dear reader,

morning. not sure i’ve ever posted on a saturday before. my schedule’s a little backwards because of our midweek shows in state college (go, roustabout!) and pittsburgh (thanks, wyep!).

firstly, a big thank you to state college fans who came out, and to jesse and jeff as always for putting us up. shane, you run a great house mix.

i can’t help but think of state college as the place where i inevitably say something from stage that’s very slightly wrong, generally due to misuse of a preposition. to be fair, mastery of prepositions (at least according to my wife, the resident authority) is one of the highest stages of language learning, mostly because it’s just a hard thing; everyday english speakers–probably including BOTH joe six pack AND now joe the plummer (how do we get our joe into election controversy? he could be the hip, young swing voter)–mess them up all the time. but the truth probably is just that my stage banter’s been getting more and more stilted this year, maybe due to general misanthropy, but more probably because our music’s gotten more personal as we’ve gone along.

returning to grammar, here are some examples: at one show i said that we were selling t-shirts “with owls,” as if to imply the two were a package deal, rather than that the t-shirt features a picture of an owl; on wednesday i said that we were releasing an internet single “about halloween,” suggesting the content of the song as opposed to the release date [”around” would have been a better choice (”about,” fyi, is one of the most misused and consequently most ambiguous prepositions we’ve got)].

right, if you didn’t get the e-mail and have noticed that the 15th came and went, “the odd and the even” won’t be out ’til closer to halloween. sorry about that.

usually people react to these comments by smiling initially, as if you’ve said something that makes sense, and then sort of looking off to the side or at their beer as they sort through whether good night, states is actually selling owls.

at wyep’s third thursday show in pgh, however, i laboriously got it right. (luckily they recorded the whole thing! so i have proof.) we really enjoyed that show, as we hope did you if you were there. a big thanks again to wyep generally and the staff that made it happen. joe and i listened to cindy howes‘ morning show on the way out of town yesterday (big fans), and she very graciously mentioned again what a good night it was. in other encouragements, the folks we did recognize on thursday night mostly had brought friends with them, and that’s just the best. you people are really making this happen.

good shows are especially nice when you’re as tired as our band definitely was on thursday. dan and joe had actually driven through the night after our 11.45p state college set wrapped up and we finished loading out sometime after 1.30a, so that dan could go to work thursday morning. seriously. here’s dan right before we walked onstage at third thursdays:

speaking of work, i’ve got some sessions to go to, but i’ll be back before too long. next boring subjects: recording and amp travails.

good luck with the prepositions today.