Well, things don’t always go as planned. Erik was unable to make it out to record this weekend due to a very large amount of traffic jammed on the freeway he uses to get to Nevada. If I remember correctly, he moved only 20 miles over the course of two hours. Hence, we’re going to re-schedule to record his parts, but my recording work will continue this week.

The fall air is finally reaching Las Vegas, and my little soul longs for the trees and grass of Iowa. Yet, Erik and I are pressing onward in this desert, gradually polishing the new songs and eagerly awaiting the work of other contributing musicians from afar. My work on “Senex” has come to a conclusion, and the guitar work for “Vegas Anesthetic Peddler” is nearly complete after two weeks of painstaking recording. Erik is planning to travel out to Nevada tonight in hopes of a fruitful weekend of re-recording vocals and guitar for “Candlesmoke” and “Phyllis” with the new microphone. There really is quite the substantial quality difference, and we’re looking forward to presenting the completed version of “Candlesmoke” soon, if possible. Over the next week, my plans are to finish off the Unwed Sailor site, complete the acoustic guitar for “Vegas Anesthetic Peddler” and continue recording vocals on it. I hope that everyone who’s reading is doing well. Erik and I continue to check the Grimfeather download.com site and appreciate the people who are continuing to read and listen to our first demo. We anticipate that the long process of recording will eventually pay off, in that we’ll have a more detailed, precise final product.

On a separate note, I’ve received inquiries lately about Cardboard Canary’s history. A brief summary of that whole story resides in the Band section, under the History heading. Also, two of the links in the “Klreijhe” sector which were recently broken are now working: Chicken 12 and Klreijhe (live).

I imagine this has been mentioned on half a billion Web sites by now, yet I was still clueless until recently as to how to help the thousands of people in Lousiana and surrounding areas amid this horrid mess, especiallly seeing as though I’m in Nevada, which isn’t particularly close to Lousiana. Hence, I’ll pass on this information, in case some of you are wondering as well. If you have the resources and feel it’s your place, head on over to www.redcross.org where you can donate money to help buy food and supplies for the people down there.

I mentioned a song called “Prometaphor” in my last entry which is another marathon-type piece. Fairly lengthy and quite a bit of space to fill in. This track was untitled until recently when the name made its way into Erik’s mind. He and I just completed two days straight of almost nothing but recording the guitars and vocals for that song and for “Timely Disaster.” It is certainly a challenging and frustrating process, but we’re both very pleased with the resulting music. My schedule is filling up with non-musical activities this fall, but I plan on continuing to push forward on the Grimfeather material, in hopes that we will eventually have something wonderful to share with people. I’ve written and recorded quite a bit for “Timely Disaster,” so hopefully that will be finished up soon. It’s difficult, but it’s coming along!

As I’ve been waiting for Erik to come record a few things for “Timely Disaster” and “Prometaphor”, I’ve finally returned to my own new material, which is now rather old. When I say “my own” I mean songs that I’ve written the overall outline and words for. The last thing I recorded that fit into that category was a song called “Glacier Park” back in March of 2004. Now I’m returning to the song “Vegas Anesthetic Peddler” which was originally recorded as a very rough demo in December 2003. It’s been quite an experience returning to it over the past couple of days, re-learning the pieces and how they fit together. After completing the first 45 seconds of it, I compared the new one to the old demo and the contrast is amazing. In the original, which has been available on this site for awhile, everything was recorded through my computer’s built-in microphone, which, of course, wasn’t the greatest quality. The guitar I used was my father’s, which was also pretty shoddy. Although the original was very heartfelt and genuinely emotional, I think that the new recording will express the same ideas in the way they were originally intended to sound. This also means that I might not cringe when I hear it. It’s been a great process so far – polishing old parts and writing new ones for different instruments. I’m definitely looking forward to making this and the new Grimfeather recordings available to hear (hopefully soon!). I have noticed that a fairly large number of people continue to visit this site even though Cardboard Canary has been gone for over a year now. Thank you for continuing to read and e-mail me. It’s very encouraging, and hopefully you’ll be able to see and hear the fruits of that encouragement soon.