About to get my Mergilli Innovations replica Dietz 2x15 cab.

Fucking STOKED. Will finally be happy with my bass tone since my Isovent cab bit the dust a year and a half ago. The EV-B's I've been running in the loaner cab Mergilli is letting me borrow already sound amazing. Told me last night that the guy he built the loaner cab for he also built a Dietz replica for, and when that guy put his EV's into the Dietz he was amazed at how good it sounded compared to the loaner. And the loaner sounds good.

Any. Looking into mastering for "Ocean of Stars" and how much it'd be to do another run. Now that I want to do something with it, I am out. Damn! But will be launching the Danny G Music bandcamp.com page and hopefully will sell some downloads of the album so as to have some funds with which to re-invest in physical copies. Am planning on doing a special for the first week official online release: buy the download for $10 (or more if you are feeling generous) and receive a grab bag of free tracks, which will differ from day to day. Never the same tracks. Well I think that's a cool promotional idea.

Still talking to players about doing Ocean of Stars dates. But would rather have the pieces in place before I start booking, rather than have dates that I am scrambling to have a line-up for. Jammed with my good friend and ex-SGC bandmate Amber Lucille last week, would like to have her in the loop as bass player. Brandon Burke (Jackson Taylor Band, Son of Fire) still interested in drumming, will call him shortly to see what his schedule is like next 2 weeks. Adrian Conner still recovering from surgery and will be out-of-commission for gigs til SXSW in March. In the meantime she may do some guest tracking for my next RPM Challenge album.

Speaking of which, did some pre-production work earlier this week. Testing drum sounds in my room, no way drums would fit in the garage right now. Cold out there too, heh. Sounds good so far, but need new snare and tom heads. Bad. Comparing prices thru the Truckers D'Addario deal vs pulling some strings with a friend at a local chain music store. Demo'd out some ideas to try some things out, but tried not to actually WORK on the ideas, as that would be cheating ;) Now just need 7 more song ideas...

Eric Tessmer Band is still going strong despite STILL not having a fulltime drummer. Had a kid we thought was The Guy but it wasn't working out. Have another young kid named Daniel Watson that we're grooming to be The Guy, just trying to convince him to take the job, heh! Played with him at Friends with no preparation and he killed it. Brought him with us to San Angelo and he did the same. Will be playing with him again on Monday, possibly practicing with him too. Not that he needs it, heh. but trying to get the originals back into the rotation and curious to see what he'll do with them.

In the meantime The Go-To Guy is Tony Miller. We played with him at BD Rileys a few weeks back after we had 2 drummers cancel on us that day. Michael heard him playing at Friends, passed him a note thru the street-facing window, he agreed. Ran over after his gig, threw his drums onstage, and absolutely KILLED it. He's got other things going on and doesn't want the gig full time, but is enjoying the hell out of filling in. Played with him Friday at Friends and last night at BD Riley's. Both shows felt great. Friday he was asking we bust out some of the other originals. Never mind he'd never actually PLAYED them with us before. He nailed them. Did the same last night as well, awesome.

Lots of other stuff going on. My Adrian and the Sickness interview for The Austin 420 Magazine is now online! www.theaustin420.com. Print edition coming out very soon. King's X has a Europe tour in March but I probably won't be available. The Mother Truckers also talking Europe in the Spring. ETB talking India in May, festivals touring across the US all summer, and Europe in the fall.

In the meantime looking into session work to supplement income in this slow time of year, already have some possible work lining itself up. Tim Abbott from the Figurados talking practice, songwriting sessions and gigs as well.

Feel so blessed to have almost an overabundance of offers, work and general cool shit going on or in the works.

First post of 2011. Halfway thru the first month.

Well shit. My blog skills are slipping, perhaps. But just activated Sprint Hotspot on my phone, so currently using it to provide wireless internet to my laptop. Crazy. No longer have the excuse of "well it's hard to edit this shit typing it from my cellphone." True dat, hard indeed to edit entire paragraphs with no visible cursor. Hopefully Blogger will fix that on the phone-version.

Anyway. Took a self-imposed sabbatical for a few days this week. Wasn't going to do shit, think about shit, or think about doing shit. Helped, immensely. Instead of recharging my battery when I can, took the time to fully recharge it so it will run longer.

Few developments:

ETB tried out a drummer Monday night (no preparation) and he fucking KILLED it. Def the happiest we've been onstage with a drummer since the roulette started. Young kid that Michael played a funk gig with NYE, and has been raving about ever since. ANd Michael was not bullshitting us, in the least. Just, wow. Jumped onstage and OWNED it. Playing with him again tonight in San Angelo (no rehearsals either). Hope he wants the gig...!

So was in a good mood going into my few day sabbatical. Harder to NOT try to stay busy than it is trying to stay busy. Weird.

Started off Thursday finally trouble-shooting some of my stricken guitar effects pedals. Got my tremolo pedal to start tremoloing again, so that's good. All I did was replace the battery and poke around the circuit board. Works now *shrugs*. Had no such dumb luck with my Wah pedal. Still non functional, and my trouble-shooting skills are seriously rusty. Hopefully my friend who is translating the Bass Crybaby schematic to a layout will have that in, miss my bass wah as well. Then played Ocean of Stars music on guitar. God that felt good, and the title song kind of needs my tremolo pedal, so good that its working again.

Speaking of gear, much closer now to having my custom Mergilli Innovations replica Dietz 2x15. Eric had him speed up the process a bit after last week Saturday watching me wire and re-speakers in my 410, only to ram my bass headstock into (and almost through) the speaker grill in an attempt to skewer the fucking thing and hopefully put it out of its misery. God I hate that 4x10 cab. But Eric talked to Mergilli, who said he has a spare empty 2x15 enclosure. So he put my EV 15's in THAT to use in the meantime til my custom cab is built, which will hopefully be by next weekend. It sounded amazing that Monday night, another reason I was having so much fun.

Lots of other stuff but no room or time to discuss here. In the meantime I will hope the rain lets up before leaving for San Angelo (and totally re-packing the van), that my van decides to idle on the way to ETB rendezvoux point and not stall out every time I stop, and that we have a good crowd and make some good money tonight.