Where has that boy gone?

In response to a clamouring from my adoring readership, I've not been myself as of late. Incredibly tired and run down from spending far too many nights in the public houses every week, avoiding my responsibilities to the band and my work.

I've had a turn-around about this in the last week and it's felt nice to be able to get out of bed in the morning and not be late to work.

Travis and I are working on a new Christmas song for this year. We are also going to rerecord "I'm Gunna Use My Hands (for Christmas)" and potentially submit it to Triple M for their local musician Christmas showcase. I haven't gotten around to mapping out a drum loop for either song yet, but it'll get done probably Sunday morning before lazing about in front of football game after football game until the sky is black and Monday morning is lurking in the backs of all our minds.

The concept for last year's Christmas song was about being broke and not having any money to purchase gifts hence the use of hands to craft things to be given as gifts. It's not the strongest song by any stretch, but lyrics like "if Santa Clause could see me now, he'd smile a toothless grin and shout, 'You're not letting Christmas pass you by,'" make it good for a laugh.

This year's Christmas song will probably be about being alone on Christmas day and then going out to a Dance club on Christmas night and the emptiness of it all... (discotech style). Fun.

We've also started talking about writing a new birthday song and a song for lesser holidays (the ones that seem to be distressingly lacking in songs to sing their praises, like Thanksgiving. Why aren't there any songs about thanksgiving?)

Word.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, Joe will be joining Travis and myself up in Sparta for the Second annual "Shields Family/Where the i Divides Thanksgiving on the Farm." I believe that I said, "this is going to be the best Thanksgiving EVER!"

All for now. I've got suboenas to ditch on some suckers.

The degree

I made copies of employee files this morning and saw private, confidential details of people in a firm. It was sort of depressing... but nothing to get me down.

I googled "philosophy degree jobs" and came up with this.

At least someone is doing well with their pursued college interests. (Not that I'm doing so badly.)

I'm still kicking around several career directions that aren't really being acted on. Kicking ideas around in one's head isn't the same as just acting. I'm good at the first thing, not so good at the second thing. I'm trying to be more proactive about the second thing.

Where the i Divides has stepped it up a bit. The other members of the band are showing more interest in the future of the band. They are working on different projects, if ever so slowly. Joe got us booked into our residency in Milwaukee. As of October 26 we play at the Jazz Estate every last Sunday of the month. Next gig? November 30th starting around 8:30 pm. We are supposed to fill three hours (which we can do, just barely at this point.) so were learning a few more covers. That means the usual arguments have started again.

For the last six months or so, Danny has talked about nothing but playing "Stars" by the band Hum. You know that song, "She missed the train to Mars, she's out back counting stars." I started to figure out the guitar parts (drop D tuning) and then Joe started to say he wouldn't do that song. Danny than said he wasn't going to learn any more covers until we got that one into our song book. We finally had it out on that song and we all decided to let it go. Thank you Danny. My next pick is "Band of Gold" by Freda Payne. It fits nicely with our approach that we've taken to apply the Where the i Divides signature sound (delay-laden guitar and vocals, melodic bass, power drumming) and stamp it on songs that don't really employ those devices. "Bachelorette" by Bjork is a nice example of that. Our version of Radiohead's "Fake Plastic Trees" is pretty standard and our version of "Running to Stand Still" by U2 flat out needs to either be played acoustic or dropped.

I don't know what other songs are going to be added. Joe and Danny are talking about Live songs, "Lakini's Juice" or "Iris". Travis refuses to pick another song. He claims his pick of "Bachelorette" was his last. Now all he talks about is covering Rob Bass and C&C Music Factory. Funny, entertaining, extremely open to interpretation, but I think Joe and Danny aren't entirely on board... Maybe I need to convince them to give it a shot. Look at what Ben Folds did with "Bitches Aint Shit".

Aside from that, the album is several hours away from a fifth pass at the mixes. I tacked on backing vocals on Monday night. I forgot to record the part I add live on "Do the Math." That'll happen Saturday morning. And maybe I'll have a fifth pass ready for the band to listen to by the time they show up for rehearsal at two. It's a good deadline to eastablish. The cover art is done. We need to establish the graphic design aspect but that'll happen in due time.

Once the album is complete (less some additional vocals from my sister over Christmas) I'm shifting my focus to two things. First, completing demos for the eleven new songs so the rest of the band has something to practice and write parts with. Second, I'm getting the beginning stages of our official website formulated and hope to have something (Anything's better than a bounce to the myspace page.) It's all up in the air as to how much depth and detail I'm going to put into it, but it'll be tasteful.

I would apologize to my readers for being away for a while, but I've been busy and stuff. You know, excuses. Once I get the damn wireless router set up at home, I'll have the internets in my room. That'll make things a little easire for me to get online and start spreading the Where the i Divides brand. (I hate marketing but I'm pretty much the only one who'll do it for the band. Yech.)

Word.