My friend Jon Nordstrom just popped by. Jonny has played bass with the band for almost 8 years now. He lives in Calgary now but was up to go to an Oilers' hockey game.
He dropped off a small Christmas gift; an edited video documenting the making of our doomed record, "Rise & Fall". It was a record that was never released, due to several reasons, primarily being that my record label wasn't crazy about it, which was too bad because the band and I were very proud of it...
At any rate, Jonny edited together an hour long documentation of the process, including our 3 day drive up to the Yukon, where the recording took place.
It re-invigorated my love of that record. I've actually re-recorded a couple of the songs which will be included on my upcoming CD, due in the spring. I'll try to post a few snippets of the video on my website in the next week or so.

Ouch!

Last Sunday, I played two games of hockey back to back... It was awesome!
I'm in two leagues that both hold their games at the same arena, so I was able to just stay in my gear and go right back out on the ice...
The first team we played were very chippy. Considering this is a "no-contact" league, they were bumping and generally playing on the dirtier side... I finally told one guy in particular, who we had nicknamed, Elbows, to lighten up a little... Well maybe I didn't say it that politely, but the next thing I know, I'm in the corner trying to dig out the puck and along comes Elbows and he gives me a good shot in the ribs... well, I went down and in the process, my stick went up. I received a high sticking penalty, while Elbows skates away, no call, looking like he was doing the Chicken Dance or something, his elbows still high and stuck out...
Well, that was in the 1st of my two games and I didn't really notice until the 1st break of the 2nd game that my ribs were still pretty sore.
Well it's 3 days later and they don't feel any better and having had broken ribs before, I can pretty much say that I have at least, cracked ribs at the moment...
Not sure if I'll be playing this weekend or not...

Snow day / Channeling ghosts...

So the first snow of the year has finally arrived! I was sort of wary before it came, it was looming in the distance for too long! Despite the cold, it's kind of a relief that it finally arrived...
I really like cross-country skiing, I used to ski competitively when I was growing up in the Yukon. I'd go on tours of different race circuits and did quite well... I was 4th at the Canadian Junior Championships about a billion years ago!
At any rate, now that the snow has fallen, my brain is fairly preoccupied with getting out on the trails.
The album....
Well, it's coming along slowly but surely. I got my friend and the band's former keyboard player, Dave Aide to play Hammond organ on it in a very unconventional manner: Dave lives in Nashville now so I emailed him the songs I wanted him to play on, he recorded them in his apartment with his keyboard. He then sent me his tracks back and I ran them through a real Leslie speaker cabinet (a rotating speaker that gives an organ it's recognizable "warbling" sound), re-recording it into the computer...
It was funny to be listening to the organ through the Leslie, without Dave actually being there... It was almost like channeling a ghost or something.