I’m beginning to give some serious thought to making a major change in my effects rack. The new rack would be built around a laptop computer (probably a Mac, but haven’t gotten that far yet in the decision making) that would be installed with recording/mixing/sequencing software and any number of a variety of plug-ins for effects. The main advantages I see at this point are (1) being able to record tracks in my own home studio and (2) being able to add effects, processors, etc. as I like onto the computer’s hard drive, without any actual physical increase in the amount and weight of the equipment I have to move around. The main disadvantage (for me) is that I just don’t know much about this area of computers and computer software yet, and still have a lot of research to do. Luckily for me, there are already some pioneers in this area among Stick players, most notably Don Schiff. You can read more about his “MacRack” on his website by clicking Musings in the main menu, and then MacRack on the left side.

I finally mailed in my absentee ballot yesterday for the 2004 U.S. general election. This is my first time to vote since 1992. I had the ballot filled out for a week before I finally mailed it. Deciding who to vote for was no problem at all for me, but I did start to get cold feet about whether I wanted to participate. In addition, considering my candidate of choice and the political leanings of the state where my ballot will be counted (Indiana), my vote for president will in effect have zero impact. (You need to understand how the U.S. Electoral College works to understand that last bit.) Having said that, however, not all hope is lost for my candidate of choice: in all of the U.S. presidential elections in which I have participated (ok, there are only two: 1988 and 1992), no one has ever won the White House without my vote.

Last night’s monthly open mic event at Barco Tropical was as fun as ever. This was my first time to play in front of people in about a month, and a busy work schedule has kept me from practicing at all. All things considered, my short set went much better than I had expected, although my perspective was certainly skewed considerably from operating on only 2 hours of sleep from the night before.

About a week ago I had been speaking with a friend about going for long periods of time without practicing, and if that made it difficult to get back into the swing of things again. I explained to him that after several weeks off, my technique would definitely be rusty, but that picking up the Stick for the first time in so long would be so much fun that only the most major gaffs would dampen my spirits. I’ll need to take a closer listen to my recording a few days down the road with fresh ears to judge exactly how rough my performance actually was.

I met a guitarist named Greg who came down to the open mic for the first time, just to check it out and see if he might be interested in joining in in the future (which is exactly what I did my first time there). We talked a lot about the Stick, and I let him put it on and play around with it a bit. After about three minutes of finding his bearings and getting an idea of what the tuning is like, he said something along the lines of, “This thing is amazing. There is no limit to what you could do.” And of course, he was correct.

The owners of my favorite bar have taken the entire month of October off, to travel around Europe. They left one employee to run the place on his own. On weekdays, that isn’t a problem, but the place gets packed on Fridays and especially Saturdays, and there is no way that one person could play the music, serve bottled beer, make cocktails, collect money, wash glasses, clean the tables, etc. by himself for a packed dance floor. Another regular customer and I have been helping him out on the weekends. I now have a new respect for bartenders. Since I have no experience at this, I can’t do much more than serve bottled beer and take money/make change. The real hard part is being on my feet for 9 to 10 hours straight, until 6 or 7am when the place finally closes. I love this bar, the people who run it, and the people who come to have fun, and I would absolutely be the first in line to help out if they were to ask again, but I will be so happy after next weekend is over and I can finally get back to the side of the bar where I belong.

Still working out the details to get a great Stick player booked at a local cafe. Progress is slow, but we are progressing. More details soon, hopefully.

After mostly taking a break from performing for the past few months, I’ve suddenly got a few stage appearances coming up next month. I’ll try to get around to updating the Schedule section soon.