A Lot of my Friends are Musical Geniuses: Part 1

So am I , of course, but this has been well documented and spoken about, especially by my wife. Sometimes I'll write some bit of music that I'm sure totally sucks donkey taint and my wife will reassure me that, no, it's complete and utter musical genius and the lawn really needs a good mowing! And as I'm mowing the lawn I'm thinking, "my wife must be right...surely she wouldn't marry a talentless hack!" It's usually at this point that I inadvertently mow over a lump of dried dog doo and find myself in a thick haze of gray poop powder.

At any rate, I thought I would dedicate this post to a few of my musical genius friends:



Jon English - Jon is a one man musical dynamo, and much like a real dynamo he can produce electricity if he's wrapped in copper wire and spun around in a giant magnet. Not only does Jon write and perform some of the greatest music this side of the mason dixon line (wherever that is) he is also a fantastic recording engineer. What's really impressive about Jon's ability to produce very good quality recordings from his little home studio, is that the equipment and software in his home studio is all cheap or free. In some cases he literally just jams a guitar cable into a picture of a piece of equipment torn from a magazine. We were in a band together once called Plow Monday.



Litany for the Departed - This is my buddy Mike's band. They are what the kids call "heavy metal". They are angry all the time. Sure, if you talk to them individually you'll see that they are very nice people who would likely do anything to help a guy out, but when you get them together they tend to set things on fire and suddenly there are battle axes jutting from people's skulls. Mike and I were in a two man acoustic extravaganza for the senses...well, the hearing sense...called Always the Fall. We were angry too, but being acoustic, we were generally subdued about it. We wielded Nerf battle axes.



The Wartime Social - My old pal Ryan is the front man of this band. We were in a band together once called Plow Monday. Ryan is not only a really good guitar player and songwriter, but he is an astoundingly good singer. This does not go unnoticed by the females of our species who tend to clamor over him like flies on a Ugandan infant. Ryan's the third guy from the front in the photo...kind of an odd place for a FRONT man.