So I’ve just finished moving into my new Venice apartment. I now have a view of the Pacific, Santa Monica mountains, Hollywood Hills and most of LA this side of the Valley. Plus McDonald’s and Domino’s within view. It’s a trip seeing charter planes take off from the residential area around the Santa Monica airport.

Wait, I can clearly see a fire erupting in Westwood Village. Now a chopper flying over the scene. All this while working on my tan before I get my Hispanic club card revoked.

I just played a Bill Nash 50’s style relic strat into a Juke 1210 combo. I dropped my pick and played my best Mark Knopfler for about twenty minutes.

Anks is in Japan living it up looking for a future wife.

Anks is headed to Japan for a few weeks to plant the seeds of our Mr. Big-esque future. Which means he and I can’t see the new Harold and Kumar sequel as a Korean/Indian tandem. He threw up a sharp looking splash page on the main site with a few fantastic shots from our Fairfax / Beverly Hills shoot with Quyen. A bunch of us are going to Silver Lake Lounge tonight to catch Bigbang
from Norway. They’re a really good rock and roll trio.

Colin and Jackie are in talks with that cool magazine to include us in issue later this year.

Checked out my new apartment in Venice last night. Top floor - check. Corner apartment - check. Strong, unsecured wifi to jack - not so much. DirectTV is coming this weekend. Maybe in time to catch the De La Hoya fight.

So a few hours after we closed out at Hotel Cafe I headed to Canter’s.  I ran into El Diablo who gave us our first residency at the Kibitz Room a while back.  About 2am and in walks Anks and his crew.  On our way out I hop into the van with all our gear.   I’m pushing our 15-passenger E-350 which has gotta be the largest non-commercial vehicle on the road.  Anks and his buddy speed off down Fairfax in this fucking Lotus about two inches off the ground.  He was twittering to his facebook “i don’t want to die.”

• Hooker
• Finding a way home
• These narrow streets
• Dozen hearts
• Las Cruces
• Steal your heart away
• Bloodburner
• Restless sea

Well we played a whole bunch of new songs at Hotel Cafe Friday night.  I think it was our best performance as a band yet.  I think watching the new Stones / Scorcese concert flick really opened my eyes to the matrix of performing.  Although Kyle and I are tethered to our amplifiers.  Kyle sang like a bird and Anks mixed it up and made it fresh.  As soon as I walked off the stage this really nice guy from this magazine came up and said he was digging our show.

I don’t have any pics from our set this time. I did try out some new pedals though

There’s MXR’s new Carbon Copy analog delay, Xotic’s RC Booster my pal Phil Hurley of Stonehoney has left me while they’re in Nashville, Keeley modded Blues Driver (!), Keeley Compressor and the Fender Tuner the guys gave to me for Christmas.  They buy me tuners and I always lose them at gigs.

Flavorpill has some nice things to say about our Hotel Cafe show tomorrow night.

…well not quite yet. After a few years of playing with only Fender amp reverb I’m daydreaming of putting together a pedal board. Since the start of the new year I’ve started using a

1. Pedal tuner
2. Xotic RC Booster
3. Keeley modded Boss BD-2 Blues Driver. So that’s three pieces right there.
4. Here are my theoretical new additions: Analog delay? I’ve tried MXR’s new Carbon Copy and it sounded beautiful. I’m going to try BBE’s new Two-Timer analog delay.
5. Compressor? I’ve been going on about this for a while now. Just listened to samples of the Electro Harmonix Black Finger, White Finger, and Soul Preacher which all sounded good. Granted Peter Stroud was demoing through a killer 65 Amplifier. That’s a real rockstar amp.
6. Tremolo? Fender amp trem would be nice. But until I get my hands in an older Vibrolux I could use a Keeley modded Boss TR-2. It has a nice sound and small footprint

Even at five pedals that’s a call for a board right there. The commitment lies in using a power brick like the Voodoo Lab’s Pedal Power 2 to power the 9 volt pedals. Then I’m tethered to the nearest AC outlet. Or I could just unplug them and use battery power. I would mount it all on a Pedaltrain and cut some short George L’s with right angle jacks.

I would do it if it makes our live show more entertaining. I’m not one for tap dancing.

I just caught a matinee of the new Scorcese/ Stones flick Shine A Light. I think I saw Chris Rock sitting a few rows behind me. And I don’t think Keith used a pedalboard.

Quyen took some fantastic shots yesterday.  We’ll have more up soon, and I bet we’ll be keeping some for the album liners too.

New song ready to roll! This one should make the record. “Steal your heart away” is the working title and probably the finished title. I picked up a neat ‘72 Fender Precision Bass strung with flatwounds two days ago and started on this boogie. Kyle’s laying down a killer walking part and some cooley high harmony. I thought the core song was pretty good but when Anks layed down his beat it just all came together. I’ve had a goal of writing a new good song a week. Right now I’m at about one every two weeks. But that’s not so bad.

A friend of mine who works at a nice post production studio rented the Culver City Ice Rink for a massive game of broomball tonight.  It consisted of about twenty people taping up some brooms, running around in sneakers and falling on our asses for two hours.  It was the funniest thing I’ve ever fucking seen.  I landed on my dome something fierce and was laid out for a good minute.  But on the drive home the song I’d started working on today just fell together.  Maybe I’ve tapped into something.

One of my favorites, Johnny Cougar (Mellencamp) was recently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The man has rocked a Gibson Dove for more than a few years now. . .

Actually, I don’t have a steel string acoustic.  It’s consuming me.  I’d really like to get my hands on a Dove, even a new one. The new Gibson dreadnoughts I’ve played can sound a bit boxy until you really dig into em. Then you really hear that Gibson Americana. I’d have fun playing an really letting one open up over a few years. Plus my name means “dove”, which means I have to play one.

Elvis rocked one in cherryburst . . . and in his Vegas years, a blackjack Dove.