Linger, Home Repairs, GO RIDERS!! and Why MIDI is hard.

Well Linger had another good show last night at the Exchange. I thought we did well, and we put in 3 extra songs at the last minute out of nowhere. I think we did well on all points. A really new experience for me and ironically first tried onstage during soundcheck was to use Victors Mac to play a string arrangement in GarageBand using the computers keyboard.

Spent the entire 3 day weekend working on the house and doing laundry. Things are slow to progress around here, there's alot to be done and alot more comes everyday. But we got nearly all the fallen tree cleaned up today, just a couple more hours - maybe 3 to get the yard back to some semblance of normalcy. Eavestroughs went up really easily, but as was shown during the rain delay of the football game, they don't hold water! But that will be an easy fix. It was a good test, albeit a failed one. Bought 3 big barrels off of Used Regina for a great price to make into rain barrels. I'll have enough water to irrigate the Sahara.

5-0. I lived to see it. I said it before the season started. Let's have faith in Eric Tillman. He knows how to build a team. Even on a continuing rotation of quarterbacks and injuries that would make even the greats' knees buckle, the Riders set a record for season starting tonight. As in, it hasn't been done since they've been playing modern football. Keep up the good work boys... Calgary is going to be a major challenge on Saturday, and Henry is still mad at us.

Been spending what down time I have with my nose in my computer trying to get everything set up to use MY laptop on stage and in performance with my bass playing. I'm looking to hook in my footswitch pedal to my computer. I'll then use it to control sample software and digital synthesizers, while also using my computer keyboard to play more targeted lines. I hope to use this to add a super-low-end layer to Linger's stuff. It will need to be really rappy and deep to cut through the already pretty full Linger sound, but I think it could be cool. I already have plans for foot-controlled lines in Root of Truth, This Narrow Path and of course Melody for the Hanging. I've got some sample ideas for Brian and the Bomb and Swaying Image and steal sample cuing from Dave for Narrow Path and Precious.

This does create some difficulties. I'm considering picking up a professional package like Reason, Cubase or Cakewalk. I've been trying to make it happen with Open Source stuff and while it's highly, highly customizable, it's hard to install, hard to connect devices and Windows Vista is un-forgiving when it comes to some software installations and permissions. If anyone out there has had some good easy MIDI software that might meet my needs, let me know, I'd be anxious to hear it.

Well all, that's that for today I guess. Kinda want to do a funny post like I used to do back in year 1 and 2 of the blog. Life is too short to be so serious.

Friday is a good day to work

Got one of my wonderful new benefits of a full time position at SGI, a Day of Rest. Every second Friday. Booh - Yah!

Spent most of the day cutting up wood and branches from the windfall this week. Also tore down my ruined eaves-trough, did some laundry and swept up the yard.

Had a few folks by this evening for a little grillin'. Had burgers, hot dogs, bad potatos, good mushrooms, great asparagus and lots of good salads and sides. Needless to say, no one went home hungry and we had some good times. A couple inpromptu jams with the likes of Johnny Rockstar on Guitar and Vocals, Duck Slick on guitar, Ronda on drum, Andrew Pilon on Guitar, Scotty T on Acoustic bass and yours truly on baby holding and playing harmonica with the other hand. Had a distinct western feel tonight, I place the ownice on it being Scotts dad's bass.

So now we're just relaxing, continuing our "Bourne Movie" film festival this weekend, can't wait until the next one.

Ok then. Here it is.

Sorry it took so long.

So we did get home the next day. Baby has been a joy for the most part I suppose. She cries, she poops, she sleeps. Occasionally she looks up at you with big blue eyes and laughs. That's why I did it.

She's been feeding well and is overall a healthy happy baby.

Mom is well, now looking to heal the hardships of childbearing and return to living it up like a rockstar.

Went to Ness Creek this weekend. Among the kickass things that happened to me.
1 - Laughing So Damn much.
2 - Five Alarm Funk
3 - Strange wood pixies.
4 - Baby connecting time.

Needless to say, I will be returning to this festival as long as I have energy to walk. And I have a list of people who I need to bring with me.

Had a big storm here tonight and we lost half of our big tree out front. I'm pretty upset about this, not because of the work involved and the potential cost, but because I REALLY LIKED THAT TREE. The first place I took Kayah outside to was under that tree and now it's sitting in two piles on my lawn. We also had half our eavestrough come down and maybe some damage to an old crooked pine in the back, but they're pretty minor jobs I think/hope.

Mom and Dad moved out of town. Kinda weird, they were this sort of anchor in a familliar place. Michelle is still in town, but hey for how long. Just odd. Weyburn has been my home for more of my life than anyplace, sad to lose touch.

Tai is well, attitude of Paris Hilton and coherence of salad dressing, but she's a good kid at heart and really helps out with the baby around.

Dogs=kickass

Bought myself a laptop at long last. Been walking around with a boner for two weeks because of it. No, it's not a Mac, I have mouths to feed.

Got permanent-full time at SGI. Things are interesting there ... what can I say - it pays well.

Label is growing slowly as I need it to. Have to make some tough decisions this week, but that's business and if I can't do it now, it isn't going to get any easier.

Well, I think that's all. Last month was the first I didn't post on since the start of the blog. I'll try to keep that from happening again folks!

Kayah Lily Pilon

Well all, Rhonda had our little baby girl this afternoon. She weighed 6lbs 4oz. I'll put up more info and some pictures in the coming days, but dad is understandably exhausted and needs a bath and coma.

Mom and baby are in perfect health, and I think will be home as soon as tomorrow.

Isn't Americana Fun?

Shasta Pop

Let's do the Commuter Challenge Why Not?

Check it out here. I think Regina will do well.

Maent Records - Invasion

Maent Records

LINGER CD RELEASE TONIGHT

Hey everyone, TONIGHT, May 2nd at the U of R, my band Linger will be throwing their CD Release party. Three bands, Johnny Rockstar, The League of One and Linger will rock the mother-fucking house down in what promises to be one of the finest evenings of rock experienced in the city of Regina in over 30 years.

Show starts at 8, doors will be open at 7:30. If you want to get some pre-sale tickets, e-mail me at maentrecords att gmail.com. They;re $5... but I won't be anywhere near a computer after 11:00AM Friday... sorry for the late notice. Just want it to be fresh.

LINGER CD RELEASE TONIGHT! BE THERE!

Record Store Day

Roll out a barrel...

Roll out a barrel of bombs!

Political Polka
The future of music.

Earth Hour a Success Here

We had the lights out for about 75 minutes for Earth Hour. While Tai didn't seem to quite get the idea that lights were not at all allowed, we did have a good time playing cards by candlelight and drinking lemonade.

I think we should do it once a month!

Self Sufficiency

Or - "Why it pays not to get your hopes up"

Busy busy busy... as usual. I've been waiting all week to sit down a write a blog post on religion and spirituality. Maybe I'll get to it tommorrow, it will be Sunday afterall.

Parents came up this weekend to help Andrew move up to Regina. So welcome to the RGC Roo. I see you blogged again, maybe I need to re-add you to my blog-roll.

Mom and Dad made it sound like they might come up and give us a little hand around the house, then not, so I just ended up doing work myself. "Why it pays not to get your hopes up".

Linger got together today (minus Duck). CD RELEASE IS BOOKED AND SET FOR MAY 2ND!!! We're playing the Multipurpose room at the U of R. So be there or be square! We're doing a big set-list and it might be the last show that Duck can play with us due to some other responsibilities, so come check it out. It could be the last time Linger performs as Linger.

Had a family crisis TWICE yesterday, starting with Bootsy going AWOL, and ending with Rhonda in the hospital again with contractions/cramps. All ended up ok, Bootsy is back home and Rhonda/Baby are fine so no worries.

But on that subject, I'm off to do... whatever.

Wow two blog posts in one day...

... that hasn't happened since I bet aught-six (dag nabit).

Tonight's topic : Women (dag nabit)

Fuck you

Ok you ladies think you got it so hard? You got it EASY ladies. I mean PURSES? How can you NOT be leaders of the world? If men weren't socially shunned for carrying purses we would have conquered Mars by now.

Oh sure metrosexuals have them. Ever see a metrosexual with a bad job? Exactly.

In this day and age of cellphones and iPods and large plastic car keys and wallets and digital cameras and GPS's and perscription eyewear and lighters and bill sizes as coins and.... so on... one is struggling to survive under this weight straining pockets made smaller and smaller by tightwad box stores who prey on your class because they know your style and your budget. Even with the introduction of the Cargo pant, typically the least used items end up in your knee level pocket and those are usually heavy things like digital cameras and that's a pain in the ass itself. Winter offers some solstace, large winter parkas offer endless pockets inside and out to hide treasures in. But here comes summer. Here comes my backpack.

Yeah you don't win them all ladies. I know. I know. But look I tell you what, I'll give you some advice (and compliment you too). You ladies should be running this world. You really should. You're organized enough, you're kind enough and you're just enough to make this world work right. People would not suffer as they do, and we would stop hurting and killing each other and our planet. I'm sure. So waddya say ladies? Ready to take the leap?

Friends, Romans, Countrymen ... Lend me your beer...

... and I'll return it. As urine.

Today's blog brought to you by : PROCRASTINATION! Try it today! Or tommorrow... or whatever.

I'm supposed to be working on the Maent Records entry in the second round of the Progress 2 Capital competition sponsored by the Regina Regional Economic Development Association. It's not like its a terribly hard job, but it IS hard and I DON'T like doing it. We have a potential artist signing that I should be concentrating on, but I gotta get this thing going because the grand prize is like 10G's in cash. CHA CHING!

Anyhoo... I guess that's enough of that. If I don't get to work now, I won't get it done in time, then I'll be up shit creek with my partners... and one of them controls how much poonanny I get or don't get.... so high ho- high ho- it's off to work I go.

Well the morning was nice...

...weather wise that is.

Updated the ol' blogroll on the right there. If I'm missing anyone who wants to be listed, let me know. Had lots of links to dead blogs. Or at least on life support.

Getting a little nervous about this meeting tonight. I've never met Ariel face to face, so I'm hoping she's open to us. I've studied up though, and made my gameplan. Now just to prep Rhonda and Scott and then knock e'm dead! If you're in Regina on Friday night go check her out at the Club (Exchange) or in Weyburn on Saturday night at Pump Jacks. She's got her CD release at the Club on April 26th, please make an effort to check her out that night as she's shooting for a sell-out as a good piece of promotion. http://www.myspace.com/arielmura


Should hopefully be able to announce the Linger CD release party this week. We're planning it for the Multipurpose Room at the U of R, the caveat right now is that it might need to be on a weeknight. As long as it happens before the baby, I'm a-ok. Ideally, we should probably just wait until summer but we've been promising this thing for basically a year, so no further delay should be allowed. I'm hoping to have time to get the webpage together. It's kinda hard to motivate, the page will have basically what the MySpace page has, with just more organized graphics - the content will be nearly identical.

Newest Addiction - Wikimapia

Oh Blah Di Oh Blah Da Life Goes On... oh!

Did the turkey thing last night at the mother-in-laws. Did something else there last night, but that's Rhonda's news to share, so I'll let y'all check it out on her blog (she hasn't got anything there yet, but I can assure you she will... and yes, she is going mad, but she looks good doing it).

Met with a representative for an artist we're trying to get on the label. I'm very excited, we're booked to meet with her on Monday, and I hope we can all come to an agreement together on what we should do. She's got a great voice, pretty and a hard worker. I think we have a winner, now I hope she thinks she has a winner in us.

Tai mysteriously found a bunch of candy kicking around the house this morning. Very weird how it just shows up like that. If anyone else has heard of such a thinig, let me know, I'm wondering if I should call the police.

Blogging?

You know what I kinda miss? Blogging. I mean it got to be a pain in the ass there because I found myself so restricted in what I could say or show or do. And I suppose I still do, its why I rarely post anymore. I over examine everything that I want to say and if I think that I can't perfectly defend it or that it'll receive too much backlash, I just don't worry about it.

But there are a lot of great things happening around here that I want everyone to know about. Things I want to share because they're MY news. Rhonda and I are having a baby... a baby. We even know it's gender and I want to scream it from the rooftops, but MOM doesn't want to know so SO ONE can know. Frankly, bullshit. We're having a beautiful little girl. And I cannot flipping WAIT to see her. I've been to ultrasounds in the past.. cool but no real connection. Felt it kick a bunch and watched my wife balloon. Nothin. But damn it finding out it's a little girl... NOW THAT'S MY BABY! The passing of the Midwifery Act unfortunately means our home birth has turned to a hospital birth.

The pregnancy has been hard. Rhonda is very sick and really hurt and beyond taking on as much of the housecare as I can handle, there's little I can do about it. Things get tense sometimes, we've gone through a lot of change over the past year, and I think we're still learning how to BE with each other. I know it's worth it and I know it'll be all right, but you know, just hard sometimes.

Also made a poorly timed decision to start a record label. I know, I know, why in the hell would you want to follow up getting married, buying a house, getting pregnant, oh yeah and taking on a kickass stepchild with starting your own COMPANY? In the MUSIC INDUSTRY no less?!?! Because I'm a sucker for punishment. And frankly, its an attainable dream too. I've spent the past 6 years working shitty jobs and having a generally bad time of things trying to figure out what I should make my lifes work. I knew a family was in there, but there was something else there, something entrepreneurial, creative, media related and I always wanted to involve music and the internet. One of the benefits of the kind of work I do in Facilites Management (fancy eh? that's skilled janitor to the rest of y'all) is you have a lot of head time. You can just put on some music and just THINK about stuff. Try it sometime. Through this process I arrived at record label about two years ago while working at the pool. And I kept thinking, formulating, thinking, formulating and just researching this and that and getting it together. Around Christmas time this year it started getting big again, and I started putting things on paper. That was the catalyst. Rhonda, Scott and I incorporated last week, we've got our first major project in preliminary stages and we've begun building a shockingly large and widespread network from places as far as Bristol England (hi Mark), Las Angeles USA, Cleveland OH, Montreal PQ and all over Saskatchewan, not bad! Check it all out so far at maentrecords.ca or swing your cell phone to maentrecords.mobi.

Bought a car... a Honda Fit. It rules. Speedy little blue demon with like 546 Miles to the gallon. Hatchback is cool and this little compact will fit all of Lingers guitars and three amps. And still have room for driver and one passenger.

The dogs are kickin ass as per usual. Bootsy is more neurotic than ever, but she's kind and loving. Shadow like to think he's a prick, but he's a pansy.

Tai is doing pretty damn good in school for a girl that missed half of a semester of French emersion. She has trouble following the rules at school and still needs to be walked through the steps of getting up and going to school by her mom and stepdad everyday, but at least she's cheery about it. We built a family of snowmen together, complete with baby and dreadlocked mom. I've amassed a collection of over 45 paintings from the Tai-Lin collection. They'll buy me a yacht someday... or decorate my office forever.

With baby coming and Rhonda soon off work, we're coming up on some tight times financially. We may have to change how we do things and that transition is becoming hard already, but I know we can make it through this spell, some of our dreams... our vacations and our record labels... might have to go on hold for a couple years. Too bad, so sad.... no one said life would be easy.

Work sucks, but that's ok, it pays me well, and I'm starting to get used to having the extra cash around. I'm actually starting to see surpluses from cheque to cheque, which is reassuring with the coming of the baby. I have a feeling that if I could spend some time concentrating on getting our finances lined up (and a financial advisor that was more interested in our well being than leading us on and fucking us over so he can buy a new car) that we might be able to get through this nicely. I'm starting to see why we had so little sometimes when I was a kid. I cannot imagine affording 4 kids in todays economy, let alone 4... or the 7 kids of my grandparents. But they made it through, I just have to follow their lead. Right?

And finally, the house. While initial response to owning a house is "Oh shit, we fucked up," after the knee jerk reaction, I'm starting to see its benefits and really enjoy living here. Our mortgage payment is a little less than we were paying in the house before and since rent rates have spiked in Regina of late, its not unreasonable to think that rate would have gone up, so we're in a pretty secure payment place right now. That's reassuring. And I'm starting to get used to the fact that I OWN the house so I can DO anything to it I want. Like if I wanted to paint racing striped on it, I could, and the only thing that would happen is my wife would institutionalize me, which would happen if I lived anywhere. I am nervous about something going wrong. I mean we are insured so like all that stuff is cool, but if we blow a water heater or the furnace... well I have savings now, but everyone seems to have bookmarked it... including me, and that could lead to a bad situation (I don't think my parents are in the lending business to me anymore). I am hoping to plan a big work-bee/cleaning-bee and try to enlist some help for a weekend, have a big garage sale, then just lie low for a while... no major renos, no changes, juat ride out the next couple years. Batten down the hatches and ride out the storm. It is gonna be a pain in the arse, and I think I'm gonna piss off some friends, a few family, but in 2010 while Canada is trying to explain why our emissions are like 700% of what we said they would be, I should be ready to look at the rest of the picture.

Here's hoping. Maybe I should start blogging again......

I'm a Drunkard!

91%DRUNKARD

Man how would I ever find out these things without the internet?

Home Birth

This should alleviate the concerns many people I know have had about Rhonda and I having a home birth...