happy to report that the presale tickets went like crazy. twice as many as the remedy club tour. seriously, crazy! but sept is way too far away. killing me.

so, episode 3 of the rockumentary was posted. it's my favorite scene of someone getting their face owned. i'll include it here in case you haven't seen it yet. the next one is going to be my favorite though. it's title is going to be "twitter will kill you". awesome.



also, if you haven't heard, the new radio single, which is a cover of the fantastic song, "how he loves", is now available on itunes. this is the radio version, the album version is completely different. it's really tough to get the emotion of this song into a 4 minute radio format. it's just a dang good song though and we want every single person on the planet to hear it. right before we started recording the new album, "church music", i was on a plane flight listening to a friend of ours cd when this song started playing. about a minute into the thing i was weeping like a small child. it was slightly embarrassing, seeing as i was on a plane in the near proximity of other humans whom i didn't wish to frightened. but dang, this song! i don't know how i avoided hearing it for so long, but i knew there were more people out there like myself that hadn't heard it yet and i became determined to change that. it's one of those you just want to sing. here's the link:



and don't panic, if you are disappointed that the first song we release is a cover of a song that's been out for several years now, you'll be happy to know that "church music" has no less than 17 songs on it. 73 minutes of music. there is one other cover, a flyleaf song titled "all around", that we gave a piano/string/weird-ambient-noises treatment to, and the starting song is, "phos hiliron," (also known as "gladdening light" or "evening hymn") the earliest known christian hymn still in use, but the rest are brand new, never recorded before tunes. it is a massive amount of music. think of it as our stimulus package.

edit: i just went to itunes and the radio single is number one on the christian/gospel music chart, which is pretty cool. then i went to check the main itunes chart, you know, just to see, not expecting anything to pop up there, but what do you know, there it was at number 89 (i think) just above miley cyrus's song "hoedown throwdown". so i did what i had to do, i had no choice, i downloaded it – hoedown throwdown! yes! she's just being miley.

well, sort of. we have finished tracking. we have finished mixing. (one shane d. wilson at the console pushing the ones and zeros. he is a wizard!) and the songs will soon be on their way to new york city for mastering by one ted jensen. our job now is to nod along or humbly suggest changes to what we’re hearing. this is all really super, except when you get toward the end of the process there is something that becomes necessary that we, as a band, genuinely hate -– the photo shoot. it is excruciating. standing there, or sitting there, attempting to look normal, like this is what we do all the time -- hang out with our band mates in a semi circle so everyone can be seen, making very serious faces so that people later viewing the photos will think things like, “wow, these guys are really serious about sitting there in a semi circle, and it is very nice that they sit there so that all of them can be seen.”

on our first photo shoot the photographer literally said, “give me kitty cat, give me kitty cat,” while making a clawing motion out to the side of her camera. this didn’t make us feel comfortable while sitting in a semi circle. it was confusing. does “kitty cat” mean “cute or playful face”, or should we bat at the air like the photographer, as in – this a frolicsome action sequence! – or are we just supposed to smile because that is a stupid thing to say, “give me kitty cat,” and this is the intent, to make us smile by saying such a stupid thing. i smiled. i was immediately told not to smile. evidently, kitty cats don’t smile, they look very serious. the next photo shoot was with one of my favorite photographers, dan winters. he’s amazing. his stuff is in magazines a lot, and when i see one of his photos i think, wow, that is a really nice photo, and then i sort of panic and start to sweat because it reminds me of the photo shoot. he told me not to smile. he would take like 100 shots of me looking very serious and i would think, maybe i should smile now, you know to just have the option of me projecting a pleasant feeling, and i would smile and he would say, “don’t smile.” he was also pretty obsessed with my beard. he shot from the profile quite a bit. it made me anxious. he would say, "stare out the window," and i would stare out the window and think, “people will see me in this photograph and speculate, ‘hm, i wonder what he’s staring at.’” and i would smile because this was funny to me, because there wasn’t anything out the window, and mr. winters would then say, “don’t smile!”

last tuesday we had our photo shoot. and, believe it or not, we had a good time. the last three photo shoots we have done with kaysie dorsey -- wife of one gary dorsey, who, incidentally, has done the art work for our last three albums. both of the dorsey's are from my hometown of texarkana. they are wizards, the both of them. and speaking of suits.



i’m pretty serious about that cane. i kept hitting everyone with it, because i kept thinking of dumb and dumber.

also, we did some stuff in front of a green screen. mark took one of bwack when no one was looking.



now bwack is in space.



we posted the green screen picture on twitter and a few people bit. my opinion is that you diligent blog readers are also quite clever and the potential for me to deliver a special photo to bwack, courtesy of you, is great.



bwack homecoming.



bwack tooting his horn.



bwack and unicorn. magical.




bwack and coldplay. also magical.

so, i beseech thee, make something i can present to bwack that will bend his mind.

oh, and i should also mention that the cover for the new album is ridiculous! there is no possible way you will be able to look at it and not smile. i would say, “don’t smile,” and you would still smile, regardless of my admonition not to.


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last night i attended the gma awards. it was festive and i wore a suit jacket, mauvish in color. it is rare that i wear a suit jacket. i should do it more often as it made me feel grown up and productive. across the aisle from me sat one william baldwin and his wife chynna philips (you know, of wilson-philips, as in “hold on (for one more day)", as in “you’re in love”, which means, she obviously knows and has spoken to at least one of the daughters of one brian wilson, which is, obviously, awesome.). i gave him (one william baldwin) a subtle thumbs up, as if to say, “hey man, you’re william baldwin and that is awesome. also your wife is chynna philips and that’s pretty cool too, ‘cause, you know, she probably has spoken to one of the wilson sisters and that wilson sister's dad is brian wilson and all. it was the same thumbs up i gave to alec baldwin in the LA airport admirals club not a month ago. i wanted to tell both of them that their brother stephen called me one day 16 times in the span of 5 minutes. i didn’t though. instead, i gave them a thumbs up. i think it was enough.

the gma awards are pretty spectacular. there are people like william baldwin there and chynna philips. these people usually present awards, or receive awards, because they are particularly awesome, and i think it’s pretty neat. i mean, once i received an award from brazilian soccer player pele and another time i received an award from one, bible man. both moments are memorable, and this is why they do this -– have awesome people present awards or announce categories.

and so, i’m sitting there, on the front row, in a mauvish jacket, and this girl is standing there in front of me and she is about to make an announcement regarding the next category that an award will be given for particular awesomeness and i have the vague assumption that she is awesome because she is announcing this particular category and all, but i’m not paying particularly close attention. you see, i’ve been staring at my phone for most of the awards ceremony because we have web-cams in our studio and i am not there, since, obviously, i am many miles away at the aforementioned awards ceremony, and i'm watching some good friends of ours playing and singing in our studio and i am terribly distraught that i am not there while they are playing and singing because this is infinitely more awesome (these individuals whom i admire, playing and singing on our recording) than the awesome announcer standing before me announcing the next category of awards. apparently i should have been paying more attention to what was happening in my immediate, physical, surroundings as opposed to being attentive to the goings on of the world wide web.

i vaguely recall hearing the words, “miss america” (seriously, that’s what i thought i heard. it turns out the words were actually “miss usa” and also there was a “1st runner-up” preceding them.) and then there was applause. this was to be expected. typically when people who are awesome are announced there is applause. and so i clapped. the applause continued. i was slightly confused because it passed the duration of typical applause-for-awesomeness length and then it began to swell in volume and so i started looking around. people were beginning to stand up while applauding. i was confused. it’s always difficult to know when it is appropriate to stand while clapping on the front row. if you stand too early you seem over eager. if you stand too late you seem aloof and callused to the moment. so i paid attention. to stand or not stand while clapping for miss america? also, there is the complication that she is exactly one foot in front of me. i decide to watch my good friend, william baldwin. he is standing. i should stand. and so i stand. it then becomes abundantly clear that i am standing exactly one foot from miss america and i have extended my hands to clap. my hands are located right in front of her face which makes them exactly two inches from her nose. she is turning around toward the audience and she is pageant waving, no lie, she is pageant waving. this is awesome. the thought crosses my mind, "wow, she has a great pageant wave!" and then i realize i am clapping my hands, exuberantly, two inches in front of her nose. she sort of ducks back. i, also, sort of duck back and immediately decide to sit back down since i have almost clapped miss america’s nose off and the thought occurs to me that she is probably pretty hacked off about me almost ruining her face and such. and so i sit. and this is when my wife grabs my arm and says, “do you even know why everyone is clapping?” to which i respond, “yeah, it’s miss america and that’s pretty awesome.” to which my wife covers her eyes and states, “this will totally be on cnn tomorrow.” and she was right!

that was last night. this evening, we were sitting in tgi fridays in the dfw airport when i received a text message from a friend informing me that “i” was on the front page of tmz.com. one hour later i received another text message from a different friend informing me that they thought they just saw me on cnn. they had. awkwardly clapping. that was me.

and so it is, with no foresight or thoughtfulness, i have become a politically polarizing artist.



i still feel pretty good about my baldwin thumbs up though. i think we had a moment.