sat here most of the day waiting for the cable guy to come. When he did show up he said "Hi, I'm here to hook up your cable." To which I replied "It's already hooked up, I did it months ago." "Oh, OK" he replied and handed me a recepit. Three hours of waiting for that? Janky.

On my walk today, I listened (again) to the new Reubens Accomplice record. Any indie-rock band that isn't afraid to use horns, strings, and especially pedal steel guitar and banjo is alright with me. Good thing too, since we just confirmed three shows with them in Southern California in a few weeks. Go stream their new album at their website, skip to "Lost Sun" or "Underneath The Golden Grain" on their little player, those are my two favorites.

Tampa Bay Lightning to give away free beer at hockey games. I guess that's reason #1 to move to the Tampa area! Now if they would get the free house, free car, and free internet plan underway, I'd be packing my bags.

The cats are staring at me, I better go buy cat food.

good luck, los angeles

Ah, all settled in from being back on the road. It only took 3 days to get everything done, but now I'm back home, unpacked, cleaned up, in with the kitties, and sleeping perfectly.

I do have to say a big thank-you to Sugarcult for taking us out on the road, and for honestly being just about the nicest band I've ever met in my life. Long story short:

Heading down to Anaheim from LA for our second show of the tour, the van breaks down, the transmission just dies. A bunch of last minute preparations get us down to the show with 7 minutes to spare before we play. The curtain opens and it's a full house, over 1,000 people rocking out. Luckily, we play really well and are in better spirits at the end of the night.

Without even asking, the Sugarcult guys offer to put all our equipment in their trailer and let a couple of us ride in their bus with them to the show in San Francisco the next night, which saves us renting a U-haul *and* a big rental car, and a few of us end up driving up the next day in a small, comfy air-conditioned Ford. They ended up driving our equipment all around half of California and we were able to make it to all the shows. Seriously, most bands wouldn't even stop to think of doing half of that for us, and they did everything they could. So, thank-you to the kindest band in the US.

The funny thing is, I wasn't sure what I'd think of their music, but after a couple shows I found myself with half their songs stuck in my head like a gooey, addicting medly. If you have a secret fancy for 70's inspired but modern sounding pop-punk, or still have a soft spot in your heart for the genre from constant listening in high school (like I do), do yourself a favor and head on over to sugarcult.com and listen to 3 or 4 songs from the record that are streaming over there. Seriously addictive.

New MP3 of the week. This one I judged by my iTunes playlists, looking at the top 25. Josh Rouse's "Come Back (Light Therapy)" is right there at #2, right behind "Float On." This had the best bassline, I swear.

gram parsons

Return To Sin City: A Tribute To Gram Parsons takes place next month. Two shows, one in Santa Barbara and one in LA. I just might go, once I find out what my schedule will be like for July. The festival features Steve Earle, John Doe, members of My Morning Jacket, Jay Farrar, Lucinda Williams & Dwight Yoakam. Good times. I saw some ads for this in Southern California this week and was hoping they'd at least have a Bay Area show, but alas, I'm out of luck.

1980-something

I'm back from our week-long tour, it was fun, and we played in front of over 1,000 people in San Diego. It was very, very fun.