shawn avery

i might update here and there but i gotz too much shit goin' on to keep fiddlin' with this every few days. the past few months only have a hand full of entries. this past week... watched a ton of bands over the holidays... i finally got to see wild sweet orange. they opened for the last show i played, but i didn't get to see them. very talented group of kids. as i said to daniel johnston at the show... "they have no fear." also at that show was through the sparks. incredible as always. i watched about 20 mins of t-minus band... very solid indie rock, but no wheels were re-invented. on friday night i watched the rewinds. they were good, but not as good as they were last year. great drum beats though. very catchy stuff. on saturday i went back to the nick (the 3rd night in a row) to see my friend jesse payne. i only caught about half the show because my date and i got a bit too comfy at the garage cafe. nonetheless... what i did see was very refined, although a l...

i'm doing more editing (very little) this week for our next mixing session on saturday. i've been focusing a lot of my time of getting some simple photography galleries up on the internets. i'm still in the middle of my fleetwood mac binge. i got "destiny rules" from netflix... the documentary about the making of their 2003 comeback album. incredibly interesting and inspiring. i witnessed a lot of parrallels between them and out own record making... and i know that sounds pretentious. tonight ashby and i are going to the superior grill to see clint wells play with his cover band. clint is an incredible sideman and smart kid. aaron will be there as well... we are going to discuss my going over to see aaron's band record on sunday. i'm going to tweek their protools le system. i scaled down some stuff online... and i'm getting ready to publish not only these photography galleries, but also the "wiseblood" photos - tons and tons of photos fro...

so picking up where halloween left off... and backing up a bit. i got into the worst traffic i've been in, in a long time. closed roads due to wrecks, double wide trailers on the interstate... more wrecks further up the interstate. i was supposed to arrive at the studio at noon. i got there at 1pm. crazy. but at least i had a mixing session to look forward to. for those keeping notes... that means we are getting closer to finishing. so last friday jeff and i mixed a track tentatively titled "dreams." it took 8 hours to mix it. and it still isn't there yet. but it is air tight. very different. think so-cal harmonies. friday night i went to the rocky horror ball at the alabama theatre, but my ears were tuned to a tight studio room, not a massive theatre with tinny audio. my ears couldn't handle it. so i just hung out with my pal amber backstage and drank wine in a plastic cup. she had to do a radio remote/appearance down the road at the grill, so i was commissioned ...

the ghost of biggie smalls is haunting my myspace page. fellow myspacer, design student and m.c.d.c apostle, karen chenoa, has assumed my online identity for the week. this week i'm editing "dreams" and "hwy" for our mixing session on friday afternoon. i wanted to get some editing and recording done this weekend, but all i managed was a synth part. so what did i do last week...? thursday night i went to see through the sparks play at the nick and they completely blew my mind. everytime i see them, they get better. they played a few new songs and had a very nice mix. traci and leah hooked me up with a fucking mountain of music. i love indie rock women. so giving. so pure of heart, so obscure. friday night i did a lot of work at the office and ran errands. i went over to ashby's and then over to brett's where we all listened to a few hours of the notorious b.i.g. i was pretty into it. probably not as much as brett or aaron, but i was into it. ashby and ch...

randomness... i renewed my tag last week and i lost the sticker. that's gonna be a pain in the ass. my friend and diety, mary jane, is making me some kind of killer bright eyes compilation. in a repeat of the weekend of my birthday a month ago, i had all these plans lined up, and none of them happened. last thursday i was supposed to go see kings of leon here in bham but for some reason i felt really crappy... then i got some kinda virus... ashby's gf christine thinks the refugees brought it. goddamn that's kinda funny. friday night, ambulance ltd. was playing at the nick along with two local bands that i know... and i had been looking forward to this show for a few months but by friday night i was dizzy and completely sick. i thought i was gonna get some kind of rabid flu but it never happened. i still have some ickiness, but not too bad. i hadn't been sick since october, '03 so i can't complain. saturday i thought was the day of our friend jeff's blues fes...

so this is a part two of two thing. and i left off last time somewhere after my birthday in mid september. the last week in september, ashby and i got together with natalie, brit and stacey and finished up quite a few parts on various songs. we did hand claps and shouting on "na na na", complete with ashby doing female vocals of his own... we also worked out some delicate female harmonies for "midmorning." we did acoustic guitar on "in la puerta", and slide guitar on "gasoline." i sorted through the various vocal comps i did for the outro of a song that is still being edited. i actually had ashby run protools as i laid down about 4 more vocal parts. i decided later on though, that i liked a combination of the old and new takes. my mom was in biloxi for two weeks helping to manage state farm's operations in the post-katrina mad max vibe that is the deep south at the moment. crazy stuff. her house is being renovated... again... she's teari...

www.trinashoemaker.com >> trina shoemaker, probably my favorite producer in the (non-electronic) sense, is a baddass. check this out. i noticed this back in 2000 when queens of the stone age released their second album, which trina produced. get a copy of or download these two songs... " everyday is a winding road " from sheryl crow's second album - sheryl crow and " better living thru chemistry " from qotsa's second album - rated r. listen to how each song begins. crazy. same congos. same guitar rhythm. now of course the chords are different... but i can't help but come to the conclusion that trina likes to start songs with layered congos and a jangly riff. seriously... check it out. it's kinda funny... one song was a huge hit with happy lyrics. and the other never got played on the radio, and is very very dark. that's probably why i like trina. oh... what else... paint something on my paint app on my page. then take ...