JBlog

I moved my small rack tom back into my kit today via a universal clamp with a tom holder.

Tags: Drums

Played my first gig with Guido’s project this past Friday night, along with Squaring the Circle and Brother Embassy. Only having rehearsed with the group twice, I was a little nervous about how well it would go over, but I think everything came together nicely. I’m supposed to be picking up audio of the show and I will post a link to a song if any of them sound OK, but it’s a board recording so it’s going to sound pretty unbalanced.

I wonder about whether it would work to get a couple of decent condenser mics to record the room in the future. Seems like it would give you a better sense of what was actually going on in the room while playing. The board mix, while it sounds good if you’re listening live, is very unbalanced because not everything needs to be boosted as much as other things. For example, board mixes tend to be very vocal-heavy compared to the drums because of their relative need to be amplified.

Two 90s Daughter gigs coming up in December. The first, on December 18, is at Fatman’s Warehouse in Danville. We’ll have another a week later on December 26 in Champaign at the Cowboy Monkey.

Tags: 90s Daughter, Breathe Jam Session, Brother Embassy, Squaring the Circle

That’s right – the Wednesday Night Fights are done until next year.

There were about 13 riders who left the Burwash lot, but only 12 bikes. Two of them, Luke and Jay, shared a Raleigh tandem bike and were ridiculously fast.

We headed for Seymour even though the wind was out of the east, which meant we had a tailwind while we were all still pretty fresh and strong. We clipped along at around 25 mph for most of the ride there. I was feeling pretty good until we shed a couple of riders about 2/3 of the way to Seymour, at which point the tandem bike got its first chance to pull the group. The speed jumped from 24-25 to 27 or more and I learned fairly quickly that I wanted no part in that kind of sustained speed, so I let the pack drop me and did some interval work with my aero bars.

I was still moving at 22-23 mph, which isn’t too shabby for a solo effort. I passed through Seymour and was about to turn down Rt 10 to head back to Champaign when I noticed the pack up ahead about a half mile had stopped to wait for me. I wasn’t expecting them to do that, so instead of turning down 10, I caught up to them and we were off again.

After crossing Highway 47, the pace picked up yet again and this time I tried to stay on a wheel for a little bit, but I only managed to hang on for a couple of minutes. I was shelled out the back and did an easy pedal all the way back down Bradley. Shay had been dropped shortly before me and eventually caught up. We rode side by side at 20-21 mph until he turned off to go down Rising and meet the group back at Burwash, where Dave had ordered up some pizzas. Since I’m not an official WC member and because I was pretty close to home having come in to the west side of Champaign, I just pedaled home.

There were still a couple of aphids out last night, but the lethal clouds we had ridden through the previous week seem to have been gathered up by the wind and pushed to Indiana.

Also broke the fender on my Trek yesterday afternoon. Of course, we’re going to get rained on for about half of the day today, so I’ll need to get the fender replaced today. I’ll need to visit Durst to get that chore done since CC doesn’t open until 10:00 and it will have started raining by then.

Oh … I’ve been asked to fill in on drums for Live Karaoke Band tonight. My buddy Jeff is unable to play for the next two weeks, so I’ll do the best I can to provide some beats for Tom and Guido. Very excited about this and hope I can pull it off without too many mistakes!

Tags: "group ride", aphids, live karaoke band, seymour, Wild Card