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So Wednesday’s show was another great one for us. The band has been having an incredible time. All the guests were great. Pat KILLED it, like we knew he would. Slim was great on ‘Woman Be Strong.’ Randy and the horn section we thought were spot on. They felt they ‘missed’ a thing or two, we however strongly disagreed. haha. Jefferson joined us for ‘The Letter’ and ‘King Of Grey.’ We got tickled afterwards because ‘The Letter’ is like the perfect tune for Erson to play on. It felt wonderful. Cool to see the crowd moving around through the whole song. Jim Lauderdale sang two with us as well. Both are songs soon to be released, one on the album, one on a pre-release 45 that we’re very happy about. So there’s one more week to go. We’re finalizing the guests for the 24th and will post all that in the next day or so.

I also wanted to clue you all in about this great function that is happening Saturday night, the 20th. It’s taking place at the Country Music Hall Of Fame. Check it out, get tickets, etc. at www.goldenhourlateparty.com. It’s to help with the Vanderbilt Trauma Survivors Network and the American Trauma Society. My family and I have seen firsthand over the last 11 months the amazing work that these folks do. We’ve also seen firsthand how hard these things can be on the individual as well as the surrounding family. Trying to reintegrate back to a normal, everyday existence takes lots of work. Mentally, physically, emotionally, financially, you name it. And these programs will aim to help ease all of these things. This is something we’ll all be involved with alot in the future as we feel it necessary to try and give back to these folks that have given us so much. If you’re around Nashville Saturday, come by and check it out. If not, there will be more opportunities in the future.

As always, thanks for all the continued support. I’ll check back in Sunday and give you all the details for the final Wednesday show next week.

So last Wednesday’s show was a damn BLAST!! We had a great time. Maureen and April just KILLED it. Thanks ladies. Plus it was a ton of fun getting to sing with Josh. He sounded great and it was truly a pleasure having him. We also got surprised by Dan Baird(who’s coming the final week for a longer ’sit in’) and had to get him up for one song during the encore. Twas dandy, thanks.

So this week’s friends will include Pat Buchanan. One of the finest guitar players around. Just stellar. He’s played on every one of my albums since ‘The Man Who Killed Love’ and it’s always a pleasure. There’s a great story about the first time we played together in the studio….remind me to tell y’all sometime. We’ll also be graced by Mr. Jim Lauderdale. Jim and I met and wrote a song the day before the accident last year. It got forgotten about until we were back in the studio and we tracked it and it turned out great. It’ll be available as part of a two sided 45 that’ll will be out before the release of the new album. We also wrote ‘Long Gone’ which is on the new album. He’ll be joining us for both of those tunes. Then we’re gonna have a great horn section that was put together by Randy Leago. I met Randy while doing the ‘Born To Run’ night with the Long Players and thought he was great. I asked him about it yesterday and, bam, now we’re doing it. Our old pal Jason ‘Slim’ Gambill is also gonna stop by for a tune I believe. He played with me for a lot of ‘The Man Who Killed Love’ touring and has always remained a dear friend. Great player so it should be lots of fun. I think we may be testing out a few more new songs these next two weeks so let’s hope those turnout ok. I do believe that’s about all for now. Hope we’ll see some of you on Wednesday.

So I think we’re officially done tracking songs. Though I know if something new comes out that could still change. Now we’re deep in the land of the overdub. We had Mike Webb in this morning for piano and organ on ‘Hard To Love’. He also played a tack-piano solo, which was conveniently constructed by dumping pencils on the piano strings(helpful hint for all y’all studio hipsters out there), on ‘I’m Ready To Go.’ Then he nailed this classical piano idea I had for ‘You Gave Me Nothing.’ Definitely started to feel those songs sounding complete-er. Haha. Jim Lauderdale made it back in for background vocals on ‘I’m Ready To Go’ and helped take that to a cool place. Then Devin got this dreamy sounding steel part and a killer guitar solo for ‘The Wreckage’. I’m just thrilled with how that one turned out. I forgot that Mike also added organ on ‘Where Do We Go From Down.’ Nice work on that too. Couple other folks coming in tomorrow and then we just keep burning it up until we ship the damn thing off. Starting to finalize things for our Nashville shows in June too. I hope lots off y’all will have a chance to come out. As always, time to reset before digging in tomorrow. Until then…….adios.

ps: Devin’s ‘dreamy’ steel part was dreamy in the ‘you’re having a dream’ sense. Not like the ‘Zac Efron is dreamy’ sense just for clarification.

So I mistakenly typed ’sudio’ in the subject line a minute ago. Bad Phil Collins memories, sorry. Anyhow it was a busy day today. Started at 10 writing with Jim Lauderdale again. He’s a lot of fun to work with. We got a song called ‘Long Gone’ that we’ll track on Monday I’m thinking. It’s going to be a good driving rocker. First song recorded today is tentatively titled, ‘Even If It Breaks Your Heart.’ It started a little off base with evryone being to fancy with it. Trying to make it too rock. It just didn’t work. It’s just this little confessional tune about falling in love with rock and roll. And how those of us that stay in this damned business have to stay in love with it even if it breaks your heart(thus the title….yes..creative I know). We all talked about that moment and then stripped it back to just acoustic guitars and it got personal fast in a real good way. Devin and Pat both played acoustics, Tim and Coomer on bass and drums. Pat added a GREAT electric part on the solo and later half/outro. Siggi will do percussion tomorrow and we’ll hit some background vocals and that should do it. After a lovely pot roast dinner from Copper Kettle(ringing endorsement/shameless plug)we needed to lay it back a bit. Tackled a song called,’What Could I Do.’ Pat and I on electrics, Tim and Ken on drums and Devin on Wurlitzer. This one got going quicker. Pat really hit on this cool atmospheric guitar thing that’s nice. The whole tune got good and soulful fast. I think we’ll move Devin’s part to the B-3 later and scrap the wurly to bring that out even further. All in all it was a damn good day. Blade was by for a while and is feeling better so we should be back with the band full force tomorrow at 11. Now I’m gonna rest. Y’all be well.

Hell of a day at the studio today. Blade was sick and unable to come in. Definitely a bummer for him and us. Hopefully he’ll get well and join us again tomorrow or Friday. Our friend Tim Marks came in to fill in on bass. He’s cool. He played on the majority of ‘Draw The Curtains’ so there was already some familiarity there. He got there just as we were getting together an arrangement for a song called ‘Where Do We Go From Down.’ It was written with Kyle Cook so he came and played guitar with us too. Siggi really nailed the drum track. Great feel, really moody. Then we completely reworked a song from the first sessions called ‘Too Late Too Soon.’ It was a blues rock thing but just kept kind of coming up limp as we listened back. I got there early this morning and wrote a new arrangement on piano. Took it a whole different place. It seemed to finally grab everyone by the balls a bit. Devin played piano. I played acoustic and Kyle hung and played electric. Siggi and Tim held down the rest. Its gonna come together nicely after a bit more melody tweaking on my end I think. Back in at 10 in the morning for another co-write with Jim Lauderdale and then he’s going to sing backgrounds on the tune of ours that we recorded yesterday. Then Pat Buchanan and Michael Webb will join us to track two more later. Keeping us hopping. Oh yeah….go Celtics! Talk to y’all tomorrow

First let me say a sincere thank you to everyone who made it out to any of these shows the last 3 weeks. The response during the shows, after the shows was truly humbling. Myself and all the guys were so flattered. It was a great warm up for getting ready to get back to work in the studio. We had a hell of a ride home from Maryland. Flat tire and such. Took all day to get home. Loaded in the studio yesterday. It was cool to be back at Sound Emporium. Kind of strange thinking about working there before the accident and then getting to where we are now. All the folks there were so helpful during that process it was good to see them all again. We got sounds up yesterday to match up with where we’d left off. That was interesting. I’m not used to taking a 9 month break in the middle of recording. Anyhow, we got started on songs this morning. We tracked two really good ones. ‘Favorite Waste Of Time’ was first. This marked Devin’s studio debut with the band. He nailed it. Cool twelve string part plus a really good lead part. I got to play electric guitar which is the first time since last August. That felt wonderful. Next we worked on a song called ‘I’m Ready To Go’. I’d written this with Jim Lauderdale right before the wreck and had kind of forgotten about it. We dug up a demo of it Monday and it was cool so we banged it out. Siggi was napping so Ken played drums, I played acoustic and Devin played mandolin. Blade played this way cool bass part that really drives the whole thing. Siggi eventually came to and hit the percussion toys and the damn things almost done. We’re gonna add some accordion and melodica tomorrow. We’re hitting two more tomorrow as well. We’re going to attempt to update you at the end of each day with progress. Hell maybe even some photos or video eventually. Danged technology. Alright, I’m going to relax a bit. We’ll chat tomorrow.