Since we are not playing out as a band as much as we used to, I have been playing these small gigs by myself. These gigs are usually in a form that I would describe as songwriter showcases. Where two to four songwriters play about 30 minutes each, or rotate one song each. The rotation gigs can be fun, but you need the right mix of people since you are performing as a weird sort of band. Recently, I’ve been really enjoying the straight up line-up ones. In those, one has more time to develop the performance, and there is no need to be so strictly song oriented. The one line-up showcase that I’ve enjoyed the most, enough that I’ve returned several times is the Songslinger’s Showcase that Brandon Herndon and John Pardue put together. I like Songslingers for various reasons. One is that Brandon and John pick the people and for the most part I trust their taste. It’s also good that they host it at our home base bar, The Cave.

Last night I played one of these gigs. It’s usually three or four people and we each get about 30 minutes, which is just about as long as I can stand myself by myself on stage. And that is one of the hardest things about these gigs, the fact that I have to play by my lonesome. And boy do I get nervous. I’ve played for years and years in bands in all kinds of stages, and have never gotten as nervous about a band gig as I do about these solo gigs. However, recently I have figured out that two shots of bourbon and two beers is all I need to kill the nervous bug.

Last night I got there early and even though I’ve learned exactly how much I can drink, I was feeling good so I went ahead and doubled the dose. Four shots of Ancient Age later… I think I played one song all the way through. Mostly I’d start playing a song, then stop in the middle, to comment on something about the song, or something totally unrelated to anything, then I would realize that I didn’t want to go back to that song, so I’d start another one. And so on. At some point I played part of Peter Gabriel’s Red Rain as some kind of joyful celebration of the victory of red, which to most of the world is the color of the left, while blue is the color of the right. In the USA the colors are backwards. As was apparently my logic last night. So my 30 minutes turned into some kind of comedy routine. And, surprisingly, everyone loved it, nothing like a train wreck performance to captivate an audience.

Meanwhile back at the studio….

We are really close to finishing all the tracking for the record. We were hoping to release the record by the end of 2008, but it looks like we won’t. But it does look like we’ll be done with the tracking by the end of the year, so we should be able to mix and master and release it in early 2009.

In the meantime, here’s a couple of songs in their almost-finished, unmixed, and unmastered glory.

Stayed and Gone – this one now has Alex Bowers on piano, and most recently Seamus Kinney laid down some sexy trombone on it.

Season of the Grape – this one now has Nathan Golub on pedal steel, and Alex on piano, and even a bit of cuica.