shawn avery

THE YEAR THAT WAS so... my extended treatise on 2006. the year that was. some intro commentary followed by the list thingy... btw, in tribute to the scene we *almost* have now in bham.. a good bit of the list will be locally focused... and although it's a music awards list, i'mma throw in some other notable shit as well. 2006 has been the most productive year for me, since moving to bham. its also been the first certifiably good year of the century... although '04 and '05 weren't bad. civilization was greatly altered by the "mini-ice age" that lasted from 1350 to 1800. and we owe our entire existence to a meteor that dropped to the ground around the gulf of mexico. a year ago i was in a situation of focusing my efforts on getting out of debt. i had recently gotten back from LA and was preparing to make another trip to LA for NYE. i remember taking stock l...

time to update again . the show with john strohm went well. at least i think it did. we had about a week and a half to learn an entire record and perform it as tight as possible. we were reading notes in the greenroom up until the last minute. i didn't get much response after the show from strohm, but i think he was reasonably pleased. for the time given, and the money paid... he got a bargain. it was a lot of fun and bottletree was fun to play again. ashby showed up for about 17 mins wearing a cool hat. he was never seen again. the pernice brothers headlined and although they were all nice, they were kinda flat onstage. great melodies, just not much to look at. i heard that our set sounded great... which is all you can ask for. the staff at bottletree treated us like royalty. katie and merillee and bryan, all super people. the previous night... friday... wild sweet orange played bottletree for a benefit show and killed as usual. packed house. lots of people there. finally FINALLY...

i mentioned in my previous post that i helped out on a silly film competition for the sidewalk scramble... which is associated with the sidewalk film festival. well, at the awards thingy a few weeks back, we took home the best music award and best actor. pretty flash for a 5 min film that took zero money and 48 hours to make. anyway... here it is. there is a dvd that has been made with about an hour of outtakes. i laughed so hard i soiled myself. what else... on the 13th i went to bottletree to see the guy from sunny day real estate and and some other hiipster band. aileen came down from hville and she was pretty awesome. that's all i'mma say. cuz she's shy. i've been playing shows with duquette johnston and a few weeks ago i went out to atlanta to play a laid back set with him and the boys from TTS at the star bar. it was the most enjoyable time i've had yet playing atlanta. mainly because the guys were cool and i didn't really have to load any gear. we also h...

as i get older, my brain holds less and less so i like to dump it here so i can remember what i've been up to . last weekend, i played drums for a sidewalk scramble music thingy. very funny. when the film is posted, i'll post a link to it. for now, you can here the songs here... randy whetstone scramble film the film is a 5 min mockumentary and i have a small spoken part. we all look like douchebags. i love it. what else... its cold today. the leaves are falling and its windy and i'm stuck at the office today for while trying to catch up on some trial stuff. lots of fun. but you gotta do what you gotta do. tonight i might go check out "borat" because apparently, its the greatest, funniest movie ever made by humans. i've been in a weird mood all week. fall does that to me... i feel kinda out of it. not grounded. it happens. and lastly... i would like to thank the american voters for giving control back to the dems. at least the congress. and poor rummy. ...

friday night... went to see running with scissors with ciera , also known as posh spice. crazy weird movie and crazy weird people. when i got home i packed some clothes and got ready to go up to rogersville. on saturday i got up and drove 2 hours... used a chainsaw and axe all day... drug limbs from trees with ropes and trucks... made a big pitfire... got really dirty... then drove back to bham and got home by 9:30. that was just phase one. i went out with ashby and brett who were dressed as magnum p.i. and ali g. i didn't have time or the will to dress up. we hung out at brett's for a while and went down to rojo and had a beer. then we walked across the street to party #1. very cool house and cool scene. a bunch of my friends magically appeared at rojo, apparently looking for me to get them into party #1. so i did. i met up with the hostess... who was a bit tispy, hung out for a few and left for party #2. party #2 was an invite from katie and was a better party f...

so... this year is going by pretty fast and its been a long time since february. weird. in the past few weeks, i've finished the wiseblood record. we sent it off a few weeks ago to be mastered and we are currently reviewing the first reference. some improvements have been made, but we still have tweeking to do. when you record an entire record yourself at numerous locations with mulitple musicians... its tough. i'll never do a record like this again. the production suffers in places. in other places, it sounds pretty good. the track i wrote and contributed to the record, after the flood ... will probably end up as a hidden track. its instrumental and just too strange for the record itself. or i'll just cut it. i rehearsed and played a low key show with duquette at cave 9... its weird playing drums again. i'm not really sure that i like it. my brain has been re-wired for bass . i think i like recording/tracking drums, but i'm not that big on performance. it could al...

so... the summer came and went. and i still have not done the big may thru august update. but i will. since my birthday i've been busy at work, which was not the case this summer when we had 547 law clerks. i haven't seen a lot of live bands lately as i've been finishing some projects. september was a fairly busy month... in addition to the chicago trip, i played a show with the spots and wiseblood... at the german club (see pics below) as well as a private show with the spots. the only photos from that are from when we were heading back to bham from jemison and we took some weird photos on the side of the road. and i jumped off of a huge mound of gravel and got a hyperextension knee injury . not too bad though. last week the spots got together again in the studio and recorded a few hours of experimental music - some of which - might make it onto our little ep. also, i finally sat down and listened to the record, " help my unbelief " that was produced by th...