Day 13

It's the weekend, and I am having a great time. Friday was lots of fun, Ben and Mary came to town, Emery came home for a show, it was like a huge, happy family. The drums also got finished, so it was a glorious day. I ended up staying at Jon and Jenny's house that night, we watched some t.v. and that was about it. Saturday we ate meatball sandwiches and went to the mall, the mall here sucks. All that stuff was just filler for the day and our true activity, Wing Dome. For everyone's knowledge, Wing Dome makes buffalo wings, and they have the dreaded seven alarm wings. So we all walk down to the Wing Dome and find out that Jon, Ben, Jenny and myself are the only ones man enough to eat the wings. We order a bucket of Miller and ten five alarms each, Jenny got barbeque flavor. I'm expecting something really hot, and these were pretty dang hot, but not unbearable by any means. So I get through my ten wings and I'm recovered by now from the heat, and Jon orders a round of "sevens". These wings aren't just any old wings, they are sold individually around $1.99 each, so you need to be serious about actually eating one of these. The wings show up and they look damn hot, you can't see the meat anywhere under all the sauce. We cheers the wings and dig in, at first it didn't seem all that hot, then it hit me, right in the nasal cavity, I started tearing up, Ben was sweating like he just ran a mile, and Jon seemed perfectly normal. By the end of the wing I couldn't get anything into my stomach, and my body was shaking like it was in some sort of shock. That was an experience, and to top of my experience, I went to the bathroom, not thinking to wash my hands before, and got the worst burning sensation in my groin ever. So I learned a valuable lesson, wash your hands after eating spicy foods, especially before handling yourself. Today was church/ fishing day, church was boring, fishing was great, no bites, but it was nice to be out on the pond with my friends, that's going to be a Sunday event for sure. I'll tell more about our spot next weekend. I start my bass tracking tomorrow, I need to learn some of the songs still, I'll get to them when they come up.

Day 11

So i skipped another day, it was boring, i watched Jordan drum for a while then I took a long nap, that's about it. Oh wait, we went to the Cha Cha with Aaron in the afternoon, that's why I took a nap. Today, on the other hand, was a great day. I got up and made the drive to the new studio, it's not half as nice as the one we were in, but it gets the job done. I then traveled over to Tooth and Nail and hung out, sign a few bands, you know, the usual. Our friends in Anberlin were playing in town tonight, so they came by the offive and hung out, it was really good to see those guys again. I counldn't go to the show, it was sold out, no guest list spots left. We only have two songs left for drumms, then I start my bass stuff on Monday, i'm nervous and excited. I watched the O.C. while Jeff and Jordan's wives made an excellent dinner for everyone, the it was back to the Cha cha, we went before the O.C. as well. I'm back at the condo, it's only 11:10 and it seems like two in the morning. Anberlin was hanging out at the studio with other guys from T&N so I got to talk with the a little longer. Ben and Mary, friends from Chico and beyond, are coming up tomorrow afternoon, so this is going to be an action packed weekend, more updates on Monday.

Day 9

We've been in the studio all day. It's almost 10pm, so that's about eleven hours so far. Only drums are being tracked, but I have to remember my parts as we go along, so I guess, technically, I'm working too. Aaron just spilled water on the mixing console, it started smelling like old coffee and not working properly, oh well. Today an older lady asked me for a cigarette, but this was no ordinary lady, oh no, not down here on old Summit Avenue. At first glance she seemed pretty normal, but as she approched me I noticed all the vomit on the front of her shirt, I tried to steer clear of her, not only her body, but her stare. But she saw deep inside of me and could tell that I did not want to talk, so she talked to me, and the more I tried to go back inside, the more she pleaded for a cigarette. I finally was able to turn her down and get back to work. It was a stressful situation. As I write, the mixing console is really not doing too well. It's turning up and down all by itself, making weird noises, things keep turning on and off. He says it will dry off and fix itself, we'll see. Maybe the Cha Cha tonight, I'll see what time we get done in here.

Day 8

Try to picture this. You see a girl looking at you and you go and talk to her, and she turns out to be a man. That would suck, but is all too common up here. It didn't happen to me, it would just suck if it did. Sunday was all too uneventful. I went to see Jon get part of his tattoo done, I'm envious. Someday. I watched movies and fell asleep. That's it for Sunday. Monday, on the other hand, was an awesome day. We came into the studio thinking we were going to be doing more preproduction, but Aaron said we were starting drums. So the other Aaron, there's three now, this one is the drum tech. He came in, brought a bunch of extra snare drums and changed drum heads and tuned everything. The drums sounded absolutley amazing. Jordan got about two songs done today, not bad. We have Tuesday and Wednesday to track the more rockin' songs, then we go to another studio to do the softer ones. About 9pm we were done for the day, and headed dwon to the Cha Cha. This place is amazing, one of the best bars I've been to in a long time. And tonight one of the bartenders was the ex- bass player for the Fastbacks/ Visqueen. She was one of the nicest ladies I've met. She seemed to take a liking to all of us, so hopefully there will be some drink specials for us in the future. More drums tomorrow, I still have to remember most of my bass parts, so a lot of practicing for me as well. Goodnight.

Day 7

I think my days are screwed up, I got here on a Sunday, and now it's Sunday, so is that eight days? Oh well. I had one of the best days off ever yesterday, it was actually my only day off so far, but it was fun. I woke around noonish, watched some movies for a while. We started on the Beatles box set, very interesting stuff, only eight more tapes to go. Before I knew it it was getting dark outside and I hadn't been out of the apartment yet, so I showered and we took off for the town of Renton, about 20-30 away from Seattle. We decided we were going to go to one of most fun places on the earth, The Family Fun Center. This is one of those places with all rides and games that parents love to blow money on so their kids won't dislike them for the moment. On this particular night it was packed full of kids, little kids, who all smelled like vomit or crap or a horrible mix of the two. We headed for the batting cages to show off who had the most Jose Canseco like swing, I lost, Jon or Jordan won, it was too close to call. Some girl gave us some free game cards with a lot of tokens on them, so we played the sweet games that give you tickets and you cash them in for prizes. Let me just say that we won big time, about 661 times to be precise. So we decided to buy a giant foam rocket, which broke the instant we tried to use it, and the rest we spent on fruity tootsie rolls, a whole lot of them. After being around so many dirty little kids we decided it was time for a drink, and what better place than Applebees at happy hour time, right? We hit up the happy hour and had a great time. Our friend Jared showed up, he's going to Thailand today, so we said our goodbyes and drove back up here, watched some movies, opted to go to the bar, but bought some drinks at the store instead, and that was the night. I was supposed to go fishing this morning, but I'm just not up to it right now, I have some phone calls to return, see how my little brother's surprise birthday party went, that kind of stuff. Before I forget, the other day this tele-marketer calls me, it's a man, a middle eastern man, he was nice, but I couldn't understand a damn thing he was saying. So he switches me over to a woman who starts to explain that I am eligible for up to $25,000 from the government, so I say I'm interested, I got plenty of time to listen to her pitch. So after about ten minutes I'm bored of all this crap, and then she tells me I need to pay $250 for a processing fee, and that's when I decided this wasn't for me, and I was going to have some fun with this woman, so all sorts of false names and information starts coming out, and she knows and starts telling me, "I thought your name was Trevor Sellers, not Jake Johanasburg", so she's pretty pissed, and the rest of the of the guys are yelling background, I trip over a chair, lots of painful sounding noises, she doesn't care, just keeps asking me my info. Finally she loses it and lays into me, saying I'm wasting her time and she is going to sue me for giving out false information, I give her some crap for calling me and trying to make me pay for money that is supposedly mine, she's yelling at me, telling me I'm a bad person, then she hangs up, but not before she says the FBI will be getting involved to take care of me. So don't give out false information to middle eastern tele-marketers, they'll try and sue you. Back to work tomorrow, the songs are sounding great, I'm excited, can't wait for everyone to hear this record.


Listening to: Guster- Keep It Together.

Day 6

Yesterday was an exciting one. Anyone ever heard of Michael Freestone? No, me either. But I met him yesterday, and he was the strangest person ever. So here's how it goes. We're out in front of the studio talking, Jeff, Aaron and myself. This guy dressed in all black, leather biker boots, slicked back German looking hairdo starts talking to Jeff and Aaron, and before I know it, he's in the control room and we're listening to his CD. Now, his CD was complete crap, it had some good qualities to it, but it was so 80's it was unbelieveable. The best part is all of, Aaron, and the studio assistant, Austin, were all in the room trying not to laugh, because this guy would bust out and start singing along to his album, he even sang a few lines to Jeff, hand outstretched looking for a compliment. Jordan had to keep leaving the room because he was laughing too much. Finally Aaron tells Mr. Freestone we have to get to work and he'll get back to him. The guy leaves and we all are in shock as to what we just witnessed. Aaron tells us the guy thinks Tooth and Nail would be a good fit for hi, and they need open up and take a chance on an artist like him. So we decided to call his "manager", this 60+ year old british woman, I'm pretty sure she's drunk all the time. Aaron could make the call without laughing, so Jeff called on his behalf. We got the conversation on tape, I'll try to put up a clip sometime. This lady , Gillian Welch, was supposed to be Justin Timberlake's manager, she denied that and said she was best friends with his mom. I can't remember the details of the conversation, but it lasted for over ten minutes, the woman wouldn't let Jeff off the phone. Crazy people. And to top it off, Michael came back later that day to drop off another CD, I think it got thrown in the trash.
We got a lot of work done in between us screwing around. Two more songs almost finished, we start tracking drums next week, Tuesday or Wednesday. After our long work day, we took a trip down to the the Cha Cha. I heard it's the place to see your favorite Seattle bands, and was it ever. Besides all the bros trying to be indie emo kids, there were the scene kids, who all have bands, and then there are the real musicians. Last night my real musician sighting was 3/5 of Pretty Girls Make Graves, or the important part of that band, the dude from MCD, it made me excited to be sitting next to those guys, but I couldn't find a cool way to talk to them without looking like a jackass, so I keep to myself and my friends. It's the weekend, we don't work on weekends, so we have a lot of fishing to do. More on monday.

Day 4

Today was a long and eventful day. We got so much work done, and it feels good. Aaron called in sick again, but came in later even though he had a fever. We practiced a lot and demoed? some songs. We also finally got some money today, so we were able to go out and actually do something. We decied on a nice little bar down the street called the ChaCha, nice place. I need to post these things before I forget altogether what they are. So I forgot to pack any change of pants for this trip, so I'm stuck with my one pair of pants until I can make it down to the Buffalo Exchange and buy some more (it's the closest clothing shop). Also, we have a foosball table in our apartment, and I'm officially addicted, it's about 2:30 am and we're still have tournaments. This is a special table though, it has many uses. A pool table, ping pong, shuffleboard, bowling, chess, checkers, and something else I can't remember. It's all miniature though, but the pool is amazingly fun. Not too much else right now, just a lot of work and songwriting/ changing. We are also going to do a Christmas song for an upcoming Christmas record, should be a good time. More tomorrow.

Day 3

I didn't want to talk about the weather here too much, but I can't help it, it's damn cold, the sun's out, but that doesn't do anything about this whole freezing thing going on. It's almost unbearable to go outside most of the time. Today started off like most others, we all got up, made breakfast and went downstaris to the studio. After disarming the security system, which eant we were the first ones there, we started practicing. The studio assitant, Austin, comes in and tells up that Aaron called in sick today, so need to practice the songs on our own. Fine with us, but we can only do so much of that. After demoing a song, we decied to take a break and head over to the label offices. We find our way accross town, and get to go into one of the best places on earth, a record label's offices/ cd warehouse. Everything was free, new cds, unreleased cds, everything, I don't know what to do with myself when I go in there, it's a very overwhelming. We met the staff, said our his, made small talk, heard everyone say they were excited to have us in the label, all in all, a nice experience. We drove back to the compound, but parking was a bitch, nothing within a block of the place. Evenetually we get parked and return to writing songs. So Austin gets to sit around the studio all day waiting for us to say "Press record", "Let us do that one again". That kind of stuff, and he gets paid for it. He also looks and acts like Ryan from the O.C. which, by the way, everyone up here is into, so we decided to have an O.C. night at the studio every Thursday, I'm excited, it's like a little taste of Chico here in the Northwest. Right now we're all watching Pulp Fiction and just got done eating dinner. More work tomorrow, hopefully a little more excitement. We're waiting for our advance check to show up so we can have some money to actually go out and do things, that's when the fun starts.

Day 2

Today was our first day of pre production, and I had no idea what to expect. Our producer, Aaron, comes in and he is half awake, he goes into the control room and starts to mix another project he was doing, we had no idea what the hell was going on. At this point we don't know what to do, so we continue to watch t.v. After a while, a few smoke breaks and many phone calls later we get to work. It was so nerve wracking to sit there and have someone else pick apart your songs, you have no idea what he will say, will he like the songs at all? We got lucky, our producer liked the majority of the songs, there just parts he wanted us to change, so most of the day was spent rewriting parts of songs and demoing them. After a few songs were finished I was amazed what we came up with. We ended the day early, around 5pm, and we needed to go grocery shopping. So we hopped in the van, and risked losing our parking spot. We drove down the street to the QFC. For those of you that don't know what a QFC is, it a grocery store that is terribly overpriced, and they don't seem to believe in generic brands. Now I don't have any problem with gay men, but my friends and I get checked out every minute or so, it's little uncofortable. Let me explain, we're staying a very gay part of Seattle called Capital Hill, and there is a lot of 'action' going on around us. There is a men's bath house on the corner, and I'm pretty sure there are no women living in any of the other condos in our complex. This whole thing is going nowhere, so I'll stop while I'm ahead. Just something I need to get used to. More preproduction tomorrow, I'm excited. Goodnight.

Day 1

It's strange to anticipate something for so long, and when it finally happens, it almost seems surreal. That's what I experienced today. For people reading this that don't know me, the band I'm in gets to spend the next seven weeks in Seatle recording a record. This was something we've been talking about for almost a year now, and it's fianlly become a reality. We've been driving since around 8am this morning, we reached Seattle about 7pm and we're now at the studio/ apartment that will be our new home for a while. This place is absolutley amazing. The studio is up on Capital Hill, in a really nice condo complex. The actual recording studio is located on the ground floor of the building and we have a condo up on the second floor, and this place is nice. Hopefully I can get some pictures to put up. But I'll explain. All wood floors, big screen T.V., dreamcast, x-box, woreless internet, huge porch over- looking the people below, everything. We're currently unpacking our bags and getting settled in. Our A&R guy/ best friend, Jon, went with us to dinner and we sat around and watched some SNL. Jeff and Jordan are in the other room working out a new song, still trying to get the best songs we can. We start pre- production tomorrow at 10:30am, I'm so excited I can't really put it into words. It's cold as hell here, and everything sround the studio seems nice, except for the guy who asked us if he could buy a cigarette from us three different times, I hope he's not out front every night. I'm still getting used to this keyboard, so sorry for any misspellings or errors in my writing.

Steven Baldwin is fat.

So I get to leave Chico tomorrow. I�m headed up north to Seattle, where the rain flows like... I guess like rain. I've been back in Chico for about six months now and have gotten reaccustomed to normal life. I've got my normal routines that will no longer happen due to my actual 'year' starting tomorrow. I get to see new places, meet new people, and do new things. I will definitely miss Chico and the friends I have (new and old). Right now I'm happy to have to resort to the bars for entertainment, even though after a few weeks I will wish that there was some dumbass college guy to laugh at where ever I go, which there seems to be an abundance of in this town. But I look forward to what will come my way. I get to live in Seattle, WA for around seven weeks, and I'm damn excited. I will be posting any and all adventures that I go on, and you can even read about how absolutely unexciting my life is, but I love it. On another note, Valentine's Day is coming up fast, and I will be alone, once again. It seems that even when I had a girlfriend, we seemed to be broken up on this day of 'love', so it's been quite a while since I had a good Valentine's Day. But don't pity me, because I don't need that, I'm not asking for that, I was just simply stating my situation. So anyway, Chico, I will miss you, my friends (in not particular order); Ben, Mike, The Dean, Gina, Travis, Casey, Josh, Joel, Peter, Brains, and whoever else I hang out with, and my house, it's real crappy, but it lets me live in it, so I like it. I'm really looking forward to getting back and it being springtime here, it's going to be great. I also can't wait to have a real summer this year. Many of you will remember last year when my summer, and my head, were ruined but a nice little fall down a wall of rocks. I will try to find some pictures, not pretty. But this summer I live it up and enjoy it more than I ever have before. So farewell, just read my blogs, and it will be like I'm right there with you, kind of. See everyone in a while.