Dan's Tour Journal

Last updated: April 24, 2008

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April 01, 2008 Spring 2008 Tour Video Journal In New Orleans and words too!
MI, WI, OH, LA, GA...etc

I thought I’d quick write a few words for you to let you know how the tour is going... please forgive mispellings, grammar or other such things... :) and the fact the Myspace isn’t letting me turn off the bold font... haha... Love you guys!

March 2008:
WI: This Tour has been great so far... lots of driving though... I’m over 3000 miles for the last two weeks... The WI shows with Thomas Boles (and Beth Klemme for a couple) were all awesome and of course to see all the wonderful folks in WI and chat it up was lots of fun. Thanks to all my WI friends that make me not want to leave... Thomas and I drove back from Appleton, we made a little coffee stop at 8th street in Escanaba and made it back in the middle of the night after we made a stop at a little 24 hour diner in Clare to eat some late night food... Mmmm.

OH, KY, TN, GA: I had a great time playing at the Global Gallery in Columbus, OH with Thomas and Eric Nassau... Everyone sounded great and had a great time chatting with friends old and new... and my espresso ice cream shake thing was awesome! I spent the day on Thurs with Ric Hordinski at Monastery Studios in Cincinnati, OH working on the new album... we re-amped all the electric guitars, Ash Peacock sang, Ricky Nye came and played some organ... an all around good time... Ricky Nye played a recording session with Bootsy Collins the day before... haha... Bootsy one day and me the next. :) Wow. After a day in the studio playing with vintage guitar amps and other fun stuff... we drove down through KY and made our way to Nashville to sleep and eat... and I had to show Nashville to Thomas. Next day we headed to Atlanta and I kicked Thomas out at the airport.

GA, AL, LA: Dropped off Thomas and picked up Erin at the Airport... Drove down and stayed in Mobile, AL... Which made for a good 12 hour driving day for me. On Saturday we drove down along the coast through Biloxi and Gulfport... Drove around New Orleans for a quick tour of the city before we went and parked the car to stay near the French Quarter for a couple days... It’s sad to see the devastation of whole gulf area but it is good to see it started to come back too... The next couple days were spent eating great local food (beignets, red beans and rice, po’ boys, gumbo, alligator sausage, etc... Mmmm... Love it!) Heard some good music, walked lots of miles, took a historic walking tour, heard great street music... saw some ummm... craziness on Bourbon Street... Love, Love Love the city! We had so much fun... Didn’t want to leave but I had to go and make the 500 mile drive back up to Atlanta to play at Eddie’s Attic...

April 02, 2008 Rabbit Hash, Waffles, Chicken Wings, Scones and more!
Spring Tour Part II: GA-AL-KY-OH-IN-MI
This section of the tour is the part were I had the best chicken wings, scone, and waffle I've ever had and certainly one of the best lattes... and I drove a lot and played some music too.

Please forgive spelling and grammar... I typed it quick to get it all posted for ya'll.

April 1st-6th 2008

Georgia
New Orleans to Atlanta is 500miles... That is a long way to drive... I made it though... just in time for the show at Eddie's Attic in Decatur, GA. I played as part of the open mic shoot out... 20 or artists from around the country all perform and everyone gets judged and it is a whole big thing... but for me it is a fun night to go and play a few songs and listen to a night of good music... I was so tired from driving that I nearly fell asleep though... haha. I ate some good quasi-mexican food and then went to bed.

Alabama
Left GA but not before I ate at Wafflehouse... The guy that was cooking was perhaps the best Wafflehouse cook I've experienced. The food and coffee were actually really great. You know it is about time that Wafflehouse added biscuits to their menu. ha. I drove into AL and I spent a couple days in a cheap little called the Key West Inn or something in Oxford, AL... I spent a couple days working on my laptop and making budget tex-mex in my microwave in my room... haha. It was nice to stay in one place for a couple nights and recoup a little from driving... I'm not used to having days off on tour but it was good since I'd driven so much. April 3^rd I went over to Birmingham to play at Java and Jams again... I had quite a few folks tell me that they were coming out and I was excited but... no one came out... not one person came through the doors all night to see the show... or at all really. It was fun to try out a bunch of new/obscure stuff on the manager and the owner's wife and her daughter... It was fun to hang out and play for them all night but it would have been nice to have some people come out. I hadn't really eaten a proper meal in a couple days and saw this place that said hot wings and fried fish in big neon letters... For some reason this intrigued me and I had to see what it was all about. It was an interesting little soul food type place that literally served only fried catfish, wings and gizzards... and fries. It seemed to be run just by the owner and his wife... I ordered the special because I really had no idea what to order... while I was waiting I chatted with the owner and a couple that was inside eating, about politics and such... It was a good close and a nice little conversation to end the evening... I got my wings, fries and pineapple lemonade... It was actually really awesome... best wings I've ever had... and I then went to bed.

Kentucky
I stopped back at Java and Jams to grab a cappuccino and scone for the drive out of town... and that apple cinnamon scone was the best scone I've ever had. I drove up to E-town in Kentucky back through Nashville and through the rain and floods... I stopped at the funniest little truck stop in middle-of-nowhere Alabama and I saw matching father and son mullets. I know that you are jealous. Haha.

I got there early and chatted with Bruce and Carla and everyone at the Backstage Cafe. Elizabethtown is always a good time filled with new faces and familiar faces alike. Everyone comes in and stays and listens for the whole show. Even Hibby was there... I haven't seen him in a while... It was like the old days back in 2003 or whenever that was that I first started playing there. I stayed in the sketchiest motel ever for $23.99. haha.

Ohio
I left and had only a few hours to drive and some time to kill before the show so I took a little detour to Rabbit Hash, KY. People have told me about this place and I finally got to go check it out... After driving 15miles which amounted to an hour of maneuvering though curving backroads through beautiful scenery, I made it to the Rabbit Hash General Store... Lots and lots of motorcycles parked outside with a crowd of bikers drinking beer outside... and a smattering of tourist checking out the sites... Rabbit Hash is one of the oldest settlements on the Ohio Riverfront and they have a dog for their mayor! It is a fun little place that has remained virtually unchanged for nearly two centuries. They have music and stuff sometimes there too. Learn more here: www.rabbithashusa.com
I took a little video of the place... I felt like too much of a dork to go walk over by the general store whilst talking to myself though.. haha.

I made it to Rohs Street and got there early enough to have a latte and use the wifi... The whole night was a lot of fun! I got to play and got to listen to the music of Venus Mission, Greg Mahan, Brandon Dawson and Sharon... It was a great night of wonderful music... and those lattes are one of the best I've ever had... They really know how to make coffee and it even is all fancy with designs in the froth! Speaking of awesome... Waffles! I had a waffle from some waffle guy's stand and it was the best waffle I've ever had.. hands down. www.tastefrombelgium.comYum.

Indiana to Michigan.
I woke up in Florence, KY and then took a pleasant little drive to Indianapolis and it was an awesome day! I made it to Lazy Daze and got to hear Chris Ayer play some music and then I set up outside because it was a beautiful day outside... sunny and warm... I played for over two hours straight... Katie and friends, Robin, and Emily and Co. all came out along with many other random traffic folks... It was so wonderful to play outside. Emily and her friends took me out to dinner and then I made the 350mile trek home.. and I went to bed dreaming of the days of cheap gasoline...

April 24, 2008 The Cave in Midland, MI and The Monastery in Cincinnati, OH
Making the New Album!
My new studio record follow up to Melodic Snapshots has been in the process for over a year... I figure you should know a little bit of background about the making of this record to understand what is going on a little better. Let me catch you up on the past and bring you up to the present.

Overview: I'm working back and forth between my home studio and with producer Ric Hordinski's Monastery Studio in Cincinnati, OH. Ric has produced a lot of amazing music for Ellery, David Wilcox, Phil Keaggy, and many more... Not to mention his guitar playing has been a big influence on me ever since my friend Ash gave me one of his CDs back in 2002. Ric has played all over the world, been nominated for a Grammy and has shared the stage with folks like Moby, Johnny Cash, Ben Harper, Bruce Cockburn, Adrian Belew and the Indigo Girls... and believe it or not... he has managed to remain a down to earth guy that I've watch Flight of the Concords videos on YouTube with while waiting for music to load and have eating Indian food with while sitting cross legged on the floor. Our music making philosophies are a perfect match... It has been an amazing experience to make music with him.

The Rhythm Section: First off, I recorded acoustic demos of all the songs at my home studio and then February 2008 I went down to The Monastery Studio in Cincinnati to have Josh Seurkamp play all the drums and percussion in one day. I did a little work here and there until I got my friend Matt Henninger to come up to my little studio to play all the bass (except one song that I played on) for the record.

All My Stuff Section: I did a bunch of recording during May and some of June, then I toured all summer... then I did some recording during September and then I toured through most of the fall... My recording computer broke in December... After some repairs and upgrades... It proved to be a lost cause of a computer that was too old and slow and I finally had to borrow some money to get a new computer in February. In February, despite starting the month out with the flu, I broke in the new computer by writing and recording 14 songs for the FAWM.org songwriting challenge and also worked on the record too. March was the marathon month for finishing up all the parts of the album... Most of my parts (guitars, vocals, lapsteel, organ, beatbox, etc...) were done.

The Icing Section: I brought in the big guns to my home studio to add the icing to the record... lucky my family and friends have big guns. :) Two members of the band Drake came out to help me with the record. Eric Engblade sang, played some harmonica, and bbq chicken pizza! Emily Carlson added all the strings parts and ate some vegan food. Then my dad played some banjo and mandolin... My mom and sister Beckie added some background vocals. Thomas Boles added some of those California vocals.

The Monastery April 2008 Trip 1: I made another trip to the Monastery in April on my way to down to GA to do a few things... Ricky Nye came in fresh off of a session with Bootsy Collins to play some funky B3 organ. My good friend Ash Peacock drove up from Florence, KY to grace the record with his voice. Ric and I re-amped a bunch of the electric guitars that I played... which basically means sending an electric guitar signal that has already been recorded back through a guitar amp and re-recording it. Fun stuff!

The Monastery April 2008 Trip 2: After spending the better part of Tuesday and Wednesday doing final little edits and redoing some vocal parts... I set off for the 375-mile journey down to Cincinnati. I got to the studio's apartment about 2:30am and got some sleep so I could get up in the morning to start working on mixing the new record. On April 17 and 18, Ric and I worked quickly attempting to mix the entire album in two days. I think of myself like a rough carpenter roughing out the general shape of the songs with all the parts I recorded and then Ric is like the finishing carpenter making all the musical parts fit in there nicely and sound good. Ric got out the guitar and played on a song too. I had my first ever 5-Way... Cincinnati Chili that is... at Camp Washington Chili. For all the time I've spent in Cincinnati over the years it was something that needed to be done and it was a fun experience.

We started mixing early and mixing on the second day only taking a little break to eat some Indian food... we did a pretty good job of trying to get everything done in two days but at the end of it we decided to let the songs breath for a few weeks and listen to the mixes and come back to make whatever changes we may need to... at the end of May.

Tour Journal From the Studio April 17th, 2008: