"Send me again into the sky..."

First, my apologies to all of those who’ve asked me what been happening with the blog, and thanks for the encouragement to keep it going. Life has just been getting in the way as of late, and I mean that in a good way. But I’m still here, and thing are definitely looking up.

Second, I’d like to address what may be on some folks’ minds, including mind: what’s happening with The Princes of Hollywood? Some of you saw us this weekend, for what turned out to be a sort of reunion show, though we’d expected only to be in Athens, Ohio for the support of the Passionworks Project CD release show. As most of you have noticed, we’ve been laying low for most of the last four months, after our tour ended in Rochester, New York on December 18th. First of all, we had a fantastic but tumultuous year in 2007. We toured more extensively and successfully than ever before, but we also found ourselves exhausted, still in debt from our last record, and unsure of our next move. Scotty “The Mullet” Houchens amicably left the band for pursuits academic, and Harlan and I decided it was time to get the hell out of dodge, so to speak, and leave our hometown of Athens, Ohio for the big lights and warmer climes of Nashville, TN. The move took a lot out of us, both financially and emotionally, and we’re only now getting back on our feet. We also got pretty used to performing as a three-piece, and singing in three-part harmony, and we felt very little excitement about re-working our songs for duo performances. Meanwhile, the state of the economy and the price of gasoline have made it the prospect of making money on tour excruciatingly suspect. A career in music (or the arts, for that matter) is not for the faint of heart or the soft of stomach.

So we’ve been laying low, remembering how to have rewarding daily life, and not thinking too much about the future. And it seems now that we find our selves in a better place than ever, and excited again about the prospect of making music that we love.

I can’t say that things will be quite like they were in the past. I’ve begun work on a number of new projects that should keep me busy performing, writing, and producing music with other folks. Our cavalier attitudes toward driving through snowdrifts in Duluth, MN in the February have mellowed a bit, and extensive touring without the support of a label or sponsor seems unlikely, but you never know. However, we are writing new songs that are some of our best yet, and we are becoming a part of a very vibrant and healthy creative community here in Nashville, so who knows what might come of that. More to the point, we’re spending some time getting back to what it is we loved in the first place and seeing where that takes us, and I promise that is a good thing.

In other exciting news, I’ve begun working on some co-writing with other writers here in Nashville, and the results have been excellent. I wrote a song a few weeks ago with Chad Harris, with whom I currently performing, that has been coming together nicely the more that we play it. It’s a big, catch alternative pop-rock song, unlike most of the stuff I write, though it has a few of my touches—a minor/major 6 chord here, a earthy metaphor there—and I’m excited about it. I’m also working on a song with Chris Meyers, of The Bittersweets fame, a fantastic band originally from San Francisco who now live in Nashville. They have a new record coming out in August on Compass Records, and it is excellent. We’ve started work on a song that is very country-noir, tentatively based on the story of a Iraq war veteran whose post-traumatic stress disorder drove him to drown his wife in the bathtub, call the authorities, and then go bowling. What we’ve come up with is a creepy yet somehow sweet tale of husband and dead-wife talking and dancing in the shadows of a sad and beautiful world.

In the next few months I’ll be doing plenty more writing, and I’ll also be performing with Chad Harris, The Princes of Hollywood, The Queen City Zapatistas, and possibly Southpaw and the Sinnisters. More to come on all of that soon!