122821 Came up with the rest of the words for Laundry Day - formerly Ladle & Savor. 122521 Recorded Ladle & Savor and came up with some melodies. 121921 Had a kind of holiday party. Introduced melody/lyrics to Switchblad Sisters. 120121 Another night of arranging, rehearsing and jamming. Three new seeds for me to start on and not finish. 112821 Got together and recorded backing vocals and keyboards for Dolemite. Fiddled with new stuff afterwards. 112721 Sang some more Dolemite takes. 112221 Pizza practice. Added Sushi (Lethal Portions) to our practice routine. Plan to finish up Dolemite and get it to Patrick this weekend. 111721 Still just rehearsing the newest stuff. Did a little set review at the end. Jerry always wants to play Rattle and Billy Corgan's Cadillac. 111121 Added some simple melodies to Sushi. 111021 It seems like every rehearsal produces the guts to a new song. Dave brought sushi so what do you think the working title is? 110421 Imported a bit of Everybody Does It into my workstation and played with melodies and keyboard parts. 110321 We accidentally came up with a Cramps-sounding tune currently titled Everybody Does It. 100321 Still fleshing out and refining new stuff. We managed to play The Last Moth all the way through. A section and a few chords away from finishing what is currently a new instrumental. 102021 Our first time with The Last Moth. Worked on the other new songs and talked about strategies for getting the recording process rolling. Also talked more about adding a hand percussionist but decided not to fiddle with the vibe we have right now. 101621 I re-worked The Last Moth without the original drums and think I have something. 101521 Hung out with Michael for a few hours. 100921 One of the best things about having a few bands play before us is meeting new people. Loved the cats in Flash Floods. Sweet boys who live and love music. Sevrin was a delight as always. You need to scramble out and catch his set the next time he performs. The sets were halted occasionally by power outages which became increasingly frequent by the end. We've ony played in Lawrence twice but both times people were attentive and enthusiastic. At some of the other venues we have played takes an hour for the crowd to get over the disappointment that we aren't a blues or classic rock band before we can win them over. 100621 Came up with a couple of bits last night that will turn into something. Session-78 and Session-79. 092321 Married Who is this Plumber and The Pig in the Sky in Pro Tools. Tempo/meter change and all! 092221 Married Who is this Plumber and The Pig in the Sky for the live set. 092121 Had some bass/rhythm ideas for Pig that I recorded. 091521 Introduced Who is this Plumber? and The Pig in the Sky and nearly got them all sorted out. Also fleshed out a thing we've been fooling with at practices. 091421 Changed the tempo for The Pig in the Sky to 150 and tacked Somebody's Intro onto the end ala Adorable Deplorable. 091021 Doing another KKFI interview in late September. These guys do SO much for Kansas City artists. 090521 Dashed out to our new rehearsal space to set up. 090321 Got away with one! Came close to having our third cancelation at Colonial Gardens but the rain stopped long enough for Scott Jelinek to do his set and for us to knock off an hour and a half before it started again. Had a great time and made new friends. 083121 Fleshed out The Pig in the Sky. 082821 Had a lot of fun playing with Sevrin and Major Matt Mason. Very inspiring sets. Thank you to everyone who came out. 082621 Thanks to KKFI's Keith Washburn for spinning Mars and Seven Little Eyes. 082521 Our show tonight at Colonial Gardens is postponed until September becase of the heat. We have rescheduled for Friday, September 3rd with Scott Jelinek. 082321 Had an acoustic practice in my livingroom with the full band. Sorted out stuff for upcoming shows and the future. 082021 Backed up the 25 songs and chunks of songs using the Save Copy As because for some reason my current setup is putting all of the audio files from all of the sessions in one Audio folder. 080921 Fully intended to complete our live calendar for 2021. This includes 2 outdoor gigs. 080721 I've not been a fan of my Boss SY1 and it's been demoted to a rarely-used board. Then I got the notiion to put it in the effects loop of the superego+. Bliss. 072721 Picked up COVID-19 from the Belton DMV last week so the bill for Friday's show will be covered by the Mystics and The Splatter Pattern. 072021 Only 1/2 of Distant Cousins (Jill Westra) will be joining us on the 25th. 071721 Got the album database caught up with some of the new stuff. Fiddled with Mac including re-singing the full song and adding some alt parts. 071621 Sevrin Eldred will be opening the show on August 28th at Mike Kelly's Westsider. 071521 I've recorded chunks of 4 songs (Mac, Mr. Cooper, Sweet, Soft Gollum, Irene Ironweed) over the last week. It's a drag. I'm talking to a few people about co-writing on some of the songs just to spread the burden around. 071421 People are always like "mrjohnny, mrjohny, what's on your magificent pedalboard?" and I'm all "Hi, I don't usually go for this sort of thing but here they are in this order:" Soul Preacher Soul Food Attack Decay Tape Reverse Synth9 Mel9 B9 Ravish Sitar Superego+ Cathedral Oceans11 320 Looper Quilter Phantom Block "but mrjohnny, mrjohnny, what about your other board?" and I'm all like curt and put off and shit and flatly spit: Joyo American Twinote Fuzz Boss SY1 Mono Synth Mod Modulator Hall of Fame Earthquaker Afterneath 071321 Thank you to everybody that made the trip to Blue Springs to hang out on a Tuesday night. Thanks so much to Jill and Kelly for a fun set and to Chris Ruzich for sitting in on some songs. We'll do it again in August. We talked a bit before DC's set about setting up our rehearsal space for recording in the Autumn and start churning out some albums. See you at 6:00 tonight when Distant Cousins take the stage. Two Forlorn Petunias have birthdays on this date. I shan't tell you who. 070921 Recorded an interview with Barry Lee at KKFI in advance of the July 30th show with The Jubilee Mystics and Splatter Pattern at the Westsider. I always have fun talking music with Barry. 070721 Grim rehearsal, which is good news before a show. Highlights: Chris Ruzich swung by to run through Glad to Pass On and Mars - the first time he and I have strapped on instruments together - and Dave's absurdly percocious nephew LJ hung out with us. 070621 July 9th show at Harley's Hideaway has been cancelled due to a scheduling conflict. We have never cancelled on a venue before for any reason. 062921 Distant Cousins added to the 7/13 show at Colonial Gardens. Flash Floods added to Gaslight Gardens bill in October. 062621 Sevrin Eldred added to the Gaslight Gardens bill in October. 062421 We've cancelled the show tonight due to inclement weather. Will reschedule for July. Likely July 13th. Josh Loper will be joining us at Harley's on the 9th. Scrambling the outfit to LC's on 18th to do a fistful of songs. Skated through Dolemite, Adorable Deplorable and Repeat. 062321 Jazzy Jazz will be sitting in on a few songs tomorrow night at Colonial Gardens. 062221 Added Distant Cousins (J. Kelly Dougherty & Jill Westra) to the bill at Colonial Gardens on August 25th. 062021 Fleshed out Gulch. I absolutely do not need any more starts to songs or even whole songs. I have to stop at some point and start managing the growing pile of unfinished material. 061621 Tried the new Ring of Stars bit at rehearsal and it seems to work fine. We came up with some mods that I'll have to go back and apply to the demo. 061321 Working on lengthening the outro of Ring of Stars. 061221 I have an Electro Harmonix-Synth9 and a Boss SY-1 on my pedalboard because sometimes I am more useful replicating synth sounds from the recordings live than proper guitar sounds. . I just haven't been able to find a useful sound on the SY-1. At least not useful enough to justify the rectangle it takes up on the board so I am picking up an Electro-Harmonix Mono Synth. This will be a useful upgrade for the presets alone. The SY-1 and Synth9 don't have presets so I have to line settings up before each song, which is not optimal. 061121 One of my favorite things about being in **stupid rock bands has always been bringing in a demo of a new stupid song and watching it come to life as the musicians sort it out. It never gets old. It's like planting flower seeds and watching the plants burst above ground minutes later. I still clearly remember the thrill of first introducing my early stuff to players in bedrooms, living rooms and basements across the metro. Nervously showing everyone the chords to my stupid song, timidly humming the stupid vocal melody, steeling myself for the negative reaction/criticism that never came - even when it probably should have! I was (and still am) so fortunate to be in situations where everyone accepted my stupid songs and made them better. Thank you for that. ** I'm annoyed by much and sub-genres absolutely qualify. If the snare hits on two and four then it's likely a stupid rock/pop song. The Eagles, The Sex Pistols, Bruno Mars, Marilyn Mansion, Herman's Hermits, Artic Monkeys, Marvin Gaye, Bobby Goldsboro, Blur, ABBA are all stupid rock/pop bands. I like stupid rock/pop music, but if you're trying to put together a stupid new band, don't list a bunch of stupid sub-genres in your ads. Why limit yourself and your music by only auditioning people that wear cuffed jeans or are only influenced by 3 stupid artists from 1994? 061021 Android "Download Not Allowed" when trying to save an MP3 attachment to my phone. Strugged with this for an hour. Found nothing on the internet. Turns out I had to have WiFi connected to successfully save an MP3 from an e-mail to my phone. I guess that's a Verizon thing to save bandwidth? 060921 Having an all acoustic session this evening. Weird at first but was rolling nicely by the end. I think we'll still go mostly electric for most venues but pull out the acoustic lineup for the Westsider since sound is an issue there. 060821 Both Jerry Riccardi and Allen Johnston replaced my drum parts on the new Girl for Samson album. Patrick played thee tracks for me last night - Cigarette (Allen), Dust (Jerry) and Present Always (Jerry). 060321 I don't want to be that band that is painfully loud. I really don't. I am committed to making playing at the best volume for each venue a priority. 060221 Added another date at Colonial Gardens. Band had our first live run at Merry Blaze. Feels good. 053121 Tidied up Merry Blaze for Allen to drum to and to use for the band to rehearse to so that we can get it into rotation because every new song I compose is possibly the greatest song ever written and must be poured into ears as soon as possible. 053021 We had a great time last night. Thanks again to Josh Loper and The Underdogs for sharing their music and to all the people that showed up. Wonderful to play to a chunk of people again! A couple of notes about future dates. The 7/31 show with The Splatter Pattern and The Jubilee Mystics has been moved to 7/30. We've added August 28th at The Westsider with Major Matt Mason and Josh Loper. BTW, I noticed that we are likely to hit our 50th live performance some time this year or early next. That feels noteworthy. 052921 Playing at Mike Kelly's Westsider in Westport tonight with The Underdogs and Josh Loper. Show starts at 7 PM. Cover is $5. 052821 Woke up in the middle of the night and came up with all of the words for Merry Blaze. Hope to show it to the band and have it ready for the June 24th gig at Colonial Gardens. 052521 1978-1979: The Jam cover David Watts, The Pretenders cover "Stop Your Sobbing" and Van Halen do "You Really Got Me". 052321 Finished Who Is This Plumber? Just need to replace temp parts with permies. 052121 Obsessing over Who Is This Plumber?, forsaking all others. 052021 Added another section to Who Is This Plumber? I actually anguished over the chord progression and it feels really nice. Talking to some other bands about some multi-band billings this Summer/Autumn. 051921 Rehearsed and worked what Saturdays were open for future gigs. 051721 Headed back Lawrence this Autumn. Gaslight Gardens on October 9th. Decided to work on Kitchen Matches and before opening the session found Who Is This Plumber. Last week I found Cherry. More chunks of songs cluttering my to do list. 051321 Adding Josh Loper to the May 29th show. The Splatter Pattern and The Jubilee Mystics will kick off the evening of July 31st. 051221 Beautiful night working on music and eating great food with Joelle and Mike. 051021 Set Allen Johnston a demo of Merry Blaze to add drums to. Danny sent me some piano riffing. 050921 Lengthened Merry Blaze. Got more Dolemite bass takes from Dave. 050721 Roughed our a version of Merry Blaze to send to Danny. 050521 Roughed out a version of Somebody's Intro to send to Danny. Shannon charted it along with Industrial Debris. 050421 Working on a date at Harley's. 050321 Tried a different approach to some of the vocal lines in Adorable Deplorabe. Recorded the guts of Somebody's Intro. 050221 Settled on The Underdogs for support for 5/29. 042921 Getting closer to having multiple bands for the next two Westsider shows. 042821 Great rehearsal. Lots of ironing out troubling bits. 042421 Pre-set up music - The Sparks "Kimono My House" and the rarities from The Kinks' "The Village Green Preservation Society". 042321 Sad Ballroom Rock in a Major Key 042221 A venue is requesting a band photo. Just about everything associated with band-business/promotion is regrettable to me. The only posed band photo I think I could stomach would be taken underwater or perhaps an overhead shot of the band in different checkout lines, mixed with other people at a store. Or maybe eating tacos. Or perhaps brooding in an alley with graffiti with our unplugged instruments. The drummer would hold his sticks. How come the singer never holds an unplugged mic in those kind of shots? 042121 Scheduled a show for us at Colonial Gardens in June. They have a beautiful outdoor stage. The date is 6/24 from 6-9 PM. It costs $10 to reserve a table. 042021 Painful start to our last rehearsal before going back to the Westsider on Saturday, but we got in sync after an hour. Decided to postpone introducing live versions of Boyfriend and Glad to Pass On until May. Sent some designs to a proper graphic design artist for t-shirts etc. 041921 Fooled with the Pox arrangement rather than finishing the 20 other songs in the basket. Essentially there are two kinds of set lists - fixed and loose. A fixed set list is like a playlist that you follow in order. Consideration has been given beforehand to which songs sound good together and everybody in the band knows what's coming up next. A loose set list is delivered by feel. You refer to the collection of songs at the conclusion of every tune and determine what would work best based on how the band is doing and how people are responding. I find this method more desirable. The downside is that if you don't quickly come up with a song there can be awkward lulls in-between numbers because the musicians need time to adjust their settings to prepare for the song. I generally try to come up with the next title during the last 45 seconds of the current tune. The panic should be visible even from the back of a small, dark bar. 041821 Recorded the framework for Pox and sent a copy to Danny. 041421 Spent a good chunk of the session sorting out Boyfrind and Glad To Pass On. Also introduced some ideas for Swimmer's Shoulders, including lengthening the last section. 041321 So many bland recommendations lately. David Bowie's Heroes, The Beach Boys' Sunflower & Roxy Music's Avalon. After that dull trio I bought The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society 3 CD set. I'd rather listen to slight variations of good songs then mediocre new songs. Also going to go after Scott Walker, The Isley Brothers and Prefab Sprout next. 040921 The June date at The Westsider has been moved to July 31st. 040721 Started on Boyfriend and Glad to Pass On from Land Ho! 040521 Started shipping copies of The Green Piano. 040321 Going birding this morning and taking Leonard Cohen's "Songs of Love and Hate", Beta Band's "Heroes to Zeros" and Laura Nyro's "Eli & the Thirteenth Confession". Loved Beta Band and Robyn. Found Nyro and Cohen a litte dated and corny. 040121 Listening to the New Pornographers and The Shins. 033121 Worked on new songs. Worked on stuff we know but don't practice very often (Sweet & Low, Beat Box Caveat, The Green Piano, Rattle etc.), tunes from the new album and songs from older albums like Boyfriend and Glad to Pass On. The Green Piano CDs are here. Danny sending me Dolemite parts. Listened to the Las album. I thought it was quite good. Bought Beach Boys "Sunflower" & "Surf's Up". Also bought Isley Brothers "3 + 3". 033021 A few times Saturday I would hear Carl, Jerry and Dave in a nice groove and just stop and let it run. What a luxury. Bought some of Scott Walker's work today. That's a long overdue listen. Today I'm listing to Bitches Brew by Miles Davis and Closer by Joy Division. 032921 Listening to Suzanne Vega and Shonen Knife. Had a little march fall into my lap. Going to fuss with it a bit instead of finishing the 16 songs that are sagging on the kitchen counter. 032721 Fun night. We did 40 originals, playing from 7 to 9:30 and then 10:15 to 11:00. Made some friends, sold some CDs. Had some volume issues that we finally sorted out by just using our monitors and shutting off the mains. Gave little eyeglass thingies to all of the eyeglass wearing members of the organization. 032621 My little eyeglass thingies are awesome! 032521 Ordered an important stage accessory that will be here before Saturday - a variety pack of bits of silicone to prevent glasses from sliding down your nose when you are engaged in the act of rocking too much. 032421 Last rehearsal before Saturday. Focused on new stuff and classics we haven't played in a while. 032321 Got a bag for the Yamaha MO6 to replace the coffin. 032021 See you next Saturday night in Westport. 031921 Listened to Television's "Adventure" for the first time. I wish I had a fresh take but my first impression matches most reviews. Coming up - The Las, The Pogues, Suzanne Vega, Snow Patrol, Shonen Knife, Franz Ferdinand, The New Pornographers and PJ Harvey. 031721 We're doing that thing where we are trying to run through everything in the set in advance of our Westsider appearance while still learning new stuff. If you are planning on coming make sure to bring roses and rotton tomatoes. That way you can make a game time decision. Listening to the Raveonettes, PJ Harvey, Joni Mitchell and just now getting to Television's "Adventure." 031421 Chris Ruzich swung by to add some bass to Kitchen Matches. He also recorded some piano and bass for a song he showed me a year or so ago. 031321 Re-sang some bits of Adorable Deplorable. 031221 Green Piano CDs are being manufactured. 031021 First time running through the Adorable Deplorable/ Area 51 merge. Getting it figured out. Collected funds for starting production on physical CDs for The Green Piano. 030821 Did some more maintenance on Adorable Deplorable. It's now 10 minutes long but could easily be 12-15 live if we don't play it like a Ramones song. 030721 Set up The Green Piano with DiscMakers for CDs. Will pull the trigger at the end of the week. 030521 Finished building the grander Adorable Deplorable. 9 minutes exactly. This weekend I need to sort out The Green Piano artwork and get a CD order started. 030421 Decided last night to have Adorable Deplorable go right into Area 51, making the whole mess Adorable Deplorable and a significant editing chore today for your humble narrator since they are different tempos. Listened to Pretty Things' S.F. Sorrow and disc one of Todd Rundgren's Something/Anything? 030321 Productive rehearsal. DJ STP made some beautiful pasta. Talked again about making CDs for The Green Piano. I just need to tidy up the artwork and submit the order. 030221 Confirmed again with Patrick that we are going to give him one song at a time for mixing and mastering. Listened to Stereolab's Emperor Tomato Ketchup. 022421 Picked up Hunky Dory, Ziggy and Aladdin Sane because I'm only familiar with the "hits". Charted out some backing vocal parts with Shannon for Area 51, Adorable Deplorables and Simmers Shoulders. 022321 Still gorging on other people's music rather than working on my own. Recent titles: The Kinks: Aurthur Monade: Monstre Cosmic Steely Dan: Pretzel Logic Neil Young: After the Gold Rush 10,000 Maniacs: In My Tribe Jane Siberry: The Walking The Byrds: Fifth Dimension Gentle Giant: Octopus U2: War Nick Lowe: Dig My Mood Edith Piaf: Compilation 021621 Enjoying Soft Machine's double album "Third" "Here on the BBC We're free to play almost as long and as loud As the foreign language classes and the John Cage interview... And the jazz groups and the orchestras on Radio 3" 021521 Listening to Monade, Helio Sequence, Gentle Giant and Matthew Sweet. Gentle Giant is dangerously close to listening to Yes. 021221 Sweet & Low on KKFI. 021021 Did some editing on Every Night, Failure to Rise, Area 51 and Adorable Deplorable in advance of tonight's rehearsal. 020921 I have at least 16 songs with 1 or more parts including chords and a melody. Maybe 10 of them are only partially completed and it's overwhelming managing where I'm at with them, especially since I keep making up new stuff. SO, I created a spreadsheet with the deets for each song and uploaded it to Dropbox so that we can monitor our progress for each song. 020821 More notes to self. Arranged, Lyrics, Drums, Bass, Vocals. x=To Do Adorable Deplorable Axxxx Area 51 ALxxx Dingus ALAxx Dolemite ALJDV Every Night xxxxx Failure to Rise xxxxx It's My Island AxJxx Kitchen Matches xxxxx Let Her Run xxxxx No Limes ALAxV Rattle AxAxx Ring of Stars AxJxx Shut Up You Crazy Diamond AxJxx Stinker ALJDV Swimmer's Shoulders ALAxx The Blue One AxJxx When the Money xxxxx 020421 Talked to Dave about some performance opportunities this summer. Tweaked the melody in Adorable Deplorable and re-learned how to play Let Her Run, not knowing that Dave, Danny and Jerry worked on it last night. 020321 Confirmed upcoming dates at Mike Kelly's Westsider. Dave, Danny and Jerry had a rehearsal at Danny's. Worked on Let Her Run. 012820 Listening to some artists that I am not that familiar with: The Sundays, Monade, Peanut Butter Conspiracy, King Crimson. I'm also exploring catalogs of artists that I know like Flaming Lips, Radiohead, The Kinks Gentle Giant, The Moody Blues and Stereolab. 012721 Down a team member which made the session awkward but we powered through and got some stuff done. 012621 I've been listening to a lot of music to get out of my head for a bit. Some of the stuff I've been consuming is so good that it's deflating. This happens to me occasionally and I have to remind myself that I'm not them and they aren't me. No harm in being motiviated by quality work, but no point in being knocked off course by it. 012021 Still splitting rehearsals between learning new stuff and keeping fresh on the older material so that we can play live for 3 hours again. 011321 Good rehearsal with a full band. Added Adorable Deplorable to the setlist. Still spending half of the sessions working on new material. 011221 Worked up a new section for Swimmer's Shoulders. Fleshed out Adorable Deplorable. 010821 Sent a rough arrangement for Area 51 to the team. 010621 Productive rehearsal. Still working out all of the new stuff, intergrating Carl and toying with lighting. 010521 Finally got a new Johnny Marie t-ship design up in the Merch shop. 010121 Still futzing with a section of music in Swimmer's Shoulders. Also need to import a little jammy thing we did from last rehearsal that seemed promising.