shawn avery

nothing got done on the album in the last week and a half. i'm not worried about it. my checking account went nutty on me this week. i'm not worried about that either. i went thursday night to see aaron / cordova at workplay . good set. nice and short. not a hint of emo anywhere. it was all very earnest rock. well. then again, aaron was wearing heavy eyeliner and played a cover by the cure. 4/5 ths of long story short came out... fun times all around. friday i did some errands after work, grabbed my gear and headed to workplay for the soundcheck for jesse's show. huge thunderstorm. from behind me... in the car, i swear i saw lightning hit a tree. as i tread deeper into this 4 th decade of mine, i get more and more zen everyday. it takes quite a bit to get me rattled at all. it takes an incredible amount to keep me rattled for more than 10 mins . during soundcheck i broke a bass string... greg from through the sparks was cool enough to let me borrow his bass fo...

why do so many things seem so improbable? all this waiting and wanting and planning. is that what life is? planning our time, in anticipation of death? most aspects of my life are in dry dock at the moment. waiting. waiting. in two weeks, we will be in the 19th month of recording our album. 19 months. that just looks funny. granted, many many months have passed here and there when very little was done. and some months have been frantic. not too terribly much more to track. and i think the mixing process will go well. the only thing that concerns me at this point is the massive editing. there's some fairly dense and complex mixes to negotiate. then again, you are dealing with ashby pate and shawn avery. if we can over-intellectualize something, we usually do. meanwhile, planets rotate on their axis, as i spin and spin around inside my interior. i'm going to build a machine that stops the world. i think it's time. we are the only known life in the universe and all we do is ro...

today is the first day of the rest of my life. if i focus, i'll be home free. none of you have any fuckin' idea what i'm talking about. its ok. its all good. some people say the nicest things to me sometimes. actually, lately a lot of people have given me props. but man, yesterday. gosh. my mind was blown.

i'm working on photos this week for the bands "the bloodlet signature" and "stars below." they kinda sorta used to be the same band. then they split off into two. mitosis? meosis? i'm rehearsing this week for a show with jesse at workplay. i'll be at workplay a lot this week. my friend aaron just landed his first headlining spot there on thursday. the good people from oxford will hopefully show up. i always love having them around. i had a scary dream about stacey byrd this weekend. but it was just a dream... so it's all good. please. somebody. let it rain in birmingham. we have so much ozone right now that you can't see the stop signs during mid-day for all the horrid haze. i need to get a better wide angle lens. my ex gf is using an old photo i took of her, pre-thunderdome, for her psych book. it's interesting how people choose to portray themselves. that's neither a good nor a bad statement. just an observation. the greatest thing...

"we could make something beautiful... something that wouldn't be a problem." - U2 .

last weekend i did some house sitting for ashby. i messed around with bassline ideas. nothing really happened. i just wasted a bunch of time creating bass fills. i'm not sure what they were filling though. on saturday i slept in... but was pleasantly awoken by a hummingbird buzzin' round my door. i went to a birthday party for ashby's girl, christine. later in the evening my boy aaron came up to bham and we watched caddle rock the ever lovin' fuck out of the nick crowd. they did a cover of " hey ya " that killed... although they kinda lost it at the end. the bassist, during the first song, was so out of tune that i started to see pink dots in my line of vision. the crowd itself was kinda trashy. aaron and i talked a lotta shit about some people. we were feeling really catty. he loves to sneak brew into the club. i think we might be dating. oh well . i never saw myself with another man, but at least that ends my dry spell. i gotta be careful though. he's ...

ashby is a noble man. he is a leader. a writer. a hi-class, top shelf human being that i would follow into battle, into trenches, all he would have to say to me is... "shawn, we gotta do this. about at girl: " but i'm happy to have stumbled upon you. or vice versa. you make me happy, i am inspired and my soul is glowing with the discovery of urs. it's beautiful. a blessed union indeed ." this weekend is all about my basslines. i have some pretty tough parts to cover, thanks to ashby's numerous chord changes. i'm up to the task. it's time to tie up the low end and put it to bed. random nothingness... energy may be returning. the clouds of dread and doubt have parted... for at least one day. all i ever ask for is a break in the clouds. my life has never been one to enjoy permanent sunshine.

hmmm ... randomness... i have no big plans for the weekend, just a lot of time allocation. likely it will look like... recording, load-in, dinner, play show, drive to jacksonville? [perhaps] - sleep. paper work on saturday. good lineup in town on saturday. jesse made the observation that when i'm in the line-up... his band is entirely left handed. yet every member, including the drummer - plays right handed. incredible. the g8 summit is over. they forgave debt the world's 14 poorest nations. agreed on a 50 billion dollar relief package, said "fuck you, i won't do what you tell me" to the terrorists... agreed on kyoto-based global emissions planning. the u.s. still fell short here. but you know, no big whoop - it's not like we are the world's biggest polluter or anything. overall... it could have been worse. tonight i will undergo much preparation in order to perform 8 songs and an embryonic outro. oh... and there's a storm a brewin'. "dennis t...

the past several days... hmmm... friday. work. errands. humidity. rain. took ashby's daughter to the kennel for the weekend. got the latest from ashby who's partying in cali. apparently legends were woven. lives changed. closets opened. actually i only know about 9% of what has transpired. will find out tuesday. friday evening i was supposed to fly to orlando to visit my hometown in central florida with my mom. becuase of the "weather" (which was perfect) and delta overbooking and understaffing, our flight got moved from 5:30 to 6:40 then to 8:30, then to 11:30. this might not have been so bad, except for the fact that we had a connecting flight that left atlanta for orlando. arriving after midnight meant we would have not connecting flight until saturday afternoon. not willing to give up two days and pay the same price, we got a refund and said fuck it. we begain making plans to go to a much groovier spot : chattanooga... where i am at the moment. so we came back hom...