flushed

I should blush I'm so embarassed about how long it's been for an entry. well I guess atlanta was my last entry...

I made a great return to UNF in jacksonville and I booked myself a hotel room for this night. the woman on my hotline told me it was 3 miles from the university. turns out it was like 22 miles from the school and right next to the airport. and the bastards didn't even hook me up with a free continental breakfast, however the $8 buffet wasn't all that bad. as for the show. it was fun as usual. I usually have a small group or loyal pals who hang out when I play at wackadoo's. and there's only one or two to my knowledge who have seen each of my 4 visits to UNF, and I think one of them is a girl names Leslie. forgive me if I'm wrong, I hope I'm close. anyway, so I decided to bust out a stool and sit, because sitting was a recurring theme of this tour and I was quite comfortable with it.
by the end of the show my denim ass-print was perfectly sketched into the surface of the stool. it was quite remarkable. and afterwards, i ran into a bit of a problem where I had run out of stickers and this one chick really wanted one... so i told her I'd mail her one, which I'll have to do tomorrow, now that I remember...
and as a bonus, I busted out, for the first time, my official frisbees and cups to the wonderful crowd that stayed all the way through for me. it was a fun show, and I'm glad I could keep coming back...

then we had a show at a new town, hoboken, NJ. this place called the goldhawk. i just took a minute to thank the guy who booked me the show. anyway, it was such an awesome room. with these couches and chairs, and tables, and it was dimly lit how I like it. the set was fun, and i was just glad that i found a parking spot at a parking garage 5 blocks away. but they validated my ticket, so it was cool... now hoboken is not just fun to spell. it's a fun place to be.

finally there was JMU. and as usual, it was a hit or miss crowd. although I love to play there. sometimes it's packed, and sometimes it's slow. but once I started playing, some cool peeps sat down and hung out the whole time... i took it as a compliment when someone came up and told me that they thought it was a cd playing on the speakers, so they dug it...

it was my final bearded tour show, and I liked the beard. I've been growing beards for probably the past 4 winters, and I must say I never had the beard longer than this winter. I had it for a couple months before christmas, and then again for about 3 full months, so I stuck with it, and I found that I could still sing with the beard, which I never thought would be possible... seriously?

yeah... so I think I'm getting in tune to this myspace thing, I've had many offers of support from people I've met on the road, so they must know how to do everything... so it'll be okay...

Pistons are kicking ass right now. I'm going to opening day for the Tigers on MOnday... life is good y'all...

ja

outkast

i'm in the ATL, and have been for two nights now, going on three... the fact that it's been so perfectly sunny here makes me wonder if the conditions would be similar when I make it back to the D. I called in a sports radio show the other day as I was driving to see what the host thought of my western michigan broncos chances of making the NCAA tournament. he almost laughed me off and told me that if they win their conference tourney, then they might be a terribly low seed... anyway, the bronocs didn't make it, although they do play tonight on ESPN for some reason, maybe they made the NIT.

anyway, this rant started 'cos when he took my call on the air, he said, "okay, now we have Jimmy from The D..." so I'm going to be heading back by the end of the week here...

i get to stop on an off monday into Eddie's Attic tonight to check out their famous open mic. i think i'll play some new tunes tonight. I'm pretty excited about these two newer songs I wrote a month or so ago. "criminal" and "sideways." I've played them a couple of times and I can't wait to record them sometime...

anyway, I'm pretty glad that my last couple of shows this trip are at places I've played before. there's always the anticipation of new venues, but these couple of college shows have had me back probably 3-4 times each in the past two years, and they really help me make it on the road. so JMU and UNF, here I come... and I'm playing on st. patty's day for the first time ever. that should be interesting. I might have to bust out some kind of irish jig song... if I can learn one in time... luckily I'm just opening up for someone, so I don't have any of that pressure to please the people as they get more and more drunk...

just wanted to check in y'all... hit up the message board...

"fight on fight on for western.... da da da da da da da da da..."

it's okay because

I'm in everyone's favorite state to spell...

played at the university today and decided to play my outkast cover, and my new parody called "smaller on me." if you heard it, you'd understand... a girl asked me if I would ever record that song, and I told her of my secret ambitions to record a complete comedy cd, with not just songs, little sketches, like adam sandler used to do, back when I owned all of his cds, before some beeattch at my high school stole them all... serenity now!!

anyway, on one hand, my cell phone has no signal, but that's okay because the battery is dead... and I got to break out my flip flops for the first time since last summer/fall... I'm so glad I brought them... I'm looking forward to hopefully a nice home stretch to this little tour. with my unprecedented 4th (i think) show at UNF, and at JMU. I'm so grateful to these schools who continually bring me back semester after semester. it really helps me to pay the gas bills... i'm so glad I found a place with some internet. this little eatery called san francisco bread co. usually when you see a "bread co." it's either a straight up "panera" or it's just named after the town that it's in. like when I was in st. louis, "st. louis bread co." and atlanta, you know the drill. well I don't think I'm in san fran right now, but the weather would beg to differ... either way I'm here, chillin with a nice turkey sandwich and some chips and some good old internet surfing. I'm going to go see a movie tonight too...

--(oh man just glancing at CNN and it said that in the phillipines there was an improperly prepared snack for schoolchildren and it killed them all, that's terrible)--

I think I'm going to see "be cool" tonight. if anyone has seen it and didn't like it, and has my number (oh wait no signal) somehow try to let me know... maybe with a skygram... you know, those airplanes that make messages in the sky with smoke... I'll pay you back if you save me the $8 on the movie ticket.

I hope to have some good candy there... I've really been binging on laffy taffy the past couple days. when I was in auburn hanging out with my friend G. I've got a lot of friends who I call G. I need to sort it out. anyway, then I got gas today and just grabbed a handful of laffy taffy, and not because I like the jokes:

-why can't cats carry money?
-'cos they don't have pockets (SERIOUSLY)

-what did the horse give the man?
-a buck (KILL ME NOW)

terrible jokes... some of them are more just answers to questions, rather than jokes... but damn that shit tastes good... mmmm...

I think I'm going to have my friend G contribute to this journal with a review of our time in Auburn and the amazing jim brewer, mitch hedberg show we saw while I was there... so be on the look-out for that...

word... munch munch

JA

Me likey the C/S

here in Texas... they call it C/S. some people may call it the best place on earth. otherwise known as college station. home of the texas a&m aggies. after a little layoff from shows, I finally got to play at the northgate music fest here in c/s. (note: I also learned that they call houston "h-town.") it was a nice little place... I guess it's usually a pretty rowdy place, the groove. but on this night it was a songwriter stage, and the bouncer guy told me what a relief it was to have a nice change of pace with some low key action for the evening. it wasn't low key for long. I knew that there was something special a-brewing. when tons of people started filing in for the bob scneider performance I thought it was a great time to debut my new song called "smaller on me" which is a parody of the ashlee simpson song, pieces of me. it went over pretty well, and I rocked out Poison Ivy and then did a new (real) song called Sideways.

the people here are always nice. now the flipside to that lately is that my last two visits to c/s I've had to spend over 1000 dollars on car maintenance. this either says a lot about my visiting c/s or a lot about the current state of the taurus... so I got two new tires and I'm ready to roll.

Also I stopped in austin out of the way to c/s and discovered a place (from my aunt's beckoning) called Tom's Tabooley. it was great. I small place on guadalupe. I can't even really believe I found it. I met the owners and they're pretty nice. so if you're ever in austin, check it out...

my friend from auburn, G, and I were gonna hang out on tuesday and she said, "oh wait, Mitch hedberg and jim brewer have a show on campus that night" so I asked her to see if she could get me a ticket, and not only did she, but it is only $5. so I'm wicked excited about that...

all for now...

JA

it's been a week? what the hell?

yeah I didn't even realize it...

so let's be frank... okay, you be frank, and I'll be James... but anyway, there are some times when I go out on the road, and I have a prior opinion about how a show might be. there are some I think are going to really rock, like in Winona, and it always rocks... and there are some times when I'm playing a new town or venue and I'm a bit anxious because I either have low expectations, or don't know what to expect altogether...

well three bonuses this past week... on thursday I played at University of Colorado, and while it is officially named as I typed it with the U before the C, some people swear on their mother that it's known as CU... anyway, it was awesome... and I wasn't really allowed to "sell" cds per se, but my homegirl Kayla helped me to find a loophole where I could simply give away cds and accept "donations" in return. but don't tell anyone from CU or UC...

then I drove all the way to Madison, WI for another first time city and venue, the union at university of wisconsin. I got to play with two great and cool bands, Polydream from Madison, and Epic Hero from Minneapolis. Epic Hero was a three-piece for this night, and they usually play with a lead guitarist, but I thought they sounded really great even as a 3-piece, no offense of course to their K-zoo raised guitarist... anyway the show was awesome and I got to play a solid 40 minute set. the place was packed, and I just had a great time. I hope I can visit there again soon...

then another one of those iffy shows. I hadn't played des moines, iowa since I played Drake University a couple times back in 02-03. so I didn't know how it would turn out. I started my reunion with des moines with a brilliantly arranged turkey swiss sandwich and a cup of tomato basil soup. then I capped it off with some wireless internet research and e-mail catch up. and, oh, the show... yeah...

I sat down on the stage (as I've been doing a lot lately, sitting down that is) and all of a sudden the place was just packed... mostly with these seemingly late high school to early college ranged kids and they were a lot of fun. they helped me to ramble between songs like I always wanted to. they facilitated my banter with some of their own, and they promptly filled up the remainder of my mailing list pages, and just started writing e-mails all around the white edges of each piece of paper on my little clipboard... so that was fun... plus I got to hang out with one of my bros from when I was in Utah back in college... we're having a reunion soon... 5 years... yup, that makes me feel young...

as for me? right now I'm in oklahoma... I usually don't get hotel rooms when I don't need to or if I don't have a show, but this was such a killer deal, and as you can tell, they have wireless internet... just watching some college bball on tv, and I'm going to try to get a cheap ticket if possible to the OSU vs. TX A&M game here in oklahoma tomorrow night. If I do get a ticket, I'll secretly be cheering for vast underdog A&M, because not only have I had some great times in college station, but that's where I'll be playing this friday. and I've always been treated well in college station...

then as I swing through the south to the southeast region, and as I soak up more sun in the past two days than I've seen all winter, I will long for my last pair of sunglasses which so tragically drowned in the ocean off of the island of st. thomas while on a cruise for the holidays...

now after three shows at new places, I will go on a streak of shows that I have played before and I've been lucky to have so many of these repeat performances... which leads me to believe that I must be doing something right. but i'm stuck with a lot of extra thought and reservations about how much longer I can keep doing this...