a compendium of thoughts and projects and ideas and things that represent a portion of who I am in the manner which you may perceive me as...I guess.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Vacation
I haven't had a vacation in I don't know how long.
disclaimer: Tour does not count as vacation, stressing about money and driving half the day away for months on end isn't my idea of vacation so...I've been so excited for a real vacation for what I'm pretty sure is the first time in years.
I don't have much to say, the past few weeks have been stressful trying to record and prepare a new album, juggle a full time job, and keep up with everything else so I won't go into the overly mundane details of what I've been doing. There aren't many adventures or remarkable moments in the past few weeks, except when some small town white trash/hick Dad tried to pick a fight with me at the skatepark because his kids don't know how to ride a bicycle and almost ran into me multiple times which inspired me to tell them to watch where they're going. Which then inspired a father to get in my face for being "mean" to his kids. There's really nothing good with a story like that and I feel dumber having mentioned it. It's always very scary and difficult to share stories with others and/or come to grips with your own humanity and personal shortcomings. I think I have always felt considerably insecure about my own shortcomings as a human being and tend to be a bit hard on myself.
Nonetheless in the hopes of redeeming myself, I try to focus on the positive...and for this very moment I will mention a book I came across and found absolutely inspiring. Most of you have probably already heard about the radio program or podcast or book called This I Believe but I recently picked it up and it has been putting wonderful stories and thoughts into my brain. It's SUCH a good book. Go read it. Or listen to a podcast. Or something.
One of my favorite Weezer songs was released on the Hash Pipe single and never made it to a full length album. But still is one of my favorite songs, so in March/April of 2009 I went into Sound Asylum Studios in Santa Ana California and requested the help of one Mike Troolines to record this cover song and we decided it would be fun to make a video of the recording process itself. I liked the idea of people being able to visualize what elements we were adding as they listened to the song itself. It's pretty simple and straightforward but still compromised all of live takes in the studio:
Recorded, mixed, mastered, shot and edited by Mike Troolines at Sound Asylum, Santa Ana, Ca. And featuring some friends of Mike's that I got to meet and collaborate with the same day I met them in the studio. Thanks Jessica and Scott!
Now as for the song "I Do" by Weezer I was going to include two versions but for some reason Mediafire decided to break when I needed it. So maybe just send me an email and I'll send you the original version if you don't already have it.
As for news and overall life updates, Lynette and I recently moved to Provo where we can ride our bikes everywhere and I can focus on recording this new album that is giving me quite the headache. I am only hoping that all the pain and efforts I am taking to make it just right will in some regard help in it's end product success. However "success" may be defined and whoever feels like defining it, I will simply say that I wont rest till I personally feel like it is a better piece of art than the last album. If I can call anything I've ever put out a piece of art.
To be honest, I think it will be. I'm just banging my head against a wall to try and make it so. Racking my brain and generally just second guessing everything. I wish I had a band where we could collaborate and we could just record everything live. That would be rad. I'm actually trying to put together a full band at the moment.
So what do you say? Want to spend most of the year driving around on the road eating whatever we can get our hands on and playing shows to variable amounts of people? (This means sometimes you play for people and sometimes you don't)
You'll probably have to live with your parents again and won't afford rent but you get to play music and say you're in a band that people think is successful to some degree. (successful because you play music)
Also, it might be fun and existentially satisfying for a while. Sincerely, Drew
World Beard Championship and American Splendor in Alaska!
Happy Memorial Day! It's weird to me, realizing as I write this blog today that I wrote the song Memorial Day, on Memorial Day three years ago today. Weird. Anyways, I just got back into town from Alaska and the World Beard Championships and the whole trip was radical! I basically tied for having the 4th best beard in the entire world! I was really excited because I met an amazing band from Detroit while I was there called Childbite and played with an amazing Alaskan band called the Moon Knights AND got to catch up with fellow friend and musician (and fellow 4th place tie for having the best beard in the world) Jon Crocker. Not to mention I played a total of 10 shows in 6 days and even got on the news during one of them! Fun!
I am exceedingly grateful for Adrian (from the Moon Knights) and the guys from Reverse Retro for helping to bring me out there and promoting the shows and for all the amazing people I met. Because I met amazing people the whole time I was there, and it was awesome. It was a really amazing trip and every single day I couldn't help but get lost in the concept of the Alaskan sun. Because it goes around the sky like a boomerang, because we're up closer to Santa Claus and the North Pole and I kept imagining how cool it would look to see a simulation of it. Because it was amazing. Sunset was at 11pm and it didn't get dark till about 1am. It was insanely cool.
Also, while I was there I watched the movie American Splendor and was quite taken with it. Roughly, it's about a comic book writer and some of the footage in the movie are clips from the Letterman Show that I am only guessing are from the following videos I've included. But Paul Giamatti does an amazing job portraying Harvey Pekar.
One thing I find very interesting is how direct and absolutely sincere Harvey Pekar is, and his rhetorical posturing though ill-mannered is so well-meaning. It's also quite amazing how adept David Letterman is at handling people and generally just controlling a situation, and I feel like whatever he gets paid, he deserves it for how quick with words he is. Sadly, you kind of see both people clawing with their words to try and obtain their objective rather than simply communicating and letting it go anywhere. Letterman has a show to run and Harvey has something he wants to say. If either of them gave the other the opportunity to actually talk maybe it could have got somewhere? Though even as I type this I doubt Harvey Pekar would play that game, I feel like it means too much to him, his didactic eagerness to inform everyone of the atrocities of the world are too much of responsibility to take lightly. And I can understand both points of view. I don't really consider either of them have to be in the wrong, unless they both are.
But I'm back home and back to the daily grind. Working as much as I can to make ends meet and I'll be working on the next album release pretty much all summer long. I imagine it might possibly come out early nest year if I hustle and/or can afford it the costs that come with recording and mixing and mastering an album, all of which leaves me both excited and stressed. But I suppose the depth of my emotions revolving around this upcoming release shall be saved for another day. It's sufficient enough for me to mention that I'm investing more of myself in it than any other release and am on my toes.
Also, I've been researching what chords I need to steal to make a hit song (just kidding, I do that by accident):
I'm off to Alaska in just a few days! I have Adrian to thank for his immense kindness in setting up shows for me in Anchorage and for putting me up in his home and in general just putting up with me! I'm pumped to play shows in Alaska. There are currently only four states I haven't played in the good ol' U.S.A. and Alaska is one of them. (West Virginia, Delaware and Hawaii are the other three) so I am excited to be able to mark that state off the list.
But even more so, I am SO EXCITED for the World Beard Championships. Seriously. I think I've got it all figured out. I've only had a few months to prepare for this (in actuality, this is an exaggeration, I've really had since the onset of the new year, so in all technicality, I will have been growing my beard for a total of 143 days and had approximately four months and 23 days by the time I am at the contest to prepare for "this"). Nonetheless, I'm not ready for any Freestyle or Full Beard Natural category. But I believe I am prepared for the Garibaldi category. I know I got some stiff competition, so let me know what you guys think. Here is the current champ in Garibaldi:
With everything in consideration, maybe I should be going for the Verdi category, where I'd be going up against this guy:
You can kind of get an idea of how my beard is looking currently here in this recent interview I did with Heave Media. Please excuse myself if I had a little too much fun doing this. I might have had too much fun...
Recently, I had a rather epic hiking day up in Hobble Creek with Jordan and Rachel Clark, their friend Jon and also our mutual friends and out-of-towners Jonathan Stark and Crisanta Baker whereupon I fell in a shallow stream and then proceeded to climb a great mountain (really it was a hill). I don't want to waste your time with too many details, but essentially, I saw a tree that was hanging up and over the stream and thought if I were Indiana Jones then I would run across the tree and jump the remaining distance to the other side of the river rather than continue looking for a place to cross. The tree was dead, wobbly, and totally unstable. While I testing just how wobbly the tree was (it was really less than a foot in diameter) one of the branches I was balancing on snapped and I fell sidelong into the stream.
Now, since I had just seen Jon fall into the "deeper than knee deep" stream a few minutes before crossing elsewhere I wasn't "too worried" about the fall, but as I crashed into the stream below I pretty much fell onto a bed of rocks...thankfully due to my ornery nature and pigheadedness, after I fell in the river I got back out and decided to try again. Whereupon I ran across the majority of the tree trunk, leaped with great gusto and landed with my feet splashing in the stream approximately one foot away from the bank. This was a victory for me (though somewhat incomplete), and a lesson I shouldn't have had to re-learn after 13 years of skateboarding to teach me that I ought to "go big or go home" and it's always when we're scared to commit that we hurt ourselves. I should have just ran and leaped with a great faith in myself and my abilities without questioning it all in the first place.
Despite all of that, I was blessed with a beautiful wound, which will probably gross you out and instead of just "posting" it on my blog I will leave it here as a link for you to open if you have a strong stomach and your curiosity isn't your downfall. I'm quite proud of it because I am a boy and Lynette thinks I am behaving strangely because she is a girl. So go the affairs between boys and girls sometimes and the difference between genders is both respected and understood.
Completely off-topic but much more upscale in the intellectual realm of thinking is an amazing (though old) article regarding the release In Rainbows by Radiohead that I thought should be offered. I love the response that's offered by "someone associated with Thom Yorke" regarding the Binary Theory. But I also think for any musician to think someone will "get it" the way the musician "gets it" is probably impossible. Not that I'm Thom Yorke or that I think that "he" should get it the way "I" get it. ha.
For those of you that haven't had a chance to purchase the most recent release called "This Could Mean Trouble, You Don't Speak For The Club" shown here: Please do! I'm quite proud of it and it's been getting very extreme reviews all over the place. Nothing lukewarm, just a lot of love or hate for it. Nothing in between. Which is awesome. And I am putting together the structure and finalizing the recordings for the next release which will be called, "Goodnight Dannii, Goodnight Gary". I've been asking many of my friends for feedback to see what their reactions are and I appreciate those of you for your insight. I feel very good about the project and am sure I will be content with it upon it's release as well. No matter what the reviewers say. I don't know if this will be the cover, but Lisa Vironda of Swim Slowly Records took this photo and I love it.
Eating Fake Food And Finding Inspiration In The Details
Tour ended wonderfully.
After the Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin stint we ran into some car troubles and some pretty rough shows. We ended up losing all the money we would have made on tour and settled for breaking even. So I'm grateful it wasn't any worse....we also missed a bunch of shows and were stuck in a hotel for a few days...but when we got to Colorado we arrived into the arms of kind and loving friends who kept our chins up until we could all get home and rest up...I had three full days of just rest and relaxation before we headed for the Northwest.
And although I was playing alone and the band wasn't there to back me up...this whole last weekend's jaunt into the Northwest was so satisying, and absolutely fulfilling because it felt SO GOOD to play unplugged and in such intimate settings with such positive and supportive people. I will admit that I felt rather torn enjoying myself so much when the band Desert Noises who was on tour with us was having so many problems...with two of the three members backing out last minute and car troubles aplenty...it was just so painful to witness.
Nonetheless, life is amazing, I'm feeling positive about the new songs that I'm preparing to record for the next album and now I just got to figure out how to record them...till then, here's a link to download one of the new songs I played live in Portland.
also, I played it on this podcast when I was in Seattle.
And here's an amazing song that a friend of mine just shared with me:
And since we're on the subject of amazing. Lynette was telling me about an amazing fad going on right now. Fake food. I'm amazed by this, because it puts into perspective how little I understand people in this world and it reminds me of my general belief that overall I think most people are pretty silly. I am very aware I may included in someone else's list of silly people and I can understand that they have their own reasons and I'm fine with that. But for anyone who buys fake food to decorate their kitchen, rather than you know....cooking...I'm just amazed.
If anyone needs fake papier mache cupcakes, you can check out this great success:
http://jenniboriginals.com/
http://jenniboriginals.blogspot.com/
Perhaps the best thing that I've heard of is someone selling "organic celery" made out of earth-friendly recycled cardboard for 75 dollars. It even comes with a salt shaker.
This isn't to say I think that what these people are DOING is ridiculous. At all in fact. I admire their success. But what really amazes me about all of this is how they are making a LOT of money selling this to people. Their success is pretty dang cool. And in terms of how much work and time they seem to put into it, well, that's admirable as well. But who buys this stuff? Am I such a boy that I don't understand this fake food fad? And why does it reek of such impracticality to me and not to so many other people around the country?
The end of the beginning or the beginning of the end.
Well, we played our last show with Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin yesterday in Pittsburgh, and like pretty much ALL the shows we've been playing together in this past week or so, it was absolutely amazing, and as usual I have been too busy to remember all the amazing details I should be recounting for your enjoyment. We did sell out the show at the Mercury Lounge in New York which was totally beyond my comprehension and absolutely bittersweet, since so many friends couldn't get into the show that I wanted to be there, but it felt so wonderful to play to a packed house in downtown Manhattan.
Is this the beginning of the end? Or the end of the beginning?
Is this where I say it can't get better and settle down or is this just where it starts getting good? Because it has been GREAT to play such well organized and attended shows, but if the upcoming week isn't as wonderful I worry that I'll feel a little let down and for reasons I don't even bother to really analyze because the fact of the matter is that I don't plan to scrape by financially for five more years and I don't plan on placing myself up as some sort of DIY martyr to satisfy idealistic ideals of what someone else thinks I should be.
One thing I did want to talk today about is what the internet means to me, and my lack of understanding for what it means to so many others. If you're reading this, I sincerely would love to know, why you use the internet, what you like about it, what your personal relationship with the internet is, or if there isn't much thought behind your using it.
The reason this thought process was sparked is because I followed a link posted in a comment from my friend Brent in the last blog entry to a website called:
http://www.whymormongirlsstaysingle.com/
and apparently, some boy wrote a sassy gossip like blog about "oh no you didn't" kind of things that mormon girls do that are socially annoying. (to be honest, I didn't read the whole blog, it just seems like that's the case from the info I've gathered) but what I found so interesting is how many comments he was getting, and how controversial he was while still lacking in actual depth. Like basically he was just complaining about things that bother him, or stereotyping people that he thinks are stupid. And it wasn't what he was writing about so much as the popularity of this blog that blew my mind....and then after I took into consideration the social phenomenon that is "youtube" it started to make sense.
See, recently Travis our drummer posted a video shot on a camera phone or some really horrible video capturing device, with the sound not even in sync from when he was 14 playing a Blink-182 song with some friends in the upstairs room of one of their parent's houses. After posting it on youtube he then snagged nearly 50,000 views and thousands of comments, which is saying something....but I don't think it's saying something about his video so much that it's saying something about the people watching the video which in turn defines our culture a little bit and who we are in this world.
Because I would argue that our actions define us, ALL OF THEM, we're all guilty of good and bad actions no matter the perception we may be coming from, but we're also responsible for how we utilize our time. Like for example, as I'm writing this blog entry I consider how ridiculous it is that a) anyone would read a blog that I'm writing at all and b) how much more ridiculous it is that I share what's on my mind because I consider it might be beneficial for someone out there.
I think I've come to the conclusion that the internet for me isn't fun. It's part of my job because I play music and the internet has redefined music marketing with social networks. I therefore adapt and utilize the social networks in an attempt to make a musical career more financially feasible. That's also why I write this blog, if it wasn't for what I do musically, I would not have a internet identity whatsoever. I would absolutely and without question disappear into the loving arms of my wife. I don't comprehend how people can idle away hours surfing the web.
And yet, I'm under the impression that most of the up and coming (if not current) generation does JUST that.
The blogs that people follow the most are usually jokes, or outrageous, or gimmicky, sometimes they'll have some entertainment value but they're not ever really informative. The youtube videos are base and ridiculous. Reality TV is appalling to me and TV in general can be an amazing waste of time and I could go on and on about a lot of things. Pretty much everything could be argued as a waste of time I suppose. And don't get me wrong. I love some TV shows....and I DO like a good game of Pacman or Super Bomberman. But where do we draw the line? Shouldn't there be some sort of moderation? Haven't we bought enough crap we don't need in this consumer society we live in? Can we have some sort of quality control? And I guess, wouldn't it be OUR job to enforce it?
Tour has been fantastic. Tonight was the first show we played with Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin and it went amazing. But at some sly moment when my back was turned. Someone stole some of Lady Danburry's merchandise. All that I am completely for sure about is that a pink Lady Danburry bag with white frill and the words "I love my grandma" printed on it went missing. So if you see anyone in Madison, Wisconsin with a handbag fitting that description, just be warned....they may NOT really love their Grandma. And they MAY be the kind of person who steals from touring bands. And it's obvious they aren't a fan of me and it's for sure I'm not a fan of them. But if they want to return it we would really appreciate it immensely because we really need all the help we can get. I hope everyone is doing great. Tour is awesome. I am SO EXCITED about the rest of this tour. It's gonna be AMAZING! Totally awesome! drew
I've been anxiously awaiting the release of Jared Hess's upcoming release "Gentleman Broncos" but I'm getting tired of waiting. I want to see it now...thankfully, I have something to hold me over...
I also think the trailer for this movie looks amazing. But also, I think any trailer would look good placed within (or perhaps without) the confines of this song. Arcade Fire would make anything seem "epic":
Last, I like these guys:
Recently, I heard and then read about how a high school girl from Arizona faked a school bomb threat with a friend.
"Police said Godson had a court date to meet on Friday, but was told that she only had one more day of unexcused absence. Godson wanted to attend senior ditch day later on in the year, and the closure of school on Friday allowed Godson to meet her court date and save her last absence."
I thought this news story was rather mindblowing, it puts into perspective how little I understand some people I guess. Here's the link.
Hope everyone is well. We're still on tour...It's been great. Here's a photo from Kansas.
Tour has been crazy and very difficult. I've been quite sick for most of the time and despite all of the difficulty I feel as if everything has had some sort of wonderful underlying purpose. When I've been too sick to perform the show has been canceled or no one has come etc....and the times when we're falling apart and don't know where to turn someone has come to our aid and helped us get through it all. It's been a very interesting tour and we have a lot to be grateful for.
Anyways, I got some more songs for free download and should have a new video soon.
and here is a live version of an new song called ヒーロー見参 I'm prepping for the next upcoming album. I recorded this version with Blake from TaughtMe in Salt Lake City once upon a time.
Also, I happened to come across a copy of a great short film called "Bonjour, Danny Bonjour" that my friend Brett Shumway made a few years ago and he happened to use some of my music in it, which I am proud to be associated with. Good film. I'm excited to watch it again. Yahoo! Here's a picture from tour:
