Features

Band of Horses, Everything All The Time and Ray LaMontagne's Till the Sun Turns Black. Oh yeah, and The Silversun Pickups, Carnavas issued a pretty luscious sound in the vein of early pumpkins...Gish. It was quite a tepid year for guitar rock, I must say.

We were playing a show in the Gateway to the west city of St. Louis (I had lost five bucks to Dan earlier on the height of the Arch). On that tour (supporting The Twilight Singers) we would typically close with one of our rock songs. I got pretty stoked and launched off
my piano bench, however failed to assess my flight path. I smashed my face into a rafter in the ceiling, chipped my tooth, bloodied my face, and crashed to the floor in a defeated heap.

Willie Nelson "Phases and Stages" (Thanks to Dan, he's a Williehead). There's also that really fucked up John Wayne Band (Don't give me none of that Abu Dabi Bullshit!!)
Those guys are drunk.

Little Miss Sunshine - Never have I seen better character creation and character development then by Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton. I'm working on the nine steps right now, and it seems to be fucking my life up pretty well. But. "You've got to move to be moved." Oh, and I just watched The Sting the other night....that's just solid, solid entertainment. Not debatable. Do we have a modern day Newman/Redford combo? If it's Damon/Stiller, I think I'd rather get hit by a cement-mixer truck, ya know?

After Gimme Fiction I'm pretty excited in general about Spoon. He provided the soundtrack for our first tour. He's got a natural swagger that Liam Gallagher would kill for, and probably has.

Sobriety

C'mon, does anyone do anything other than youtube.com these days?

We were driving to the airport after playing a showcase for our soon to be label Wind-Up records, at the Knitting factory in New York City. It was obviously a late night prior. I was driving and on the phone with our manager Michael Dutcher who was telling me about how we would be playing Lollapalooza with the Shins, Modest Mouse, The Decemberists, etc...Jason was in the back seat relaying a blazing rock and roll story from Rolling Stone magazine, and Dan was sitting shotgun. All of the sudden, Dan looks over at me glossy eyed and pale and says "pull the fucking van over." Before we are even at a standstill, he throws the door open and vomits out onto the hot gravel. Top of our game baby.

I hope this doesn't have to be an original....but it's Walken/Ferrel in the Cowbell skit on Saturday Night Live. Our producer Tony Lash turned us onto it...."Guys, Im telling ya, you're gonna want that cowbell in there!"