Just a Little Goodbye

Stumbled across this today, so I thought I'd post it up here, even though it's a little bit old. This is a video of me playing with The Infidelles about a year ago, maybe longer at Royal Studios here in Memphis, which is owned and operated by Willie "Pops" Mitchell, a legend, so-to-speak of Memphis music. He has recorded bands in this place like Al Green, Ann Peebles, Keith Richards, and tons more, and the Beatles even practiced in this very room at one point. We recorded an album with Willie's grandson "Boo" back in like Summer '07 that doesn't appear that it's ever going to come out, which is a pretty big bummer, but this was all still a cool experience. This video was shot for the website www.gomemphis.com. That's Willie Mitchell talking during the video. Enjoy.

October 6 Dysrythmia flier

By Brian (last name not known) at Black Lodge Video.
Edit: I guess you have to click on it if you wanna see the whole image.

I got into Dysrhytmia a bunch during my freshmen year of college, but I've never gotten around to actually watching them play, so I'm looking forward to this. We've played the Black Lodge Microdome before, and it's a cool, intimate kinda setting. If you get thirty people in there, it's packed, which is nice because it's a safe bet you're gonna be playing to a packed room. I'm sure some people will not be able to get into this, which is a nice thought, even though it's still gonna be a pretty small crowd.

Last weekend, the Unbeheld played two shows with Dark Castle from Florida and Sons of Tonatiuh from Atlanta. We played Little Rock and Memphis, which were both good shows, particularly the Memphis show. I notice that, particularly when we do these Sunday night Buccaneer shows, which this last Memphis show was, we're getting lots of local bartenders and the like; people who are in bars and around live music every night of the week. It's a good feeling to see that, even with the night off from their respective bars, these folks are still coming out and watching us play. It feels nice to be playing in something that has integrity and is enjoyed by people who I would call my peers, and people who are older than me. People with real tastes, as opposed to kids who will swallow anything you shove in their faces. I've been getting lots of good feedback about the show when I've gone out in the past week, and it gets me really excited to record this full length we're going in to do in a couple weeks. I've been listening to lots of stuff that I want to seep into my playing, and just getting overall pumped.

Ok, that's all for now.

Hello again

So I was bored the other day and hanging around on the blogger kinda considering the whole thing. I've talked before about my anxiety about having an online diary of sorts, and I'm very on the fence about the whole concept. I don't think this an odd feeling for most bloggers other than the least self-conscious of the bunch - which, I suppose, may be a lot of them. But my self-awareness prohibits me from being able to regularly write in a public fashion where I scrutinize everything I type through the eyes of whoever I might suspect is reading a particular bit at whatever time. It disappoints me to say that I don't have that same careless abandon I used to have when I constantly updated public journals in the past. Kind of. Even the idea of updating facebook status, which has been a daily activity for some time, is starting to sit poorly with me. I'm just falling more and more out of love with the idea of having any online persona to speak of. Of course, all of this supposes that anybody reads anything I write or is interested at all, which may be a non-issue at this point. Point is, I just don't have a desire to update this thing in the manner I thought I would. I used to be a writer, but I'm afraid I may not be any more. But one thing I notice about other friends' blogs is that all of them seem to have a focus on that person's particular hobby or interest, be that art, writing, music, or whatever. And one thing that has been and continues to be an unstoppable force in my life's direction is my music. I play with multiple different bands and groups, with various different aesthetics and identities, all of which get touched by multiple different hands, both inside and outside of the particular bands, and I think that I would enjoy and update this thing more as a conscious catalog of everything I do musically. It's a huge part of my life, full of things that I am consistently proud of, and so I am changing the direction of this blog. From here on, I will view this as a place for me to post videos, songs, fliers, pictures, or stories about my travels to "wherever the music takes me," to adopt a bit of band-guy pretentiousness. Maybe it's self-indulgent, but it doesn't seem to me to be any less self-indulgent than talking about my day or anything else online with the idea that anybody really wants to read. Anyway, at the very least, this will keep from writing some sappy bullshit when I'm down. Here's hoping it stays interesting, I say, as I second guess even the need to have written anything I just have.

So, anyway, here's a few videos that I have various things to do with.:

The Armed Forces - "Love Exploder" trailer
This is a promotional video for the new Armed Forces single, "Love Exploder." This is a band I play with from time to time based out of Nashville. They are releasing their new album "The Rest is Noise" on a subscription basis, one song a month, for a full year. This is song 3 or 12. I did not play on this song, but I do have a small part in this video, which was shot on a little two show run we just did to Chicago.


The Unbeheld - "Mother Chaos" live at the Hi Tone 8/29/09
This is a live recording of the title track to the Unbeheld album we are recording early next month. It was recorded by somebody in the crowd (I don't know who) at a recent show we did at the Hi Tone with Nebulba and The Entrance Band (who featured Paz Lenchantin from A Perfect Circle/Zwan on the bass, which was cool for me). It's a decently recorded live video.


Slow Southern Steel Trailer
"Slow Southern Steel" is a documentary that was filmed last fall about the southern hard rock and metal/stoner/sludge/doom diy scene that's happening now, whatever you want to call it. I could describe the focus of the documentary, but that's what the trailer is for. Anyway, there is some footage that I haven't seen, either performance, interview or both of the Unbeheld that will show up in the documentary. It also features footage of some cool bands such as Torche, Down, Hank Williams III, Kylesa, Music Hates You, Jucifer, Zoroaster, and a bunch more. The deep voiced guy in the trailer who says the shit about not wanting to die anywhere but the south at the end is Phil Anselmo, who sang for Pantera and is now in Down. The guy smoking the joint at the beginning is Pepper Kennan from Corrosion of Conformity. The fact that my band is in a documentary with those guys is pretty cool. The documentary is going to various film festivals soon, with a suspected release in like Spring 2010. The movie has been getting a press in magazines both in print and online like Decibel, Alarm, and Blabbermouth, with hopefully lots more to come.
Slow Southern Steel Movie Trailer #1


Anyway, that's that for now. Hopefully this new direction means I'll update this more.

Shawn's dreaming of horses

So currently remembering that I forgot that if you put on "Catapult," you're gonna just keep listening when "Angels of the Silences" comes on, and before you know it, a few songs are gonna go by and you're gonna find yourself suddenly at the end of "Miller's Angels," and then it's not gonna matter how you started your day off.

Goddamn I love The Hold Steady

Cymbals Eat Guitars on Don't Look Down

I really really like this band. Their album is super good, but seeing them do all this live seems to be the way to experience it. It can be pretty angular, but it's pretty damned good. Check it out if you're bored.

Cymbals Eat Guitars

The Great Prayer Experiment

...Such experiments, if done properly, have to be double blind, and this standard was strictly observed. The patients were assigned, strictly at random, to an experimental group (received prayers) or a control group (received no prayers). Neither the patients, nor their doctors or caregivers, nor the experimenters were allowed to know which patients were being prayed for and which patients were controls. Those who did the experimental praying had to know the names of the individuals for whom they were praying - otherwise, in what sense would they be praying for them rather than for somebody else? But care was taken to tell them only the first name and initial letter of the surname. Apparently that would be enough to enable God to pinpoint the right hospital bed...

What's that you say, Lord? You can't cure me because I'm a member of the control group? ... Oh, I see, my aunt's prayers aren't enough. But Lord, Mr. Evans in the next-door bed ... What was that Lord? ... Mr. Evans received a thousand prayers per day? But Lord, Mr. Evans doesn't know a thousand people ... Oh, they just referred to him as John E. But Lord, how did you know they didn't mean John Ellsworthy? ... Oh right, you used your omniscience to work out which John E. they meant. But Lord...

-Richard Dawkins