It is a beauty of a Saturday afternoon here in Nashville. I just finished mowing the lawn and now I’m inside cooling down while watching my beloved LSU Tigers play Auburn on television. There were no lawnmower incidents, thank you very much. [Incidentally, if you have no idea what this references, go here to read up on fellow Square Peg, Andrew Osenga’s woeful experience while lawnmowing]

I played a tiny show last night here in town at St. George’s Episcopal Church. I say “tiny” because, if my addition is correct, I think there were approximately 10 people in attendance, including my wife, myself, the drummer, and the opener, Kelleigh, along with her husband. Rich Courtney, who produced a couple of songs on Miracle of Forgetting, and recently relocated his family to Nashville from Baton Rouge, LA, was kind enough to join me on drums/percussion. I recently saw David Mead perform a show with just him and a drummer and I thought it was a very cool yet simple display. It inspired me so much I wanted to try it to see if I could pull it off in a live setting. I usually write my songs hearing a rhythm section in my head and it seems a natural fit to do the same thing live. Rich caught on quick and we had a blast playing a handful of songs together. I MUST figure out how to do the 2-piece band thing for more of my shows….

Another old Louisiana friend of mine, Jon, who’s currently studying music production/engineering at MTSU, as part of a semester-long class project, has to produce a couple of songs. He asked me if I’d be interested in letting him work with a couple of unrecorded or newer songs that I might have lying around. We did pre-production at my house a couple of weeks ago on “The Traveling Onion” and a brand new one titled “Bedlam and the Fuse”. This past Thursday night I spent the entire evening (plus a few A.M. hours) at MTSU’s incredible studio system recording acoustic guitar, drums and bass under Jon’s tutelage. Cheers to Jon, Darryl, Darren, Don and Josh for making me feel welcome and for working so hard to learn the songs and to capture good performances. I think we’re supposed to reconvene for overdubs in a few weeks. Hopefully I can figure out a way for folks to hear these recordings once they’re complete. You can read Jon’s blog. Incidentally, if I can EVER figure out how to post pictures I’ll put some shots I took from these sessions. Do any of you know how to upload pictures on WordPress? Email me if you do.

Yesterday afternoon, I got to spend a few hours with one of my new favorite songwriters, Andy Gullahorn. I’ve been writing a lot more than usual over the past month or so and, for one of those songs, tentatively titled “Come Back a Fool”, I thought Andy would be a great person to co-write it with since all I had was a melody, a chorus and gibberish for lyrics. His latest CD, Room To Breathe, is a constant in the Peters’ CD player. Tremendous melodies, great voice and deceptively simple depth. If that weren’t enough, his homemade website is among the funniest, most dry-witted places I’ve found on the internet. I’ll let you know how this particular song progresses, if it does. I give Andy 5 Gullys.

The sun is now beginning to set and I’m heading outside to enjoy a smoke on my pipe at dusk. Oh yes. Tonight is homemade pizza and a movie. I think we’re going to watch Akeelah and The Bee. “Xylem: X-Y-L-E-M.”
EP