Madness

In my defense, I've been trying to tickle the silly out of her for months. It's just not working.

Nearly moved in

My body is on fire. The piano almost broke me.

Child Labor

So Kirsten came up with a new idea for her knitting shop, La Femme Monkita, the other day: kid belts. And since we happened to have a model on hand who works for peanuts (actually for GoGurts), Kirsten decided to have a little photo sesh.

See for yourself. The belt concepts were pure Kirsten, but the sass is all Claire:

CLICK HERE

MIA

This is the hole I fell in:

School of Rock

I have a piece in this week's Metro Times about the School of Rock, which is an actual institute much like the one in the movie with Jack Black (this one is part of a franchise, and Black's character is said to be based on the founder of it).

It's the longest thing I've written for them. In fact, I actually turned it in at twice the assigned length, feeling that it just kind of wanted to be a certain kind of story and hoping the music editor would agree and not fire me. It's also the first time that I've done the photography for one of my stories.

Check it.

Youth

She turns 30 today.

Talking bout the good life.

What happened first was that I arrived home from work Thursday and these two questionable looking men were standing in my driveway. They had driven long distances to commune with me.


We shared the sacraments.


Then we got down to business. In two days P "bass" Alma administered the honey to a bunch of songs on my new record.




Koltak came looking smartly dressed and too hip to quit, because he had ideas about the songs and he drank a lot and gestured wildly throughout and occasionally picked up an instrument when called for.


Then we threw a party for Kirsten, who turns 30 Tuesday.





After the party a bunch of us stayed up gathered around a computer where we dug up youtube footage of every great soul artist we could think of: Al Green, Sly Stone, Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, D'angelo, Prince, Michael Jackson, James Brown. I still feel good from this, but there are no photos.

Magazine

So this is cool. My first magazine piece is out on the shelves. Although it took more work and time than you would think to make that happen. Here's a little timeline:

1993 - Discover the band Swervedriver, fall in love with them and they remain my favorite band for a good half a decade; the band that I ape when I write songs.

There is hardly any info available about the making of all of the Swervedriver albums that I've obsessed over, or even interviews with the band, leaving me with so many things I'd love to know. I come up with an idea: Why don't I just call and ask? So I set up an interview with their frontman, Adam Franklin - who's also been doing amazing solo work since the band dissolved - for the recording magazine Tape Op. Tape Op was my bible when I was discovering how to record and produce records. It was an education and an inspiration. I've read every single issue ever published from cover to cover. So doing this interview was an honor on a couple of levels.

July 2006 - I interview Adam over the course of two nights on the phone, just before my band is about to leave for tour, telling myself that I'll be ambitious and do the transcription while I'm on the road. This proves to be impossible, and I also realize that I probably could have gotten away with doing a half an hour of focused interview. As it is, I had 12 times the amount of interview necessary, and transcription takes a LOT longer than you'd think it would.

Also, I had my favorite photographer, Matthew Nistor, shoot Adam in New York for the piece, so I'm extra proud of what I'm turning in cause it's coming packaged with some real freaking art.

January 2007 - I finally get the bitch written and submitted to Tape Op. Then I wait for a response.

March 2007 - Editor says it's in the pipeline, but probably won't even come out until August.

August of 2007 - Still hasn't come out yet. I check in and am told it's in the pipeline and ready to be edited.

January of 2008 - Nothing. Email again, am told the same thing, but that they're waiting to interview a recording engineer mentioned in my piece, so that the two articles can run concurrently.

July 2008 - Two years after doing the initial interview, it finally runs. That other piece, that was supposed to run as a companion, does not run. They did a lot of cutting, but it was all tasteful and they didn't fuck anything up. And Matt's picture looks amazing. One problem, they forget to credit Matt. I email the editor about this and he replies with extreme apologies. The photo was so good he assumed I nabbed a press shot from Adam's publicist. They're going to run a correction next time out.

This is the best part of all. I got permission to publish the entire unedited transcript on Swervedriver.com, which is run by fans, just so the other fans can have access to all the answers that I had wanted in the first place. Basically, if you're a Swervedriver fan like me, this is a a Christmas boner. So I contact the site to tell them the good news and they're thrilled and tell me that the message boards have already been talking about the article. I look and there's some really nice praise from the fans, including one post that says it's the best Swervedriver article they've ever read. Word, right?

Forum discussion

32

When I turned 32, suddenly everything I said became fascinating.