Fantastic rehearsal last night. All that crap from the last few days---it's as if it never happened. I should have known better than to get stressed out about it. Jason said that his comments the other day were themselves the result of stress, what with such a big show for us coming up this Saturday (at Hooters) and so little time to actually prepare for it. But last night I think we all came to the conclusion that we're ready for it. Red (our keyboard player) was out of town last night, so the practice session was just guitar/vocals, bass and drums. Not the ideal situation, but by the same token this gave us a good opportunity to play and hear the songs "stripped down" a bit, and it turns out that was exactly what we needed.

We ran through several songs that we'll be playing Saturday night but we spent the most time working up a couple of new tunes. Jason's got a new song that we plan to segue into my last new song with, and I have to say I really love the way it's sounding. A mid-tempo brit-pop influenced number with a beautiful, cathartic chorus and some nice, expressive vocal stylings. I don't know that we'll be quite confident enough with it to play it on Saturday night, but it won't be long before we can add it to the repertoire. Very likely we'll do it on the 10/9/04 Hi-Lo show (a show I'm quite eager to play since we're billed with the mighty Fellowship Students...can't wait to hear them again).

As for this coming Saturday night...turns out we'll be playing two shows that night. The first at Hooters and then we'll leave there and go directly to VZD to headline there.

I can't tell you how much I am looking forward to playing at VZD. Ever since I was a young punk just learning to play the bass I remember thinking that VZD was very possibly the best place for live music in Oklahoma. Clubs have come and gone, but VZD has always been there with local and regional live music EVERY NIGHT. I've only had the opportunity to have played there on one occassion, back in 1993 with a group called Tall Tales. My experience with Tall Tales ended on a very negative note and so even though I did have a lot of fun playing with them, everything about my tenure with them is clouded with some bad feelings, even the VZD gig. So I'm very happy to finally take that stage with musicians who respect me as much as I respect them, who are all my best friends, and with songs that I feel are much more representative of the kind of person I am than what I was doing with the Tales.

The Hooters show is going to be a BLAST as well...They don't usually have live bands at Hooters, but this is a special event set up to promote a disk golf tournament (disk golf=frisbee golf, for those of you who, like me, don't know any better). It's going to be an outdoor affair visible to any and all who happen to be driving down the Northwest Expressway at the time.

Jason gets to go to some of the bigger radio stations with a couple of Hooters girls escorting him for the purpose of plugging the event and the band. Lucky dog.

The nice people at Hooters are spotting the band free vittles and barley pops, and that's the kind of thing you just don't see much of anymore. So hey, hey, let's hear it for HOOTERS!



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