time of madness

hi there again. it's been a couple months in case anyone was keeping track. no great touring stories to speak of, cos there hasn't been any great touring.
I did, however, come storming back last saturday with a show in my hood. it was a solo show, and to go along with the local flavor, I had my buddy josh clemens from BLEND play a solo show as well, because it's such a rarity to hear him play acoustic. you can check out BLEND's myspace page or blendmusic.com for some good tunes.

anyway... back to me me me. with my absence from the road starting this past fall season, I got involved with my first ever passion, which was hockey. i decided that it was time to give back a little to the game which gave me so much in my youth. as mentioned in previous entries, I took part in coaching a 10-year-old travel hockey team, and I must admit, the season started off kind of rough. they group as a whole is great and they love to play, but we just didn't win many games before the turn of the year. as of late, as the season winds down (and it really is almost over), the team took on its own personality and started really showing us that they have a lot of fight in them. so now we're in the playoffs, where we weren't expected to advance, and we're just a couple of games away from a magnificent journey to Joe Louis Arena for the finals. so that's what I've been doing mostly in my time stationary.

on the music tip, I've got tons of new songs, so many that I really cant even keep track of them all. I played a few of them at the show on saturday. the show featured my incredibly hoarse voice, because that same afternoon we had a playoff game and I was screaming until my voice was almost completely gone. five cups of tean later, I got through the show. it wasn't a superb performance, but everyone kind of understood the circumstances and it was as if I was playing top notch. some of the new songs I played were: COLLAR (which I wrote about 2 weeks ago), SIDEWAYS, CRIMINAL, TEN O'CLOCK NEWS, and Josh and I did a couple duets including POISON IVY and 3x5 by john mayer. it was a nice finale. fun times. and 3x5 is definitely a song I would cover in the future, now that I know how to play it.

anyway I mixed up the songs on my Myspace page, just to offer something new, and as soon as I demo any of the several new ones, i'll be putting them up on that page. so keep tuned in. if you need me call me.

JA