Tomor­row is what feels like, and just might be, my fifth day on four hours of sleep. My brain is total­ly exhaust­ed, but is still churn­ing along with lists of things to do and choic­es to be made. I am com­plete­ly gid­dy and every five min­utes I gig­gle under my breath.

What the heck is going on, you ask, and the answer is I am pro­duc­ing a record for my friend Dave Olson, a sweet and gift­ed song­writer from Iowa City now liv­ing here in Min­neapo­lis. We’ve rent­ed a ren­o­vat­ed barn in Buf­fa­lo, MN, assem­bled gear and an amaz­ing crew, and have been liv­ing here for the last few days cram­ming as much music as we can fit into a hard dri­ve before the mon­ey and time dries up.

The longer sto­ries will prob­a­bly be typed here lat­er, when I have the lux­u­ry of time and sleep­ing in. For now, the short sto­ry is it’s been pret­ty incred­i­ble. The musi­cians (so far) — Dave, Ben Ram­sey, Chris Bates, Cody McK­in­ney, Ryan Young, Erik Kosk­i­nen — are play­ing real­ly well and are mak­ing these pret­ty songs of Dave’s come alive. Our engi­neer, Adam Krin­sky, is a fuck­ing super­star and if our ses­sion was the Tin Man, Adam would be Dorothy with a can of oil.

I’m sor­ry, but those are the metaphors you get out of me at three in the morning.

Any­way — the only time I’ve had to grab any pho­tos was tonight after every­one had either left or gone to bed, and this is what it looks like when that happens.