shawn avery

this past saturday at urban standard, clint wells was featured in a show put on by birmingham magazine. it was a listening party, with a twist. everyone, ostensibly, was there to hear the new griffin house record (which is really good). griffin couldn't be there, so clint wells was asked to come in as somewhat of a representative of the album. clint took this opportunity to debut some of his and brad lyons' songs they've written for their new flannery o'connor inspired record. it doesn't have a name yet, but the line-up has been chosen, we've done a few rehearsals, and booked a few shows. i'm guessing they are going to commence to recording the album sometime this summer. also, there's a documentary crew filming everything. its pretty impressive. now here's where it gets weird. the songs are all named after o'connor short stories, and mirror somewhat, their themes. this project is led by two songwriters, with back-up players including female back...

a few months ago i wrote a journal-like post about my previous 20 years of recording and my creative angst that usually gets in the way of me producing anything autonomously anymore. for the past year or two, all i've done is played a few shows, and recorded some drum tracks for through the sparks. i have a show coming up on saturday as a bassist. this is the lowest level of activity for me in quite a while, although there's nothing wrong with that. i only played 4 shows in 2004, and all of those were before mid-july. the same goes for 2005 - i didn't play any shows after july. however, in 2007 i played somewhere around 40 shows. lately i've been in an existential arm wrestling match with myself over what exactly to do with my musical creative urges that doesn't immediately fall into the black-hole of anonymity and utter pointlessness. see what i mean? lately, thanks to the phantogram record, and an ever evolving appreciation for niche/vintage recording gear, i...