2008 is almost over, finally.

2008 sucked.

2008 was the year of relationship and family bullshit.

2008 is the year of narcissistic fuckups.

2008 is yet another year of wanting to get the fuck out of LA.

2008 was a year of severing some ties, burning some bridges and building a few new ones.

2008 was the year of asbestos removal.

2008 was the year of rescuing and rehabilitating a dog that almost got killed by by a car.

(photo by phil hilfiker)

2008 rocked.

2008 was my year to actually touch a California gray whale, in the wild.

2008 was the year of road trips across the US to Massachusetts and NYC.

2008 was a year to be proud of my country yet extremely disappointed in my state.

2008 was a year of being fortunate enough to legally drive as fast as I want.

2008 was redemption for pissing away the last few years musically, and finally getting my new album released.

2008 was the year of shooting my first music video.

2008 was a year that I wouldn’t really want to repeat, but I will strangely miss it.

I took a road trip back in October, and when I was in Massachusetts I spent a couple days at Matthew Larsen’s old brick duplex in Holyoke and helped him record a few songs. Go to Matt’s site and listen to the new songs.

Here’s Matt laying down some melodica.

After four very full and busy days, the shooting for the “Fell Out Of The Sky” music video has come to an end. Today was the greatly anticipated party scene, which wouldn’t have been possible without all of our friends, who had to take a break from their busy lives to eat, drink and be merry. Editing for the video starts next week!

Not a whole lot of time for me to take many photos today, so I only have a few to post for now. I’ll try to dig around for some more soon.

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Holy crap today was a lengthy and intense day of filming! Tomorrow is the last day, the big fancy party scene. Here are a few photos from today:

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So the second day of shooting has come to an end. We got some amazing shots and the actors were all outstanding. One more weekend of filming coming up, and then we’re off to editing! Here are some photos of the day:

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Today was the first day of filming for the “Fell Out Of The Sky” music video! The unbearable smoke and ash from the Sylmar fire forced us to change ALL of our locations today, but we were fortunate to find some great alternate locations. All of the actors and crew were great! More shooting tomorrow, and next weekend as well. Here are some photos:

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You too could be part of the State Shirt CD/t-shirt mailout extravaganza and all-star revue. Clicky click to procure your place in post office history.

This is what happens when you go to the West Hollywood Halloween Carnival in an incredible Tinky Winky teletubby costume. We were only there about an hour and Angela ended up posing with over 300 people.

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(and this is only about 1/2 of the photos!)

Was lucky to see a great show in Greenfield, MA when I was back there a few weeks ago. Was good to see a bunch of people I haven’t seen in years. Urthquake (Bob ex-Squidlaunch) started off the show with his noisy, guitar-loop-filled set, rockin the pointy-headstock guitar. Bromp Treb (featuring Neil of Fat Worm of Error) killed the audience with his spastic, psychy-dubby, insane soundfest complete with two reel-to-reel tape decks and custom tape loops. Truly great.

Dan Friel was up next… I was in the band Squidlaunch with Dan back when I was 18. His music is a lot different but his love for noise has not changed. His new album has been getting a bunch of great reviews. Go check it out. The set was ended with Diagram A. Complete blistering, hypnotizing, intense noise.

I took a bunch of pictures. Here you go.

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Well it ended up being too cold to camp, which means too cold to record any new songs while camping! I guess I’ll have to try out the State Shirt back country mobile recording studio some other day.

Today I made it all the way out to Massachusetts. Traveled along some windy back roads and came across a couple beautiful family farms and took some more photos. Will be working on some new music next week, and working to getting This is Old released!

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see you later

Ok, so I’m not exactly on tour, but I am driving across the US, taking some photos and recording some music along the way. Today I drove for a while along Route 66 in California, and spent some quality time with a few dilapidated houses and buildings. The setting sun was providing some perfect lighting, so it seemed like a good opportunity to shoot some new photos, some of which for my bio.

Tonight I’m keeping it classy, spending a night in the lovely roadway inn in flagstaff, arizona. I’m currently accompanied by the sounds of trains raging by every half hour. A bit too tired to work on any songs today. If I hit a campground tomorrow evening, I’ll see if I can start (and finish) a SongFight song. Here are some photos, more tomorrow.

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Going to be taking a little road trip to NYC and Massachusetts, see some friends, record some new music. Will see if it’s possible to record a SongFight song from a campsite somewhere in the middle of nowhere. I’ve got this laptop, a guitar, some effects, a microphone and a power inverter for my car. And I might just stop off of Route 66 in the desert somewhere to play a show on the side of the road. Come on by. Hoping to take a shitload of pictures, and update my site from any unsecured wireless connections I can find! Check back for some updates along the road.

The release of This Is Old is near. Mastering went well (it sounds great) and all of the artwork is off at the duplicators. Hoping to have final discs in my hand in about two weeks. Preordering will start soon, stay tuned!

I think I might want one of these.

Over the last five years or so, I have been doing a lot of improvised live looping, sometimes noisy, sometimes melodic, usually with a microphone, guitar and some crappy keyboard. Though I’ve never really bothered to record any of these performances from start to finish, other than to cull loops for other songs. So last night at 1am I decided to break out the cheap camcorder. All sounds were improvised, created with a microphone, a bunch of pedals and a guitar, nothing prerecorded or planned, all one take. I put together a video collage around the live stuff with found footage.

Photos from 2005. Was just about to drop in a big ol 455 in there. Didn’t really know what I was doing. Probably should have been making music with friends instead.

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So this year has started off to a bit of a mess musically. New album is still not quite finished! The guy I was hoping would mix the album needed to back out. And I’ve been trying to work with an indie label over the last couple years and we just never seemed to get anything going. But I really have no one to blame but myself. It’s just taken me forever to finish writing and recording. I should have pushed myself harder to get it finished sooner but it’s a real pain for me to rush anything creative.

So how do I go about getting everything finished up? Take a 3 week road trip! Hmm, ok so maybe not the best way to finish the album, but at least the time away has started to give me a few ideas on how to get it finished up and released by late summer. I’m going to get back into SongFight a bit more and should have a few songs popping up here and there. Also the details are sketchy but there may be a couple remix releases coming out this summer. I’ll keep you posted.

After spending the last two days in Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park, I’m not sure I will want to return to L.A. I think I’m just bring my laptop, a guitar and a microphone and record here.

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