November at Home.

The summer is behind us, and thus the Young Dubliners are finished with touring for another year. We occasionally have a leg or two in the fall (remember the Irish tours?) and early winter (a fun time to play gigs in Alaska!). But, this year the Dubs are taking it easy for the holidays, playing just a handful shows for the remainder of '08.

Having lost all of my gear in our trailer theft in August, I've slowly been replacing what I had with a slightly new direction. For starters, for several years I played a stock Vox AC30 both on stage and on recordings; I also used a Framus Ruby Riot combo. After some experiments on rented gear, I replaced the lost Vox with a Marshall half-stack - a bit edgier than I have sounded, and probably louder too! I'll have to be careful not to blow the hair back from the folks' faces in the front rows!!

Through a small miracle, I recovered my two Framus electrics. Turns out a gentleman in the Phoenix area purchased them at a swap meet shortly after the heist, as well as a few other accessories of ours, and was unwittingly auctioning them on eBay!! When we spotted them, we contacted said gentleman to ask where he'd found them. He still had me guitars, and graciously returned them immediately. A shout out to Richard in AZ - you're on the guest list for life my man!!

Since settling back into life in Los Angeles, I've been fortunate to hit the studios on a number of projects. All have been tracking guitar for independent artists, on a range of music swinging from adult alternative to pop to plain alternative to plain wacky. One outing was a return to working with singer/songwriter Jeff Aeling, whom I worked with on a project last December. We spent a fantastic week tracking basics and overdubs at Sage and Sound Studio B in Hollywood... Other locations I saw included Echo Park Recording, tracking guitars for the Young Dubliners, Tim Boland and Ken Sluiter producing; Bright Orange Studios, for Brian Cram, with Jon Mattox producing; and Chun King Studio for Craig Bowden, with Shawn Nourse producing.

I am currently playing a fly date with the Young Dubs, performing 2 nights at the Sarasota Irish Festival in Florida. We're threatening to start playing some tunes from our new CD, due out in February.

Cheers until the next time!

A brief catch up!

Well hello. Long time no blog! Hope everyone's having a fantastic election season.

I'm finally back home after a long and awesome bunch of tours with the Young Dubliners. We're replacing all of our gear slowly and surely. In no time the show will be back to normal, replete with lazer lights and go-go dancers (ok, just amps and stuff. But someday..._

Times are exciting because the band has just completed our new album! Still untitled, it's slated to drop in February - just in time for the March Madness tour and St. Paddy's Day. My ears are still ringing from the final mixdown session we had today! The songs and sounds are possibly the most ambitious and inspired records this band has produced to date. Maybe writing and recording 4 albums with the same lineup has something to do with it...

But, no rest yet! Tomorrow, I'm beginning preproduction for another project. Jeff Aeling, whom I had the pleasure of sessioning for last year, has a new batch of songs which he is recording in Hollywood, back at Sage And Sound studios. The demos sound great, and I'm looking forward to writing some eclectic and rockin guitar tracks with Jeff again!

Have a great Thanksgiving, or whatever you celebrate in your part of the world.