113119 I want to start getting our feet wet in Lawrence venues. Looking to share the stage on 2-3 band bills. Last night Dave had an idea about the music leading up to the bridge in Seven Little Eyes. Danny agreed and added an ammendment that I edited this morning and uploaded. Made myself write words for Green Piano. 113019 Long practice in Danny's studio - which includes a proper bar and sinister but effective sound room. Still working on new things and sorting out some old stuff. Took the Korg X50 to Wilburwerkes Audio. Not powering up correctly, screen blank. 112919 Changed the Christmas Ornaments to Green Piano. 122819 Went to Mesobi to see Chris Ruzich play with New Common Ground. Such a rock. 122519 Spending Christmas digging out a space in the studio to set up and record Jerry for the balance of the Girl for Samson and Johnny Marie material. If Jerry happens on this post before I can break it to him, I would remind him that we recorded all of Allen's parts for Gardenaire and chunks of Land Ho (I think) here. 122318 Introduced Green Piano to the Forlorn Petunias. Shannon's Korg X50 bit the dust so need to find another affordable digital piano option. May go Yamaha CP50. We are Artist of the Week at Navajo Live on 3/19/20. Also doing a private party on 3/21/20 while we're in San Diego. 122219 Handed off charts to Erik. Ran through Green Piano keyboard parts with Shannon. 122119 Printed horn charts for Erik. Printed the parts that Dave Estes submitted for Mother and You Set It Off for Shannon. 122019 Erik Hulse is going to contribute horn parts for That Doesn't Turn You On and You Set If Off! Fooled with Green Piano all day. 121819 Focusing on some fresh material tonight - Seven Little Eyes, Whte Girl, Wake for Wanderers, Nellie Ordinary and Hats Off Extraordinaire. Still fleshing out Green Piano. 121619 New bit fell out of my bottom. Initially titled Christmas Ornaments in honor of the dozen Northern Cardinals that dot the Rose of Sharon that borders my backyard gardens. Ultimately titled Green Piano. Imported Dave's MIDI for You Set It Off and Mother. Really lovely stuff! 121419 Had breakfast with Shannon and Danny before doing some tracking. Recorded guitar parts for Seven Little Eyes, That Doesn't Turn You On and You Set It Off. Sent Allen a That Doesn't Turn You On refrence mix to drum to. Listening to a Dave Estes solor for Mother and then printing out charts for Shannon for Seven Little Eyes. With the Davey's gig out of the way we are now looking at 6 blissful weeks of adding new songs to our set and refreshing some material that we used to do. It will be great fun to be able to throw a out a lot of surprises in future shows. 121319 Confirmed a full show at Mike Kelly's Westsider with Allen Johnston & Jerry Riccardi on Saturday, February 8th, 2020. The recorded version of That Doesn't Turn You On is still different than the live version so I spent some time today prepping the recording for more drum takes. Lengthened the "set feet prove to be wrong" section and added the repeat of the carnival bridge to the end. Danny will come over tomorrow and add his bits. 121219 Thank you to all of our friends who bothered on a Thursday night. We are so grateful for you. Got a backup J. Mascis Jazzmaster just in time for tonight's show. 121119 BBC Sound Effects 120919 At this point we are starting the show at Davey's on Thursday and playing for a little over an hour. Picked up keyboard tracks from Dave Estes for You Set It Off. Beautiful stuff. 120819 The lineup for this Thursday is in flux. Will post updates here and on social media. 120419 Good rehearsal. Worked on a potential set for Davey's but also fooled around with some old and new stuff like Her Bows, Seven Little Eyes and Hats Off, Extraordinaire. Celebrated Michael's upcoming birthday and Joelle, as usual, made something awesome to eat. Got some keyboard parts from Dave Estes for You Set It Off. 120319 Taking the stage around 8:30 PM at Davey's Uptown Rambler Club on 12/12/19. Tickets are $7. 120119 Seven Little Eyes: made minor adjustments to the arrangement and tracked more vocals, bass and acoustic guitar. Made up a melody for the bridge. 113019 Danny came over and we added some guitar tracks to Stinker/Love. Also added classical guitar, acoustic and keyboards to Seven Little Eyes. Dave Estes came by to get the album on a thumbnail drive so that he can add some keyboard parts. 112919 OK, I back to making an album in earnest now. Finshed making the Stinker arrangement match the live version. Imported drums for Mother, Christian in July and Hats Off, Extraordinaire. Shannon recorded her Moog solo in Mother and sang her live parts in Christian and That Doesn't Turn You On. Ran into an issue with Mother. I sing the "Can of fruit..." line differently live than on the recording so I must choose! 112819 Manged to smash Love onto the end of Stinker. For this, I am thankful. 112319 Today is a come-to-jeebus day for me. I created two loose instrumentals (Stinker & Love) that we have developed in rehearsals. Developed differently than the recordings. Today I need to create a single session that agrees with our live template (including tempo changes) and includes as many of the good parts already recorded as I can. Fortunately there isn't much of this kind of editing left to do before I punt this album into hyperspace. Ugh! Recording music with a computer is stupid! In Pro Tools, delete an unwanted tempo marker by left clicking on it and dragging it off of the screen. You'll see the cursor turn into a trash can. Now off to relearn how to remove partial measures from the start of the song. Notes from Patrick about how to merge two sessoins with different tempos in Pro Tools: Joining two sessions with different tempos can be challenging, that's where the track warp feature becomes a burden. The best way to do it is, for the session you'll be importing from, turn off "ticks" on all the tracks, including MIDI, and set them to samples. Then open the session you're importing to and open the "import session data" dialogue. Import the tracks from the other session (the one you set to samples), move them where you want them on the timeline, making sure the start point for the new track is on the grid. Then add the new tempo at the start of the new track and then set everything back to "ticks." 112219 Got the balance of the drum tracks that Allen and I recorded in San Diego. 112019 Practice without Shannon. We sorted out all of the bits in Stinker and Love, the two instrumentals on this album. Took a stab at Nellie Ordinary with Danny singing. Sounded great! Joelle and Michael made a beautiful soup. 111319 First rehearsal as a 6 piece. Dave Estes is now playing keyboards, guitar and hand percussion. Some more movement on the December 12th thing. 111019 Thanks to Tim Kelly and our friends in the Groove Pilots for inviting us up for a couple of numbers at Jake's Place. It was exactly one year ago to the day that we shared the stage at Mike Kelly's Westsider. Pictures from the peformance are on Instagram and Facebook. 110919 Going with Jerry and Shannon to see the Groove Pilots tonight. Going to visit with Dave Estes beforehand to talk about becoming the 6th Forlorn Petunia. Dave plays keyboards, guitar and percussion. I've started to feel like there aren't enough good songs to complete this album. This is probably partially because the material has been laying around so long. I'm used to spitting out albums without the extra 6 months of reflection and trudging activity. One of the things bothering me is having two instrumentals. Today, while lengthening Stinker, I'm going to add Love on at the end. That should make for a peppy little musical journey. 110619 Practice without Shannon. Dave Estes sat in on keyboards for a few songs. Jerry dragged a microphone over to his kit for the first time. I need to: Add lengthened parts to the end of Stinker. Extend F# in That Doesn't Turn You On Chorus. Speed up Mars. 110319 Danny and I roughed out a song with the banjo and guitar. 110219 Rehearsal with Danny, Brian, Allen, Shannon and I. Did our set at 6:30. Shannon and Danny sat in on some songs with Dogfish Bark. 110119 Finished tracking drums for Hats Off. Jerry will do the balance of the record. 103119 Recorded drums for Christian in July, Hats Off, Extraordinaire and Mother. 103019 Got drum takes for You Set It Off and started on Christian in July. 102819 Another practice with Brian Marshall. 102719 First practice with bassist Brian Marshall. 102319 Danny Button will join us in San Diego for the show on the 2nd with Dogfish Bark. 102219 I have drum takes from Allen for: Beatbox Caveat Christian in July Mars Reach Around That Doesn't Turn You On You Set It Off Still to do: Hats Off, Extraordinaire Mother Sweet & Low Stinker Dingus Love ...and for Girl for Samson: Bossa Breeders Dust Fountain of Youth Miss Majesty Puff Adders Still to do: Cigarette Hiding a Slave The Wall Little Shootin' Elvis Present Always Old Into Young 102019 Shannon learned the keyboard parts for Wake for Wanderers. This one is on the list for the California set. We'll sort out Her Bows when we get back. 101919 First outing with Jerry Riccardi on drums and our last Brookside Farmers Market appearance. 101719 Doing a short set opening for Dogfish Bark on 11/2/19 at BNS Brewing & Distilling Company in Santee, CA. Allen Johnston on drums and Brian Marshall on bass. 101619 Fun rehearsal. Dave Estes and Victoria hung out with us. Joelle made us an amazing snack at the end. I'm used to shouting out the starting tempos to songs - a practice that is danger as Jerry insists on us following the time on the records. 101219 Added more guitars to Hats Off, Extraordinaire. Added more backing vocals to Christian in July. Relearned the 2 chords and 12 words for Her Bows. Shannon will be doing all of the heavy lifting on this one when we do it live. 101119 Recorded lurchy guitar parts for Christian in July with the Telecaster and Jazzmaster. Probably needs another pass of drums now. 100919 Second session, but first full practice with Jerry. 100519 Spent the morning auditioning submissions from Danny and John. 100419 More Brookside Farmers Market pictures featuring the classic lineup on our Facebook page. These were taken by our friend Dave Estes. 100319 First session with Jerry Riccardi. 093019 Loaded Danny's electric piano and guitar parts for a bunch of songs. 092819 Brookside Farmers Market performance pictures from this morning. Highlights: generator dying midway through the set and a vendor (to our delight) tipping us with fresh garlic cloves. The whole pile of us (including Jerry Riccardi, Joelle St. Pierre and Dave Estes) scrambled off to Chelly's Cafe afterwards where, as usual, we marveled over Gabby's ability to take a huge order without writing anything down and always getting it right! Thanks to the lovely Cara Mace for working the camera. #brookside #chellyscafe #waldo #kansascity #farmersmarket Rain should be finished by 9 AM this morning so we're still planning on playing an acoustic set at the Brookside Farmers Market starting around 10. 092519 Thank you Heinz Rodgers, Michael Myers, Sue Murphy-Andrus, Chris Ruzich and Company, Jerry Riccardi, Angela Litner and Richie, Lea, Laura Clark for coming out on a Wednesday to hang with us. Thanks also to Peaty Bog Water for a fun set. 092119 Had a great time running through our discography at the Englewood Tavern. All of the boys in Switchblade Johnny were super sweet. 091319 Doing a short Johnny Marie & the Lonesome Petunias set with Shannon Swift and John McConnell on 09/21 at the Englewood Tavern (4386 South Broadway, Englewood, CO 80113) in support of Switchblade Johnny. 091119 Our last practice with Bryan carrying the load on percussoin. 091019 Finished lyrics for Hats Off, Extraordinaire and sang a half dozen takes. 090919 Danny uploaded misc. tracks for Christian in July. 090619 New live lineup coming in October. More on that once legal is done with all of the paperwork. 090419 Ran through a prepared 1 1/2 hour set with some more of the new material. Joelle served us delicious crabs and cake. No, not crabcakes. 090319 Imported drum tracks for Reach Around, Beat Box Caveat, Christin in July and Hats Off, Extraordinare. 090219 Tomorrow I plan to start importing drum tracks and getting things sorted out so that I can start tracking bass parts. 090119 Made some click track adjustments for Stinker for Allen. 083019 So, the tempo (120) of Christian in July has been bothering me but I have been loathe to begin the process of re-recording all of the tracks. Decided to give Elastic Audio a try, since all of the parts are still in demo form. Set everything to ticks, guitars to Polyphonic and vocals to Monophonic. Wresltled with removing a marker that was fouling the starting point and eventually won. Changed the tempo to 130 and the results are flawless. What a horrible and glorious time to be alive. Took my strat to be set up. I also, I'm a little embarrassed to say, had Matt swap out the white pickguard for a red torti. The guitar is black. McConnell already scolded me with a picture of Clapton playing a black and white strat. I just had to have some way of separating myself from Slowhand. Hamhand plays a strat with a red pickguard. 082919 Bryanless session but we carried on. Worked on new stuff - Christian in July, Stinker, Parasol, We Don't Do That, Juno Contacto and Blister Beetle. DJ STP's birthday so booze and cake were consumed. Played the Jazzmaster most of the night and loved it. Played the new Telecaster at the end and dug it too. Great time to be me. Except for my wretched tennis elbow. 082619 Re-recorded the C section ` of Hats Off, Extraordinaire and re-cut the guitars in stinker to be more aggressive. 082419 Got drum tracks for Beat Box Caveat, Christian in July and Hats Off, Extraordinaire from Allen. Already planning our next live show with him at The Westsider. Maybe in December. 082319 We tend to do up-tempo, fiercer versions of our recorded songs live. I think at some point I need to actually record the songs that way. I may try to record Christian in July live and see if we can capture more of the edge. Went to see Broken Arrows with Majors & Generals at The Brick. 082219 Cleaned up Poison and renamed it Hats Off, Extraordinare. Sent versions to Joe to replace my wooden piano playing. 082119 Futzed with Stinker and tweaked and re-sang bits of Christian in July. 082019 I am desperately in love with the Jazzmaster. Songs just keep plopping out of my bottom. Can't wait to pair it up with the Fender Excelsior. 081919 Thank you for the recent burst of merchandise sales. Have more designs coming soon. Trying a new guy for guitar set-ups. Took the new Telecaster to him today. 081819 Danny must have his studio tweaked to his satisfaction because I've started to receive tracks again! 081719 Jazzmaster came today. Flipping' love it. 081619 Tried the new Telecaster at practice. It sounded great but it wouldn't stay in tune and the intonation is dreadful. Will get it set up soon. We focused mostly on new songs. We even played around with White Girl. 081519 Doing a 9-10 PM at the Roxy on 9/25. 081419 Have had to pass up some opportunities for shows because of scheduling conflicts. This is not all bad because we are trying to add a fresh set of old and new music. It takes a little while to sort out new additions, even when they are ours. 081319 Bought a J Mascis Jazzmaster and an American Performer Telecaster. Added 16 measures to That Doesn't Turn You On after the first chorus for some additional guitar work. 081219 Shannon learned Chritian in July (working title). 081019 Got a nasty tendon strain from doubling our practice days while using Bryan's low-slung Telecaster. 080919 I think it would be fun to do some sets with the songs in chronological order, including track sequences. It would also be an opportunity to whore each album as the set progressed. Taught Shannon more bits from Juno Contacto and the primary part on We Don't Do That. 080819 Had a good session adding new songs to the set list. Also celebrated our multiple August birthdays with pizza and such. Forgot to add We Don't Do That to the list. Will add that next week. Getting Allen click tracks for Christian in July, Love, Mother and Poison. 080719 Printed keyboard charts for Juno Contacto for Shannon. 080519 Sent out Christian in July demo to everybody. Also plan to add Juno Contacto, Blister Beetle, White Girl, Nellie Orginary, Dingus and clean up Parasol. The goal is to be able to present the people that come to see us regularly with more variety and to easily entertain for 3 hours. 080419 I've been posting some of your pictures from the performance at Mike Kelly's Westsider on our Facebook and Instagram pages. Now we're going to focus on working up another big pile of songs to add to the live set so that we can entertain comfortably for 3 hours. 080319 What an amazing crowd last night! You made the night really special. 080219 See you tonight! 080119 Last rehearsal with Allen. He got a little surprise when the lovely Mel flew in from San Diego unannounced for the show tomorrow. Bryan brought his Tele for me to use again and I nearly made it to the end of the set before breaking a string. 072919 Third rehearsal with Allen. Things are coming together enought that we can now see smaller issues that need to be ironed out. Worked up the proper ending for Repeat and added Three Bells to the set again. I asked Bryan to loan me his Tele again for the last rehearsal and performance. Again, I have too much ham in my indelicate fists. 072819 Allen wanrts to do Three Bells Friday. And so we will. 072619 Second rehearsal with Allen tonight, minus Danny. Bryan brought me his Clasic Vibe 1950s Tele to try. I am a hard, ham-fisted player and easily bang and wrench Strats out of tune. The Tele worked great, I didn't really need to tune it the whole 4 hour session. Will pick one up in the Autumn. Allen and I ran to John Bara's shop to look at drums. John graciously loaned him a 1960s set of Ludwigs, hardware and cymbals. Allen has been working with Mark "Buzz" Collins, a long-time, seasoned Kansas City sound engineer, on getting our sound tweaked for the show on the 2nd. Found a bit of missing code that was fouling the CD Sales link. All better! Woefully behind finishing this album. May I offer future me this to-do list for motivation? Beat Box Caveat Bass and more drum takes. Dingus Bass, guitars and drums. Love Needs to be played live for a bit with the current arrangement to see if anything magic happens. Mars Add some backing vocals. Mother Add bass and drums. Recut all existing parts. Poison Needs a cohesive arrangement and lyrics. Reach Around Bass and backing vocals. Sweet and Low Oi. Vocals, bass and drums. That Doesn't Turn You On Vocals and bass. You Set it Off Vocals and bass. Christian Arrangement. Lyrics. Parts. 072319 First rehearsal with Allen Johnston on drums. Glorius. 072119 More t-shirts, hoodies and other apparel added to our merchandise page. 072019 Thank you so much to everybody that came out to the Brookside Farmers' Market this morning. We dig seeing people wriggle while they shop. Special love to Mama Tu's Farm for always making sure we go home with a big pile of beautiful vegetables. Marvelous seeing new faces and ecstatic to see our San Diego-based drummer and his beautiful companion surprise us with an early appearance! He'll be rehearsing with us for two weeks and then playing with us at the Mike Kelly's Westsider on Friday, August 2nd. 071819 Last rehearsal before an acoustic set at the Farmers Market tomorrow. Next week we'll start rehearsing with Allen Johnston for the Westsider show. Added more designs to our apparel partner. 071719 Got an Oceans 11 to get me by until my Cathedral is repaired. I'm going to have a difficult time kicking the 11 out of bed when the Cathedral comes back. Sounds great and has lots of gimmicks for your nincompoopy narrator. 071619 OK, I'm going with these guys for our merchandise. You can buy t-shirts, sweatshirts, coffee mugs etc. with a wide variety of logos, colors and styles. 071519 Head back from Electro Harmnoix. Dig: I send them the pedal and $25 - they repair it and return it. Gosh dang that's a helluva policy! Friends are asking about t-shirts so I'm determined to find a print-on-demand service that will also ship the merchandise and give me a page and a link rather than making me set up a page on Shopify or Etsy. I might have found it. 071419 Keyboard is done! Will post name and contact of repair person once I get it back and test it. He couldn't repair the Cathedral so I sent a message to Electro Harmonix. 071319 Took the Korg X50 and Cathedral reverb to a person who does repairs in Parkville. Got a larger folding cart for the guitar and keyboard cases. Should be able to get them from the vehicle to the stage in one trip now. 071219 A series of power reboots trashed my Electro Harmonix Cathedral so I picked up an Oceans 11 to get me by. 071119 Trying to coordinate some extra rehearsal time with everybody when Allen is here in a few weeks. 071019 Starting work on the 5th album again after a long break. What an amazing turn out last night. That was such a thrill for us. Special thanks to Emilee, Rachel, Kevin, John, Patty, Peg, Mike, Wanda, Terry, Mike, Joelle, Victoria and Cara for your regular attendance. It's no fun without you. 070919 Hope to see you tonight at The Roxy. I will post our start time on Facebook and Instagram. Our next scheduled appearances are a full acoustic set at the Brookside Farmers Market and a full set at Mike Kelly's Westsider. 070719 Thank you again to The Landing Bistro & Lounge for hosting us and our friends The Groove Pilots last night. We had a great time and the food was amazing! 070519 Added another verse worth of music to Mother. Made Shannon make photocopies of her charts. Dave's wounded paw feeling much better. Ordered a set of files for cleaning up the bridges on my guitars. Also bought extra bridges because I'm certain to foul the first two that I attempt to repair. 070419 We're finding out our starting time on the 9th at 6 PM. I will share here and Facebook as soon as possible. 070319 Got together to smooth out the bumps on the new stuff before our appearances on Saturday and Tuesday. Dave has a dinged wrist and took it easy tonight. 062919 Shannon and I worked on the piano solo in Now Here and layed the groundwork for re-introducing White Girl from Gardenaire. 062819 Still struggling to get timely, if any, replies from Behringer Customer Service for my issue with the DeepMind 12. keyboard. Again, good instrument, very poor support. 062719 My strategy for tonight is to polish up the new or rarely visited stuff to see what we can include in our 2 hour set in Warsaw. Then next week we'll run through everything. Broke the E string on my Strat while play Mars for the 3rd time. Will find a local luthier to get it set up before the 6th. 062519 Having a difficult time with Behringer Customer Service. Love the keyboard, but the support leaves much to be desired. Fortunately the DeepMind 12 is functioning again. 062419 Back at the Roxy on July 9th for the final round. 062319 Thank you to everybody that came out to see us at the Roxy. Listened to drum takes for Beatbox Caveat and sent off feedback. 062219 Scheduling snafu at the farmers market but we sorted it out and just did one set. Thank you to our friends who stopped by to say hi and a special hug for the vendor that gave us loads of amazing produce. We all had lunch at Chelley's Cafe afterwards - a casually observed post-farmers market performance tradition. First time for Danny. 061919 Danyless session. Solidified some of the new songs and worked on some stuff we haven't played in a while. Was dismayed to discover that the first F & G keys are glitchy on Shannon's DeepMind 12. I am not in love with the notion of packing it up, sending it off, and not having access to it for a couple of months while they repair it. I love how it sounds but Behringer's customer service is horrible. 061319 Energetic session. Stephanie and Joelle hung out with us on our first annual Bloody Mary Night. 060819 Got a note from Dave wanting to add Blue in the Veins and Now Here to the setlist. Printing off charts for the piano player as we speak. 060719 We're going to play with The Groove Pilots at the Dam Experience Fireworks event in Warsaw, MO. They will be shooting fireworks off of the Truman Dam! 060619 Good rehearsal. New stuff coming together nicely. 060519 Confirmed that Allen is here from 07/24 to 08/04. 060119 Shannon and I worked through some of the new stuff. Decided to knock the A section to Posion from D down to C for a variety of reasons. 053119 Bought a second Monoprice 15 Watt, 1x12 Tube Amplifier with Celestion Speaker & Spring Reverb. 053019 Petunias practice. Working in more stuff from the new album. 052919 Arranging Reach Around and Poison today. 052819 Got the Korg X50. Piano sound is OK. Will go with it until I find something better in the same weight and price class. 052719 Worked on arranging Poison. 052519 Tried some different guitar parts throughout Poison. 052419 Had a party for Shannon at Craig's pad. Joelle, as usual, prepared an amazing dinner. Bryan brought his mandolin and Danny his guitar and we had a Beatles sing-along. 052319 Learn New Stuff Night. Ran through Poison, Mother, Love, Dingus, You Set It Off and Beat Box Caveat. 052219 Bought a Squier Classic Vibe 1957-style Stratocaster for broken string scenarioes. 051819 Made it through the first set before the rain made it impossible to play anymore. The tent provided us with some shelter but some pretty hearty streams were running across the stage and down the stairs in front. Lovely moment when a little girl ran up to put a couple of dollars in the tip jar and emptied the water out of it first. 051719 Got a Korg X50 to give us better options for piano and organ sounds. Still intend to use the DM12 for pads. 051619 Last practice before doing 2 hours at the Brookside Farmers Market on Saturday. 051319 The isolated power supply and Hum-Debugger did the trick! I'm library-quiet now. 051219 Shannon learned the keyboard parts for Little Something, 20,000 Days, On and Billy Corgan's Cadillac. 051119 Bought an Asmuse Isolated Power Supply 8 Isolated DC Output for 9V / 12V / 18V Guitar Pedal Power Supply with Isolated Short Circuit and Over Current Protection to help with my noise issues. 050919 I had some noise issues with my guitar and pedalboard (I use 8 Electro Harmnoix effects) last night that were frustrating. Did some troubleshooting today. I isolated the noise issue to the Mel9 and Sitar. They were being chained on a standard 9V 100mA power supply. I tried using the Electro Harmonix 9.6 200mA supplies (one for each) and they seemed to be quieter. The problem is that those mofos are HUGE and I can only get 2 on a power strip. I tried chaining them all with an Electro Harmnonix 9.6 200mA adapter and the Canyon freaks out, but works fine chained to a standard adapter. I bought a Electro Harmonix Hum Debugger Noise Cancelling Pedal for the noisy Strat pickup issue, which means another giant power supply. I also ordered some 3-way chain cables to see if I can power smaller number of pedals with a single EH adapter instead of greedily going for 8. Suddenly the acoustic guitars breaking strings all the time doesn't seem like such a big deal. Not the first time Dylan mislead me. 050819 Recorded the piano bit from yesterday and experimented with some melodies. Petunias practice. 050719 Bumbled on a little piano bit that I like. 042919 Have some confirmed dates coming up and lots of almosts, maybes and possibles bubbling in the pot. 042819 Thank you again to The Groove Pilots for sharing their stage and gear with us yesterday. The people were great. Warsaw, especially the view from the stage, was lovely. We had a wonderful time I must acknowledge the young man who, when choosing a CD from our catalog, had the courage to go with the first album rather than the last. Salute! 042419 Re-sang harmonies on Mother and fleshed out Love to include the riffy bit. You'll see what I'm talking about. 042119 Pulled the trigger on a Monoprice 15 Watt, 1x12 Tube Amplifier with Celestion Speaker & Spring Reverb. Bought a Tung-Sol 12AX7 for the V1 slot. Was told to try a JJ as a substitute if the Tung-Sol is too bright. I wanted to try something lighter to drag around instead of the Fender Excelsior or the Blues, Jr. 042019 Got a piano part for Dingus from Danny. Still talking over artwork and album title with Michael. I think we have our cover image. Meeting tomorrow. 041919 A beloved team member burdened with having to learn our live set has created a playlist on Spotify: Johnny Marie Live Set List 041819 Worked on the Benton County Wine Stroll set. Introduced and did a couple of runs at Mother. Danny and I worked on merging a couple of frisky bits into something. 041719 Had a long chat with Allen. He's submitting drums from half the US away for two recording projects that I'm in and we need this calls occasionally to keep organized. I'm so fortunate to have him participating on both albums! 041519 Back from vacation. Recorded some vocals for Mother. Michael came by and we spent some time talking about artwork. 041419 Got a lovely review of Land Ho from a songwriter I greatly admire. 040519 Thanks to Sounds of Springfield for playing "Land Ho." Tune in next Friday for another Johnny Marie & the Lonesome Petunias track. 033119 Got an EHX Synth9 yesterday. Tried the Mini Mood on the intro to Mother and was satisfied with the results. 032919 Thanks to Sounds of Springfield for playing "Blister Beetle." 032819 Tune in to Sounds of Springfield on Friday March 29th from 2 PM to 4 PM to hear tracks from local artists, including something from our last album "Land Ho". Good rehearsal. Got through the two sets and the third set of new stuff. Ran through Beat Box Caveat. Highlight: I sweated a single stream of sweat while playing "Reach Around." Simple, elegant. 032519 Came up with a melody for Mother. Changed a few chords so re-recorded it and uploaded to the Demos folder for my teammates (Bryan) to listen to. 032419 Played Michael everything I have for this album so far: Dingus Mars That Doesn't Turn You On Sweet & Low Beat Box Caveat Mother You Set It Off Reach Around Talked about artwork. Got first wave of piano parts for Dingus from Danny. 032319 Sent a version of Dingus sans piano for Danny to play with. Had a nice hunk of a song fall out of my bottom while fooling around with the Cathedral reverb. Shannon and I ran through it a few times. 032219 Scheduled time with Michael to listen to what we have for the 5th album so far and to discuss artwork. Got my Electro-Harmonix Cathedral reverb pedal. Love it. 032119 Got together and worked on stuff from Land Ho and the new album. Introduced Dingus. Talked to Danny about the all-or- nothing issue I'm having with the JBL EON 515s. They are too quiet at LINE setting and too noisy and wild at the MIC setting. Danny reccommended gonig with the LINE setting and maxing out the mixer. 032019 Thank you to Tim and Ben Parson at WERU radio in Bangor, ME for giving "Capers" a spin. 031719 Got drum takes from Allen for You Set It Off. 031619 Paris showed me how to print MIDI scores from Facebook earlier this week so I was able to give Shannon proper piano parts for Land Ho and Push Past. 031419 Full rehearsal at our original space. Focusing on stuff from Land Ho (Parasol and Nellie Ordinay) and new material. Talked about doing a short set at the Benton County Wine Stroll which our friends the Groove Pilots are headlining. 031319 Borderline racist blog entry from 3 years ago: The lord done bless me with another chile. World, meet and ignore "Juno Impacto". So much easier to write new songs than to finish existing songs. I only reposted it because I like the "World, meet and ignore..." line. 030919 Ran through some of the songs in the set with Danny and Shannon. 030819 Used a an Electro-Voice ND96 at Danny's last night and I loved it. Bought one post haste. It will be interesting to side-by-side it with the Beta 58a. 030219 Talked to Dave about using both an upright and traditional bass going forward. The upright is so dark and beautiful but the traditional bass really sets fire to the more aggressive stuff. Sent click-track versions of Beat Box Caveat, You Set It Off and Sweet & Low for Allen. Reach Around has a Pro Tools issue that my Lord and Savior Patrick Meagher will eventually gently guide me to resolution. From P: Sounds like you added an extra tempo marker. Make sure the tempo ruler is showing (edit window/ tempo ruler) and then delete the offending maker. Or, you can drag the tempo ruler down and it will show you the tempo automation written. You can select it all and delete it. Loaded a Classic Synth Sysex set on the DM12. So long bank H. You can join the original bank G in hell. 030119 Bought a Ravish Sitar to replace the one Dave loaned me. I use it on Sweet & Low. 022819 Practice at Danny's. 022519 Preparing to add Parasol to the live set. Getting close to introducing Mars and Beat Box Caveat. 022419 Used Midi-OX to add some new presets to the DM12. 022319 Shannon and I working through the presets on the DM12 to find sounds that approximate the recorded material. We've added keboards to a dozen songs so far, including 4 from the upcoming album. 022219 Got the DM12. Sounds wonderful. Having problems with the saving to favorites option so already have a customer service request pending. 021619 Thank you Mark Manning for sharing Capers from Land Ho on the Wednesday MidDay Medley Bandcamp page. Mark is well known in the Kansas City area for turning people on to local talent. 021519 Patrick Meagher has a beautiful new album out. Patrick is my bandmate in Girl for Samson, and mixmaster and co-producer of 3 of 4 Johnny Marie albums, You can read about it on my Facebook page and at GirlForSamson.com Bought a Behringer DeepMind 12 True Analog Polyphonic Synthesizer to use for live performance. 021419 Re-staged our rehearsal space and ran though a big chunk of the sets. Worked a little on You Set It Off and That Doesn't Turn You On. 021319 Worked on Reach Around most of the day. 021119 Re-recorded scratch drums for Beat Box Caveat and Sweet & Low. Sorted out an arrangement for Reach Around. 020819 Playing at Mike Kelly's Westsider on 08/02/19 with Allen Johnston on drums. Got drum tracks for That Doesn't Turn You On from Allen. Got the first piano parts from Joe Salvato for That Doesn't Turn You On. Thrilling to have keyboard parts from a real player verses my one hand/ three finger style of playing. 020719 Have a venue confirmed for one of the performances with Allen Johnston in late July and early August. Working through a few more details before sharing. Worked on keyboard bits with Shannon for That Doesn't Turn You On and You Set It Off. Brookside Farmers Market appearances confirmed. Wrestled with a groove for Beat Box Caveat. 020619 Sent You Set It Off and That Doesn't Turn You On to the team to familiarize them with the arrangements. 020519 Thanks to our friends for braving the lousy weather to add some life to our two sets at the Roxy Bar. It really meant a lot to us. Pictures of the show on Instagram. Hope to be back soon. Still on target to play for two hours tonight at The Roxy, despite the percipitation. Still starting at 7 PM,. 020419 Teeth Filed is now Reach-Around. 020319 Chris Ruzich came by to add bass and vocals to Mars. Such a lovely man and player. 020119 Setting something up in late July/early August with Allen Johnston on drums. 013119 Romped through the set. First session with Shannon on keyboards. See you on the 5th. 013019 Added several tremolo guitars to You Set It Off. Sent slide parts to Danny for Repeat. Worked up bits for Land Ho, Capers, Repeat and Gardenaire for Shannon on the microKorg. 012819 Worked on Teeth Filed all day. 012719 Sent Chris Ruzich Mars. Sent Danny isolated guitar tracks from Capers, nothingood, Ordinary Guy, Billy Corgan's Cadillac, 20,000 Days and On for live stuff. 012619 Good session with all five players. I broke an A string, dashed off 25% of a fingernail and got a large blister on the inside of my forearm. Sent Joe Salvato some mixes of That Doesn't Turn You On for piano parts. Shannon added harmonies to You Set It Off. I added some reference drums to That Doesn't Turn You On. 012419 Another full rehearsal with Danny. He brought keyboards and a guitar processor to bring some of the hooks and melodies from the recordings to life. Bryan brought a new shaker that he created. The shaker was new, but not the phenomenon. 012319 Spent most of the day finishing up You Set It Off. Only needs bass, drums and a better vocal take. Even though I am generally no longer the drummer or the bass player I still like to come up with parts when I am building a song so that I have a clearer vision of how it might move. Some times I play the drum parts and then use the Steven Slate Sampler to compensate for all of the non-engineering set-up I performed. Here's the only reason I mention this - I can never find the plug-in, and when I do, I forget to blog about it to help future me. It lives in Dynamics and is called Trigger2. 012219 We have a schedule conflict for the new Midwest Fashion Awards date. 012119 Worked on You Set It Off. Lengthened the solo section and lengthened the solo. 012019 Ran out to FM Music to talk to Herb & Faron about carrying our last 2 albums and perhaps doing a show. 011819 Worked all day on You Set It Off. I wasn't happy with how my Big Muff records so my friend Dave talked me into trying a cheapo Vintage Tube Overdrive. I liked how it sounded but it didn't have the sustain the Big Muff does. Ended up using Muffy in a potentially throw-away guitar solo. 011719 First full practice with Danny Button. Danny brings guitar, keyboards and vocals to the table. We plan to present the new 5 piece lineup at The Roxy Bar in February. We are now decidedly less Violent Femmesy. 011519 Playing at the Roxy on February 5th. Will have the Brookside Farmers Market schedule in a few weeks. 011419 Contemplated daring to repeat a verse three times in That Doesn't Turn You On. Determined to struggle through a new verse today. I don't like bullying lyrics. Later: wrote and recorded new lines. 011319 Had a little bit tumble out of my bottom last night. Futzed with it some more today. Currently named You're Untitled. (You Set It Off). 011219 Why can't I remember the name "Fender Excelsior?" I always want to refer to it as "Fender Excalibur." Did some more work tidying up the 4 mostly- completedly songs. 011119 Pulled up Quatro ` and sang some reference melodies. Quatro was a dummy title I made up because I thought this was the 4th album. It's the 5th. So yup, it's a dummy title. 011019 Sweet & Low Added more guitars Added more vocal takes of chorus. Started paring back instruments. Beatbox Caveat Added more guitars Came up with a 2nd verse and sang it Added tamby Tightened up the mix Recording a Big Muff sucks. Big Muff. 010919 Thomas Montgomery, my long-time friend and contributor on nearly all of the Johnny Marie albums, has died. Thomas was a brilliant musician. A true artist. He worked for several years at Mad Hatter Studios in Los Angeloes after going to school in Florida. He came back to Kansas City when his mother became ill. Thomas played in The Waldinis, Mongol Beach Party, Grumpy and Girl for Samson. 010819 You can now buy Johnny Marie & the Lonesome Petunias CDs at some local Kansas City record shops: FM Music Vintage Sounds Mills Record Company Starting the search for another backup singer. 010719 Sorting out the 2019 schedule for Johnny Marie & the Lonesome Petunias at the Brookside Farmers Market. The KC Midwest "Peoples Choice" Fashion Awards has been moved to April 13th at the Scottish Rite Temple. 010619 I don't understand the first thing about markers in Pro Tools. I do know that sometimes there is an unknown marker at the start of a section that I want to work on and I am unable to put the major marker (red or blue arrow) over it. I've since learned that holding down the Ctrl button will place the arrow over the mystery marker. Pro Tools seems to be randomly or automatically creating groups. Haven't licked that one yet. Did some more tweaks to the first four songs. I want to use the Electro-Harmonix Big Muff driving the Electric Mistriss flanger on a few things tomorrow. 010519 Finished the lyrics and sang new takes for all 4 of the current songs. Received more Mars drum takes from Allen. 010419 Got two takes from Allen for Mars. Imported them and datadada, song! Added some better vocals and harmonies to Sweet & Low. Also added an intro wash with the Ravish Sitar. Used the String Ray to replace the synth bass in Mars. 010119 An incredibly well-timed kind word from my friend Brannon.