November 1

After I created this blog, I ran out of the house to fight traffic across the Lehigh Valley from Nazareth to Alburtis. When I got to Karl's house, he was surprised to see me. (Karl Eisenhart is the guitarist in Pinnacle, our Progressive Rock band. We're working on our second CD.) It seems that I got my wires crossed. I thought that we were going to mix "the epic" today and go to Star City recording studio tomorrow. Reverse it. So I ate my lunch early while chatting with Karl. He showed me the new kitten that showed up on his back porch about a week after Gator died. What a cutie! Fessig loved sniffing the cat but the cat didn't quite know what to make of Fessig.

Karl and I got into our respective vehicles and crossed the Valley back to Bethlehem and Star City. We were let in by Carl Cadden James. He just happens to be the bassist in Shadow Gallery, a Progressive Rock band on the InsideOut Music label. (Check out their CD "Room V" because it's awesome!) He took us into the big room ($250/hour) and set us up to listen to our CD while he took care of business elsewhere. Greg Jones (our drummer) showed up a few moments later. We started listening to our latest round of mixes when in strolls the owner... Jeff Glixman. He's the legendary producer who has credits like Kansas (Leftoverture and Point of Know Return) and Yngwie Malmsteen (Oddessy). We chatted and listened intently as Jeff shared his thoughts on mixing. This guy is so cool. He wants his studio to be uber-musician-friendly. He's succeeding in my book because this was the third time in Studio A at no charge. Carl and Jeff have made suggestions that allowed us to remix our CD to make it significantly better than when we first brought it in for mastering. After talking about the financials to have our CD mastered, Jeff left Greg, Karl, and me to finish listening to our CD. It sounds absolutely glorious in this studio. The SSL console is a mammoth and we've already found the master volume knob on it! Just as we finished listening and taking notes, Carl returned to listen to our latest efforts. He liked what he heard and made a few suggestions. Tomorrow, Greg and I will meet at Karl's to implement what we hope will be the final changes to our mixes. We left happy campers and with next Tuesday and Wednesday on Star City's books for our mastering session(s).

I went home, picking up some pork chops along the way. After some email, I headed back out. This time I went to LA's house for a rehearsal. LA (Williams) is the fiddle player in Emerald City. That's one of the two Celtic bands I'm in. LA has a private gig booked for just the two of us. I play bass in Emerald City. For this duo gig, I'll be playing acoustic guitar. We went through the Fiddlers Fake Book to select the songs we can do. Basically, the songs are ones we do in Emerald City or songs we did in Malarky. I'm still the bass player in Malarky but LA was fired. That's a long story for another time. LA and I worked for two hours, getting me home at 6:30.

When I got home, I deleted a telemarketing message from my answering machine. I signed up for the National Do Not Call List in January but I STILL get solicited! The other message was from my sister, Anita. I called Anita as soon as my pork chops were in the toaster over, set to bake. We chatted until the chops were ready. I ate dinner and then wrote this blog entry.