dear reader,

before i truly wake up, it’s easier to set aside the headaches, worries, and mountain of phone calls and e-mails that instantly buries me when i return home. granted, it’s harder to form complete sentences; but everything’s a trade-off, right?

first of all, let me say that we had a great weekend overall. we had a wonderful time meeting and listening to the bloodsugars, and can only hope that relationship continues. in cincinnati we played at this club, were treated very well by their gentlemanly sound guy, dwight, and got to play (and share an apartment with!) seattle’s joy wants eternity. (their website is great.)

the only real spot on the weekend, of course, was my unfortunate allergic reaction and the resulting cancellation of our show at brillobox in pittsburgh. good night, states has never before cancelled a show, and i was particularly sad to have done so this past weekend. we appreciate so much the support of everyone who attended and chose not to receive the offered refund; please come see us in october. it’s not too far away.

although this clearly doesn’t make up for the missed set, i thought i’d offer a brief tour of our stage set-up, in pictures and words, as a peace offering. this is maybe sorta what you might have possibly seen at b-box.

clockwise from rear stage left:

TREVOR
t-dog stands RIGHT THERE, people. that’s his ’70s bassman 135 that gives him such a deep, woody tone (thanks, tubes!), his venerable fulltone ‘69 (the first of two and only remaining ‘69 owned by gn,s) used to great effect on “not come around” & “family dark,” and his fender jaguar baritone (tuned to low E, like a bass). he plays it on the aforementioned “family dark” and on “far side of the boulevard,” which truthfully has been out of the set for a while. had we played on saturday night, you would have seen trevor bop hard, rock his silver j-bass (not pictured–it’s actually fused to his waist at this point, so photographing it without him is just not possible) authoritatively with fingers, pick, and thumb, and sing a bunch o’ harmonies. the low end, as they say, would have been held down.

JOE
i get really excited when i see joe’s set-up, because i know there are just so many great sounds that are going to happen here. unfortunately, my amateur photograph does not include joe’s pro junior, and his blond strat is just barely visible as a voluptuous curve leaning on the x-stand; this shot is more from joe’s perspective as he stands like a pablo-honey-era-jonny-greenwood-haired giant at the front of stage left. the synth is the nord lead 2 that joe plays on “i am the loser,” “only thing,” and “far side of the boulevard.” (megan actually stands here and plays it on “there is a treasure” as well.) this is the first clavia product we bought. the pedals are entirely for joe’s intricate guitar work, and there are clearer shots of them in some of the recording photos. if we had managed to mount the stage at brillobox, you would have seen joe pick his guitar literally thousands of times–many of them furiously–, often whammying (not a word) dramatically, cooly lay down some fat mono lines, adroitly play the knobs of his pedals (especially on “long coats, no energy,”), sing intently, and play acoustic guitar on “sometimes i see you on the lawn.” joe = sangfroid.

ME (STEVE)
well, not much to say here. in fact, i play acoustic guitar ~60% of each show, so this picture is a bit misleading. what’s interesting about these shots to me is how little space we each actually have to stand in, and my position on stage is no exception. lately i’ve been setting up just slightly forward of the dead center of the stage, between and very slightly set back from joe and megan. so… my tiny pedalboard [80% homemade (i’m all about the percentages suddenly)] featuring the delay for “there is a treasure” that i control with my feet, and the fuzz i use for leads on “only thing,” “killer of the one,” and “sometimes i see you on the lawn”; my awesome coiled guitar cable; the gibson les paul deluxe i bought in highschool as my first real electric guitar (and play on “there is a treasure” and “only thing”); and my re-issue twin reverb that i’ve used with few exceptions for the entire short life (so far!) of gn,s. not pictured: ‘65 gibson sg junior (for the rest of the electric songs) and ‘68 gibson b-25. the set list from friday night is visible at the bottom of this photo–joe and i almost always share a set list. had i not been an idiot and eaten bleu cheese on saturday, you would have seen me say stupid, slightly unintelligible things, sing my heart out, thoroughly abuse my beloved acoustic guitar (probably smashing the headstock into one of dan’s cymbals at some point), squint cross-eyed at the mic, and walk around to the jup for the end of “long coats, no energy.”

MEGAN
we’ve never played with a band that had more keyboards than us, and unless we start opening for wilco or potentially jean-michel jarre, probably never will. i’m not proud.
this is where the proverbial magic happens. it would not be easy to describe everything that actually takes place behind these ‘boards, probably not even for megan. off the top of my head, i believe she currently uses 5 electro patches, 5 x-station sounds, and i think 11 jup sounds in the course of a set. (that’s actually like 275 possible combinations!) but i’m getting ahead of myself. the top right synth is a roland jupiter 6, made sometime around 1983. it’s been in gn,s just as long as any of us, and is prominently featured throughout “short films on self-control” and the internet singles. our website is modeled after the thing because we love it to death. it weighs like 10,000 lbs. or something and is 100% analog. i could talk about it all day. the little silver guy in the upper left is a novation x-station 25. it’s got a great little touchpad and joystick that megan uses pretty extensively in “long coats, no energy” and “killer of the one,” a bunch of onboard effects, and the ability to sync just about anything to tempo (in terms of bpm) which we really like. (that’s how those blips on “not come around” always fall right with the beat!) megan actually sits the x-station on a music stand these days, mostly because no one can figure out how else to mount it so it’s within easy reach. the third keyboard is a nord electro 73 that megan uses for all the non-synth sounds in our set: acoustic piano, rhodes, wurlitzer, and organs (except for the trashy ’60s organ sounds on “killer” and “she wrote a letter,” which are the jup). this a just a really great ‘board all the way around, and in contrast to the jup weighs like <1 lb. and is 0% analog. joe actually stands here and plays the electro on “there is a treasure.” among the things you cannot see in this photo are the two sustain pedals megan uses for the jup and electro, and the secret chinese-herb voodoo she must certainly be using to be able to step on both pedals while standing up. scary stuff, folks. notice the set list taped to the electro.
had our little band been able to play on saturday, you would have seen megan play maybe a trillion notes (192 of them 16th notes), constantly change patches, bop almost as hard as trevor but with a little more femininity, somehow direct nearly all of her voluminous vocal stylings in the direction of the microphone floating ominously above the sea of keys (25 + 61 + 73 = 159), and maybe, if you’re really lucky, tuck her hair behind her ears.

DAN
dan’s drums are really beautiful. although megan’s rig has approximately as many buttons, switches, lights, visual displays and control sticks as the cockpit of a commercial aircraft, the real helm of the gn,s live show is arguably right here at the skins. before i orient you to the inner workings of this command center, let me impress you with my drum knowledge by talking for a second about dan’s kit itself:
two cymbals: old. i think they’re zildjian, probably made by actual turkish people in actual turkey. they’re definitely different sizes or something. brass-colored.
hi-hats: definitely two of those.
rack tom: it’s small; it’s awesome; it has a moon gel.
snare: the head features two or three moon gels, usually some marker doodlings or drawings of robots, and one note reminding dan to put the lightbulb in his kick drum that backlights our logo on the kick drum head (thanks to emily kane–go, kanes!). there are somehow “wires” involved with this drum but i don’t know what they’re connected to. maybe dan.
floor tom: big. i know that i like when dan hits this and that it is hard to mic. two moon gels!
bass drum: also called the “kick.” i am NOT allowed to stand on this drum.
well, i think we’ve all learned something here. this photo does not show the hat trick that dan mounts on his hi-hats for some songs, or his stick bag (he uses mallets on “there is a treasure”). what you can see clearly are his yamaha clickstation metronome, his one-shot shakers (two of i think 4 shakers he uses in the course of a set), the briefcase in which those items live, dan’s roland spd-s sampler and trigger pad bank, and his in-ears that allow him to actually hear all of these things (they’re sitting on the floor tom–see?). dan somehow installed hardware on the underside of that briefcase that allows him to secure it on a stand, so he can grab things out of it and toss them back in without worrying about knocking it over. the spd-s is the source of many extra arpeggiators (”i am the loser,” “killer of the one,” “spring is the winter’s end,”), noises (”i am the loser”), drum loops (”sometimes i see you on the lawn”), and the glockenspiel and xylophone sounds dan plays on “family dark,” “long coats, no energy,” and “she wrote a letter.” although dan plays an actual glockenspiel in songwriting and recording, programming individual notes into each individual spd-s pad is easier for live work because, besides being one or two fewer instruments to lug around, it allows dan to play mallet instruments with regular drumsticks. dan’s role in live shows is special because we play to a click, but trevor, joe, and i (and sometimes megan) can’t hear it at all. it’s only in dan’s ears, so he has to somehow keep us all from going horribly off-course. the cruel dynamics of rock ‘n roll are such that, if one of us does go way off, it generally appears to be dan’s fault. it’s also his job to start the click at the correct tempo for each song, and then begin the intro or song at the appropriate time and when all the other involved members are ready. if one of us is for some reason not ready to begin a song (which happens all the time), of course we also find a way to make that dan’s fault. such is the life of a drummer. had my body produced the enzymes to digest casein, you would have seen dan make -1 or -2 mistakes, play his drums with a wide and thrilling range of dynamics and expression and often with one hand, yell effusively at at least one point in the set, have roughly 2x as much fun as anyone else in the band, make a series of inimitable faces, and probably mouth the words to several songs.

or something like that.

dear reader,

it’s been a while, truly. august is largely a month off, which for the first week has meant a combination of rest and working steadily at all sorts of things i’ve meant to do for a long time.

one thing i’m not doing is songwriting. for me, that creative process is a pretty long pipeline, generally begun in this sort of sleeper phase where the world is unequivocally inspiring and provocative, and ideas seem constantly to swirl around me. during this time, my facility for language seems to increase, and i largely do nothing to work on songs. intermittently i’ll get a big chunk of music that feels urgent, and i immediately work it out on some instrument, but in these early stages it’s more often than not forgotten.
it’s only in the last stages of songwriting that i actually say, ‘ok, let’s write the verses, plan the structure,’ etc. since the writing timeframe for our single releases was so condensed, the spring and summer felt like one long session of this last phase, often with no early stages preceding at all.
if you have no idea what i’m talking about, just imagine some kind of weird groundhog day in which you repeatedly write a research paper in one draft without having actually done any research; alternately, you might picture yourself starring in a movie, only you have no idea who your character is, where the plot is going, or even the title of the film, and haven’t read the script. you read your lines off cue cards as the scene is being filmed. shooting goes on for months in this fashion.

all that to say, i’m experiencing a prolonged feeling of relief to just have a few weeks off to let some words tumble around in brain, work on my guitar rig, and spend time with people i really like who are not actually members of good, night states, like my wife. this is the break i thought i’d get in july, but didn’t.
the world is exciting again. i’m rediscovering positive emotions, and even, perhaps, a modicum of optimism (at least one of my bandmates undoubtedly just read that and came to some harm, perhaps by coffee traveling through his or her nose).

as evidence of (and segue from) this, i found myself in a political discussion of sorts with a good friend yesterday in which i appeared as the hopeful, ideologically relaxed one. (for those of you who haven’t met me, understand: karl marx is more ideologically relaxed than me, and he has a manifesto.)

the one sensory experience that seems consistently to burst in on my happy, conceptual peace is the constant barrage of evidence and indication that our country has completely lost its fair-mindedness and most of its rationality. mostly, i’m talking about the trend in political rhetoric of just about everyone using moral terms to describe a need for the government to make laws that benefit him or her. special-interest government is fascism. totalitarianism is still totalitarianism even if it’s the will of the majority.
granted, those coercive means of distributing resources (whether to the many or the few) in our country are not likely to change, but for goodness’ sake stop talking about them in terms of right and wrong. this is not a partisan complaint. everybody needs to shut up.
the last straw of late, it just so happens, are these preposterously undertaken congressional hearings with oil company executives. basically, if you haven’t followed them, these sessions have consisted of various congressman attempting to make some of the most powerful businessmen in the world feel bad or something. (don’t worry, it’s all being paid for by you and me.) congress may need to make a bunch of laws to take money away from oil companies and spread it out in camden or whatever (although i might suggest they start by just removing the inappropriate tax breaks for said corporations, i.e., stop GIVING them money), but once again, i submit: we have no need for political maneuverings in which nothing is done, blame is ritually assigned and re-assigned, representatives preen and posture and demonstrate their apparent concern for constituents, and the highest of horses are led out to bear political interest more disgusting than the lucre on trial.

we are quickly becoming a society that protects the opportunities of its populace to make money, and attempts to punish people who take advantage of those opportunities. a more schizophrenic premise i can barely devise.

if only, if only, if only my annoyance could somehow serve a creative purpose. it seems a waste, as an artist, to not write some hallowed protest song. somehow these feelings, equally as strong as the euphoric ones, find a different channel in my brain and never end up in the ‘hey, maybe i should write a song about this’ category (actual name of mental folder).

at the end of the day, though, i’m glad that’s the way it is. ultimately my complaints about our country and government are just that: complaining. the action, the reality, the change we hear so much about these days, is not and never will be legislated. it’s person to person, nuts-and-bolts, voting-with-your-wallet-and-putting-your-money-where-your-mouth-is.

the hope of these days is that in a few weeks i’ll have some songs to remind myself, and maybe a few other folks, of that.

in the meantime, thanks for reading.

dear reader,

this is my brain on drugs.

i still can’t quite get this thing to work. it now sounds wonderful 80% of the time, and like a screech owl (or falcon, anyone?) being fed through a paper shredder the other 20%.

but tutoring is almost into summer phase, joe and i actually finished “river in the dry” before he left for california, we just had a great weekend with trevor and megan here in nj, and i’m gonna get some rest. even my bevy of partially working amplifiers and benched pedal projects are not enough to dampen that slow euphoria: rest.

my ambition for the next couple weeks is to post enough that this blog gets truly boring. just totally banal. it’s a lofty goal, i know.

talk to you soon.

Hello again, music fans. Here’s the diary entry I promised!

Friday, 7 September

Dear Rock’n'Roll Diary:

It’s time to pack for a weekend recording! Here is my suitcase:

Upon switching to my current rig, my case was vastly overpowered by cable and pedals, so I was graciously rewarded an upgrade in the form of the band’s old merch suitcase. There was extra space, so late on Thursday night, I dumped some clothing, $200 of homeopathic meds prescribed by my new doctor who recently affirmed that I am indeed as consistently ill as I have always suspected, my teddy bear, and some pink pajama shorts, which later doubled as a dust cloth upon realizing how dirty the keys of the aforementioned Roland Jupiter 6 happened to be.

On Friday afternoon, Trevor and I piled three or four synths into Joe’s car, microwaved some burritos, closed up our house, shed a collective tear over our aquatic snail who passed away this week, and left about 40 minutes later than we had planned. I made my typical nest in the back seat, wedging myself in between yet another synth, a trumpet and a cooler containing approximately 1.7 pounds of dark chocolate and a large bowl of homemade salsa.

About four minutes into our trip, hunger struck: it was time to test the salsa. The salsa had enjoyed its night marinating in the fridge: full of a friend’s urban farm tomato goodness, lime juice, locally grown garlic that must have been picked yesterday, and fresh cilantro, it had turned itself into a fresh cold summery soup. Which, at a stop sign on our steep hill, was promptly sloshed directly from the bowl in my lap onto my Personal Nether Regions. That is to say, for the next three hours, I traveled with salsa soaked underwear.

When we finally stopped at a Sheetz I was excited to see that the ladies’ room came equipped with both paper towels, for mopping up salsa, and a hand dryer, whose nozzle I aimed past my waistband directly into my now clean but very wet pants.

And then we left, and drove several more hours until we reached New Jersey.

Believe me, Diary, this rock-n-roll lifestyle is every bit as glamorous as it looks in those press photos. To quote my beloved college roommate: “Cha cha cha!”