One of the most amaz­ing things about spring in Min­neapo­lis is how quick­ly it sets in. One sec­ond, you’re try­ing to fig­ure out where you’re going to put this new foot of snow on your side­walk; turn your head and—blam­mo—there’s grass and leaves and cou­ples walk­ing their dogs and flow­ers and pollen.

Of course, I’d prob­a­bly enjoy the mir­a­cle of spring a lit­tle more if I was actu­al­ly in Min­neapo­lis. These days I’m spend­ing most of my time with the Alter­nate Routes, which is to say I’m spend­ing a lot of time on the road. Weath­er notwith­stand­ing, I’m hav­ing a great time play­ing with these guys, and hope­ful­ly there will be new music com­ing your way soon.

Back home, I’ve been slow­ly (but sure­ly!) putting the fin­ish­ing touch­es on Dave Olson’s record. We start­ed the record just over a year ago, and as much as I’d like to say we’ve been slav­ing over it every day since then, the truth is we’ve both been out of town more often than not. Regard­less, I’m proud of the record so far and some things, as they say, take time.

Speak­ing of stu­dio-type endeav­ors, I’ve also been putting some fin­ish­ing touch­es on my lit­tle project stu­dio. There are a few nice mics here, and among oth­er things on the way are a pair of Avedis MA5s I’m excit­ed to work with again. When it’s all said and done I’ll be able to pro­fes­sion­al­ly track drums à la casa, as well as pack things up eas­i­ly for mobile over­dubs. I might need a stu­dio name, you know, for that extra-pro­fes­sion­al touch. Any suggestions?

In drum-geek­ery news, I’ve been real­ly into these Istan­bul Agop cym­bals late­ly, and just got a new 19” Mel Lewis that I’m going to total­ly lay into inap­pro­pri­ate­ly on every song at a ses­sion tonight with Mol­ly Maher. The word on the street is there’s some sort of record com­ing out in the sum­mer. Stay tuned.