October Railroad Earth

Well I'm still reeling from this past weekend. So many friends and family spread out over 3 days; such a short time to catch up. And by catching up, I mean usually an extremely abridged, Cliff's Notes at best, version of everyone's lives. But I'm thankful to have that. Everyone is doing their own thing. So many success stories. So much moving forward. Everyone is so fucking smart and talented. I'm excited for everyone's future plans and accomplishments. It's also pretty far out that by me coming home and inviting people out that, in turn, other people who hadn't seen each other in years got a chance to hang and reconnect.

And although I didn't come here to play any shows I still managed to get some music-related stuff done. I met up with Michael Lenzi (Resplendent) at his place and listened to a new song he's been working on. The plan at the moment is for him to get me his recorded tracks and set off on the collaborative project we'd been talking about for quite a while now. I guess this means that there's a good chance that Resplendent/Downey will have another release sometime in the future. Couldn't be happier about that.

Haven't listened to my Bubble Shield mixes since I left Stockholm. I finished everything in such a blur, ears ringing, eardrums broken, that I don't even know if it's good or not. I need to give it some time and not rush that release. I can see myself revisiting those recordings and doing more edits and mixing. I simply will not rush anything. The end product will be better because of it.

Dug into boxes and boxes of tangled wires and cassette tapes. I recovered a full length album that Dan Marsden and I did in 1997 under the name My First Flat. We never released that album and I'm not totally sure why. We played one show as My First Flat in a garage once. It was short lived. Of course I have a live recording of that show. It was a matinee.

Unearthed old Slackjawed and Wolfie recordings. Through layers of hiss came my voice and guitar from 1995 on unlabeled Maxell hi-bias. There are some golden moments there, scattered. I want to keep the podcasts going through December and I'm debating which stuff will pass the quality standards test.

Been back and forth on the Metra six times now. Watched hole in the wall Baptist churchs and fried chicken places zoom by. Saw kids playing basketball with one of those chain-mesh nets and a Globetrotter red, white and blue basketball. Swish. One million kids on singlespeed and fixed gear bikes. Crust punks singing for change. Sushi from heaven. Electric snake elevated train taking me everywhere. The bus down Western. Walking up Western. Getting scared. Scaring people. Chicago is dirty and beautiful and busy. It's a world away from Stockholm. I miss everywhere. I miss everyone. It's hard to live-twitter this sort of stuff.