Today I was playing bass, a Fender Coronado, a lovely green one that belongs to Salim, flat wound strings, three songs, two with fingers, one with a pick. Then some backing vocals from me and then some backing vocals from Olivia. We are working with drummer, singer, guitarist, bass player, engineer, acrobat, ornithologist, and astronaut on this project and just to let you know who he is if you are familiar with The Apples in Stereo and The Deathray Davies that’s just two of his super hip bands. He also plays drums and bass in Salim Nourallah’s band and I join him on Salim’s latest album A Nuclear Winter, released later this month. There’s a nice review of the album in the Big Takeover right now. John and I will be playing with Salim on a triple bill with The Deathray Davies and Buttercup in San Antonio, Austin, and Dallas between 21st-23rd June. Lots of band hopping with John, Joe Reyes, Rich Martin, Jason Garner, and Olivia.

The last two evenings have been continued work with sessioneer Brian’s Valley of Salt project with Kevin our other engineer recording the remaining violins, and editing horns, sax, and trumpet but that’s the last of the work on Brian’s record until January as tomorrow we start on sessioneer Brooklyn Rajan’s record. Rajan is a published author apart from being a singer-songwriter, having three science fiction novels and lots of short stories in different magazines. Check him out. Kevin and John have brought in all kinds of pedals and guitars and amps to work on this five-day project, exciting.

We finished about 11 PM with the sound of screaming creatures in the garden. Was it cats? Was it banshees? Whatever it was, it was blood-curdling! It was in contrast to earlier in the day when a squirrel was watching Olivia and me from a tree, it turned around, ran up the trunk, and spread itself over a branch for what looked like a rest and a cooling on another hot day in Texas. I keep on seeing a black butterfly bobbing around in the daytime, but I haven’t actually seen it settle to confirm its colours. When you think of butterflies you think bright colours, this one is dark, I can’t actually imagine that it is actually black, do they have goth butterflies in Texas?

Paul, our resident ‘I can play anything’ friend, dropped by today to pick up one of his guitars he needed for A Good Morning Texas appearance Friday. He’ll be coming straight from there to play bass with John on drums and me on guitar for the Rajan project, Kevin will be engineering, looking forward to it.

Music today has been the third Chameleons album, Strange Times (1986). Mark and the lads are on tour in Europe at the moment, selling out shows, go and buy a ticket to see them while you still can.

Music Of The Daze