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...

in this illuminating info graphic, which shows how many units of sale would be needed to replace a minimum wage job in the united states, its obvious that being on a major label is sorta like being mugged. if i could somehow sell 300 copies of an album every month (which really isn't that many at all), i could sleep in pretty much all the time. meh.

this past week was quite productive. both bands i'm in did some rehearsing, performing and recording. after nearly 4 months of inactivity (lame) electroliner did some rehearsing this past tuesday and thursday, with great results. after an hour of two of getting back into the mindset of a 5 piece, we got up to speed on our existing set list and learned some new songs that worked quite well. thursday morning, bo, john and clair performed at the good people brewery for a fox6 morning show appearance. friday night we played two sets during a benefit/fund raiser at the brewery. it was a bit warm in there, but it was actually a very cool setting for us. we were lucky to have our sound-man, kenny on hand to set up his excellent rig of mains, monitors, lights, boards, etc. this is the first band i've been in that's had the luxury of hiring our own sound gear, run by a music veteran with great ears and positive demeanor. it makes a difference. we played incredibly well, even by my ...

travis morgan (skybucket records) emailed me this morning, with a link to a design blog that featured my through the sparks "terminal" poster. this blog, called the inspiration stream, is part of a larger site , and this is the direct link to the feature page. the most astonishing aspect of this to me is the fact that the blog curator placed a design by scott hansen ( iso50 ) beside mine. that guy is a design god, and i visit his blog almost every day. travis has made the poster available for sale on the skybucket label's merch page .

right now, the world is very much aware of the impending disaster scenario in the gulf . its been quite a while since the explosion on april 20th, and conservative estimates have the spill as surpassing 3.5 million gallons of oil. thus far, all attempts to close the valve have failed. today, a very ambitious, and actually quite creative solution is being attempted. a 100 ton box of steel is going to be hoisted off a ship, and dropped a mile below the surface. let's hope it works. luckily, there are a lot of resources available in the gulf, and thus far the weather has allowed for a lot of preparation for coastal defenses. booms, oil burns, dispersant chemicals, natural dispersion, etc. have all helped keep everything somewhat under control. kinda. one obvious casualty of this disaster is not only the potential loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in fishing revenue, but also the renewed debate on the expansion of offshore drilling has been dealt a blow. but it doesn't have t...

this is a poster i'm doing for an upcoming show by post-punk / sludge rock legends, melvins . i think kurt cobain used to carry their amps to gigs for them. anyhoo... this will probably be my last poster for a while. this one started out interesting, with the arresting inverted "colorized" hydrogen bomb image, but the type wasn't working. after letting it sit untouched for a week or two, i finally finished it last night, along with some quickly done alternate cross-processed versions. these aren't my best posters, but they aren't my worst. i drew from some eccentric inspirational elements that i'm too tired to get into. other than the chopped up image and text artifacts, the thing i like most is the text doesn't look computer generated. it looks more like photo text.