Some interesting tibits…

Jim Holbrook, former bad ass bassist for Fever in the Funkhouse left an extremely honest and incisive comment on a post from July of ’06 – scroll to the bottom…

Why has he (Nick Briscoe) not been signed or picked up? Simple, when you are in a band that has one of the largest record deals in the 1990’s offered to you (an unprecedented 8 album deal!), yet you are tired of playing the music (like Nick was) and you want total control over all aspects of music, and you consequently turn down the deal of the century, the record industy tends to blackball you. Period.

Thanks for the honesty Jim!

---

Also – I finally got a copy of The Slack’s new cd at their show last Wednesday at Gezelig. The band really rocked out forall of the Dallas music superstars – They even played XTC’s ‘Generals & Majors’. You can tell they put a lot of time into the cd, entitled “Wishful Sinking”. Check it out here. Kudos to Chris, Eric and the rest of the boys!

I took another break and hung out in NOLA this past weekend. Our little posse consumed many calories in the form of local beer and incredible food. Even items I tend to dislike, like oysters and grits, tasted amazing. Next time yer there, check out Mothers for breakfast, Nirvana for lunch (Best Indian food I’ve ever had) and Jacques-Imo’S Cafe for dinner.

We also hung out at my favorite club, d.b.a. and saw the amazing Leroy Jones. The musicians are just too good, too real, too honest. Wonderful stuff.

In other news, I’m getting some extra tracking done for the new cd. I’m calling the cd ‘Isolated Twins’ and would love any artists out there to contact me about doing some cover artwork relating to this title/theme.

Hey gang,

I’m chilling in DC, and just recorded some really cool trumpet parts with my bro-in-law, Brian MacDonald, a wizard trumpter with the Airmen of Note. I wrote this insane section for a new song, ‘Faster, Faster’ and while Brian dealt with the latency and memory issues of my crappy laptop, we managed to get a ton of good takes. He also added some cool Flugelhorn to ‘Swingy Memories’. I’ll take everything back to Big D next week and edit appropriately.

Speaking of the trip, I’ve seen lots of the US I’d never seen before. Memphis was incredible – tons of blues bars, a well-developed scene and great food. The people were almost too friendly. Of course we had to see Graceland. Two words – Shag carpeting.

Asheville NC is by far the most beautiful place I’ve ever been in the US (Banff is in Canada-still #1). Whitewater rafting was tons of fun even if the water levels were way down. The town is total granola, but again, very friendly. The drive in was like a car commercial – plenty of banked curves while leaves fell like rain.

Charlottesville VA – heh – very nice, very snooty. Bought a ton of Virgina wines just for the helluvit. Monticello was the exact opposite of Graceland.

I’m heading into the home strech of tracking – just keys, a coupla geetars and oh – those pesky vocals. (Slow and low that is the tempo Let it flow let yourself go)

Graceland pics soon.