Just wheeled my Isovent cab into Austin Speaker so the guy could check it out.

He called yesterday asking questions about the cab, not only out of professional curiosity (never seen one) but also to help him tailor the speakers to my needs. Not only did I realize that the cab is indeed 600w total load (300w each for top/bottom) but popped the speaker jack plate off the back and noticed a big burn mark on the circuit board. Nice.

So he says that the burn mark isn't anything important and that he was going to glue a big ass capacitor as wide as my wrist into the cab to act as a make-shift crossover to help ease some of the load on the top 10's. This will allow the cab to operate more efficiently, but on the flip side it would now be wired for 4 ohms for bottom 15's and 16 ohms for the 10's, which would not let me run just the top 10's anymore by themselves. That feature came in really handy when playing smaller, quieter Truckers shows. But this cab is way too heavy to lug around as a 2x10 and I can still run just the bottom 15's with my Marshall JCM800 if need be so that's cool.

Long story short, the speaker guy doesn't want this to happen again. Hence the make-shift crossover.

Last night practiced with Shandon at St. Elmo Music Lab. No Tom this time but Jim Ortiz was there so that was cool, haven't seen him in awhile. He was green on some of the songs but with three guitar players tomorrow night (yes, THREE guitar players!) he can hang back on the stuff he's rusty on. Everything still sounded great tho. Finally figured out the horn parts on "Nitty Gritty", wish there was time to do a dual guitar thing with it. I also added some backing vocals on that one and "Viking Girl". Fills things out a bit more. Tomorrow night at Continental Club should be fun.

Was cool cause after practice I bumped into Jrab, Ryan13 and Al Shire from RAZR13 in the hallway. That was cool, always good to see them. They were just getting out and invited me to the Continental Club for a quick beer (Ryan was going home to Houston and couldn't join us). Cool hanging out with them, Jrab is a brother and Al is a great guy. Can't recall the name of the band about to play, but the drummer was Damien from Barfield who is a certified, card-carrying bad ass. Love watching that guy play. Has the funk/Motown syncopation DOWN to where it is physically impossible to NOT bob your head to his beats. Awesome.

Monday night at Friends with ETB was actually pretty good. Really good crowd for a Monday not that tips were great. Fun set, Marshall JCM800 and Baxter's 4x10 sounding better and better. Tried some of the new harmonies that we'd practiced earlier that day, some of them on some of them damn close. That morning we had a long rehearsal at the St. Elmo Music Lab. Even tho we have 3 shows leading up to Saturday's CD release, we want to get in as much practice time as possible so we can sound as GOOD as we fucking can. It's already there but we really want to drive it home for this one and also have a good crowd, and hopefully start doing weekends at Antone's.

Maggie Mae's tonight with ETB. Tomorrow 11am ETB rehearsal, hopefully pick up speakers, gig that night with Shandon Sahm @ Continental Club. Friday ETB gig at BD Riley's. Saturday big CD release at Antone's. Long week already.