You're Not Bears... WE ARE!

What's up dudes. It's been a while since a good post and all, but I've just got nothing on my mind right now. Okay. Sike. That's a lie. I mean, my brain's always in some kind of twixt of sorts but earlier this week it was nice out and I didn't want to sit at my computer longer than I had to (which I ended up doing anyway... I just didn't write a blog). Now it's winter again and I'm too cold to want to sit here and write anything down, but I'm going to make myself do it.

Points of interest today... my house is absolutely disgusting. In response to my previous post, or maybe it was two posts ago, Chap has graciously offered to try and play drums for my new recordings but then he got the flu or something, so that's still getting pushed off. But that's okay because it prompted me to sit down at the kit and try and figure out the way I want certain parts to sound by playing along with what I have recorded so far (badly), and that made me realize that I think a lot of the songs are way too slow and might have to be completely re-recorded from scratch anyway. That kind of blows, but the work I did on these songs was so long ago that I can barely remember what it is I'd be losing by starting over on them. Plus maybe they'll sound more cohesive and better put together if we start the recordings with drums. Ya know?!

No I don't know. But we'll see. Also, I recently started a new band project with some solid dudes... Joe and Doug, which is going pretty good so far. The only issue is the two of them aren't too into actually writing songs so I've been trying to crank out material in between practices and it's way tougher than I thought it would be. See, the "concept" or sound for the band is that we want to be straight up punk rock and not this BS "dance punk" crap or playing old rock and roll but louder and calling it punk rock crap that's sneaking up on us these days. What we're trying to get going is something the Lawrence Arms (at least I think that's who I heard it from) define as "midwestern beer belly despair rock). If that doesn't put a picture in your mind think that band and Dillinger Four and Latterman and None More Black and all that other kind of stuff that a few people were really into two or three years ago but not so much anymore. That's what we're working on.

So back to what I was saying... I thought it'd be real easy but it turns out that when you're used to writing real strum heavy acoustic stuff for acoustic guitar and only acoustic guitar, it gets really hard to write chord progressions and lyrics on an acoustic guitar when you know there's a going to be a whole lot more to it once you add other instruments and that it's going to sound much different with a full band. Does that make sense? Because it does to me.

For example... I don't know how these bands write their lyrics and melodies. Whenever I'm sitting around with just my acoustic guitar trying to think of a melody to go with some power chords or whatever or vice versa it always sounds extremely corny and generic without hearing it faster, thicker, and being screamed out just right. And it's also not like you can just "jam" and write these kinds of songs like I'm used to doing, and if you can I sure as hell haven't figured out how yet. I'm almost embarssed to have written a lot of the stuff I've gone through trying to write these songs. But now I just figure "fuck it", I need to force myself to present any old thing to the full band and run with it... see what happens. That's how the Beatles got started... writing lyrics about how they don't know how their girlfriends put up with them because they're slobs with mice in their houses and singing that against two real generic sounding power chords on an acoustic guitar.

Right? No seriously. It's true.

Also we're pretty sure we're going to call this band Bears. That name's already taken we think... but I really don't care because it's awesome.

I'm going to go stare at my huge pile of dishes and hope it washes itself now.