Busy week. Playing blind. Threadgill's.

Busy week indeed.

Monday morning renewed my HAAM (Health Alliance for Austin Musicians) coverage for another 2 years, picked up my new contact lenses on the way home (I'll get to that), cleaned up leaves around the Hobbit Hole and played ETB Friends monday residency that night. Tuesday early ETB rehearsal, met up with Kirk from Dead Oak to talk about the summer. Wednesday rehearsal with Adrian and the Sickness for a theater gig on Thursday, with Ocean of Stars rehearsal planned for later in the evening. Working on AATS and Ocean of Stars music in between. Two Dallas-area gigs with ETB on Saturday. Had declined a Friday show with Forever Town in Houston because I was too busy to accept it.

Some of the aforementioned plans changed late in the tuesday ETB rehearsal. We'd come up with another very useable 14 minute jam. Started working on 'Stray Dog' when something tweaked in the side of my right wrist. Shit.

Went home and bought a wrist brace. A similar thing happened few years back and I played a full ETB set wearing a similar brace without it affecting my playing too much or worsening the injury. So wasn't worried about that. But had a full weekend of gigs and a practice with AATS so wanted to go easy on it. Cancelled Ocean of Stars rehearsal just to be safe, didn't want to risk playing guitar and worsening it. But rehearsal with AATS went very well, felt fine playing bass.

So will be rocking the road warrior wrist brace tonight at the Blackheart with Adrian and the Sickness \m/,



ETB at Saxon Pub last Saturday was pretty interesting for me. (Apr 20)

My contacts were old as shit and financially hadn't been able to pick up the new ones. Was going to ride out the old ones til after the Saxon gig but no dice. One of them went unwearable, so would either have to wear my glasses that night (but take them off for our set) or get an eyepatch and wear the one good lens... but that would have left me explaining the eye patch all night and it wouldn't have been a very interesting story, so fuck that.

Wore my glasses. Not that eyesight had anything to do with my gear problems setting up. Got my rig ready, took off standby, hit some notes and nothing. Except for the transformers of my SVT clicking angrily every time I hit a note. Forgot to plug the speaker cable into it. Glad I caught that right away. Then I still had no signal, but that was the cable going into my wireless. No problem.

I wasn't the only one who had problems that night. Eric and I jammed for a few minutes while Rob fixed something on his kick drum pedal. Eric: "He's not hiding from y'all, he's back there fixin something." Heh.

Gear situations aside it was a fun show.

But playing and not being able to see very well. Wow. We played great tho I couldn't necessarily see Eric and Rob's faces clearly, but could see them well enough to catch cues. The audience was a different story. I could see that people had faces but that's it. So I didn't want to look at anyone because I couldn't see if they were looking back at me, heh. Awkward.

Fun show but yeah that was weird feeling disconnected from the crowd like that because I couldn't see them very well.



And finally, ETB's long-anticipated headlining show at Threadgill's World Headquarters! (Apr 12)

And it was awesome. The weather was absolutely perfect for an outdoor venue, clear and cool. The crowd was amazing, very good turnout! Lots of people who have been waiting for the make-up date to our two previous weather-related cancellations, lots of close friends and musical family.

We payed our asses off. Fantastic set. We were all on fire. The crowd loved 'Stray Dog', the new tune. Man that was a fun night. Thanks so much to everyone who came out!

Photos courtesy of Dave TV: