we did mcguffy’s in dayton on saturday. trav and i decided it is our favorite place to play right now. when the room is full and everything is vibin’, it just plain rocks. saturday was no exception. great crowd. i said on stage that if every show could be at mcguffy’s with Amy and Smalltown Sleeper i would be happy. no lie.

we played sort of a long set, which has been taking shape in the last few months. it’s really got a nice flow to it. plus, right now we have a ton of material between the stuff on swim, nostalgia, and all the new and unreleased songs. so we’ve got some things that are standards, and some other songs that we’ve been rotating to keep things fresh.

we played an unexpected encore of two songs that were rotated out, new black car and girlfriend. and by unexpected, i mean we didn’t just draw a black line cutting our set into 7/8ths and 1/8ths parts. it’s nice to be able to reach into our back pocket for stuff like that now…good to know that when we’ve played everything we planned, there are still a few left that people will enjoy hearing. a couple years ago an unplanned encore would not have happened. it would have been “sorry…we’re out of songs that you know and like.” that to me just says we are lucky to have fans that have been with us for a while (and aren’t afraid to make some noise at the end of a late night!).

thank you to rachel for taking these photos with lissa’s camera. this has to be one of the most dynamic photos of t playing cello ever. it is really exciting to me compositionally. the best part is the opposing top and bottom diagonal areas of black and white, and the way the line of the bow and the arm echo those shapes. crazy. chiaroscuro! any art history majors in the house? i didn’t really think so. but i know ya’ll are creative people, or you might not be so into a rock band that you read their online journal.

i am working on two songs that might be good. might even be really good. i’ve written about five or ten others in the last couple weeks that are not so good. it’s really hard to tell at first, so now that i’m thinking about it, maybe even these two suck and i just don’t know it yet. i guess i’ll find out soon enough and let you know. they are sad, and maybe artsy/retro.

sometime, i’ve gotta call my friend eric and get back into the studio to do vocals for the not-so-sad unreleased (but almost finished) “modern girl”. eric if you are reading this give me a call. i don’t know what we’ll do with it right now, but we might as well finish it.

oh the songs. i love songs. i love making songs. i just feel like i am swimming in them right now. as average as most of them are, it’s a really nice feeling when you get in that mode. except that all the other aspects of your life kind of fall by the wayside, whatever the wayside is. only when things are falling by, can you use the word wayside. that could be a song right there though “wayside. what does it mean? we do not know. falling by, falling by” blah blah
okay maybe not. just trying to liven things up around here. sometimes i forget to be entertaining. look as we speak i am forgetting.

i should be sleeping.
see you this saturday at soupies in cincinnati, for the conclusion of the JFK Tripple Saturday Tri-state Tour. wham. didn’t have time to make tee-shirts.

g’night.
joe