I don’t know which is worse – catching movement out of the corner of my eye and trying to identify the 3″ creepy crawly creature skittering toward my bedroom door, or realizing 10 minutes after returning the rogue crab to his aquarium that I wasn’t remotely frightened or surprised by the event.
I haven’t been blogging lately, and I haven’t been feeling great this week, but so much has been going on! For starters, my next college tour is next week, so I’ll be heading back to Wisconsin to hit up schools like UW Stevens Point and Ripon, plus a Christmas show at Wisconsin Lutheran and a bunch of others. It’ll be nice to get back on the road – now that it’s freezing outside, I spend most of my time in the apartment and I’m going a little stir crazy!
This Friday is also my show opening up for Sara Bareilles at Harding University in Searcy, AR. When the show was booked, I knew how much she rocked and couldn’t wait; since then, she’s all over the radio and I even saw her CD on a poster display at Barnes & Noble right between Tony Bennett and Celine Dion! Her music really isn’t much like either of them, but hell, I doubt she’s complaining. 
I’ve been keeping up with my Guitar Hero, now that GH3 is out. I’ve beat all the songs on Medium, gone back and gotten every score over 100,000 and 5 stars on all of them, plus at least one perfect score in each section. I’ve also started to develop a bit of a wrist issue, so I’ve cut back. 
Actually, the real reason I’ve cut back is frustration – I’ve only got 3 songs left before I beat everything on Hard, and I just can’t get through them! I can do all the crazy riffs, the solos, the hammer-ons and pull-offs, you name it. But the one thing I just can’t seem to do is play speed metal. *sigh* I guess I’m never going to open for Slayer…
The big news, though, is that this Saturday, I’ll be flying to Austin to perform for the FameCast Finals!! A few months ago it was just this thing I was entering, you know, just to see what happened; today I’m looking at a serious possibility of winning $10,000, and I get to play in front of a panel of industry experts who will be critiquing me afterward!
Call me crazy, but that last part is really exciting for me. I may not dig American Idol, but I’ve always admired Simon when he really digs in and gives some honest feedback. Especially when the person onstage really needs to hear it. One of these guys, Gary Graff, has reviewed music in Rolling Stone, Billboard, The New York Times and a ton of other impressive publications, and his early critique of my song “Let Him Be” (you can read it here) was really positive. I’m looking forward to kickin’ ass and takin’ names.
So that’s where things stand right now. I’m about to go make myself some apple cider, turn on Lost in Translation, and endure the monotony of editing down my mailing list so that when FameCast voting resumes next week, I can let everyone know. That, and I should probably go count the crabs…if one guy got out, who knows how many were right ahead of him…
