I’m in Nashville for a few days, doing a lit­tle hang­ing and play­ing and record­ing and such, and I man­aged to squeeze in a quick jazz jam with one of my favorite piano play­ers (Lil­lie Claire Mor­gan, age 4).

I read this great review of No Octo­ber the oth­er day…lots of nice things being said about the record and the pro­duc­tion, but my favorite part had to be this:

Record­ed in a barn (seri­ous­ly) in Buf­fa­lo, Minn., with a ton of won­der­ful musi­cal friends assist­ing … The most impres­sive part of the deal is that Olson is nev­er buried by his friends. They sim­ply help to bring to life this inspired batch of songs.

… No Octo­ber is roots music at its best, as Olson com­bines an under­cur­rent of blues through­out the project and lay­ers coun­try and folk over that in an amal­gam that is wire-weld­ed airtight.

That empha­sis is mine. When Dave and I were round­ing up musi­cians for the project, the word ​“empa­thet­ic” came up more than once. It seems like kind of a pre­ten­tious word, but it tru­ly fits the tal­ents of every­one on this record — that is, almost every­thing they play makes oth­er peo­ple sound good.

As usu­al, it’s been ages since my last ​“news‑y” type of update, so here’s the scoop from the land of Prince and Honey(dogs).

Ses­sions: lots of them sprin­kled around, includ­ing a fun cou­ple of days at the Pearl with Jason Shan­non; two days in Duluth with Caitlin Robert­son at the beau­ti­ful Sacred Heart Music Cen­ter, which is a church with a record­ing stu­dio inside; and a fun, fast day at Brent Sigmeth’s stu­dio in Can­non Falls with Brent’s two awe­some dogs and the Minor Plan­ets.

Gigs: after being gone for most of last sum­mer with the Alter­nate Routes it’s been a nice change of pace to stick close to home. One of the high­lights of the last month or so has been being intro­duced to Wits, which I guess is sort of the younger, hip­ster ver­sion of Prairie Home Com­pan­ion. I’ve got­ten to play a few shows there as a guest drum­mer, back­ing Aimee Mann (!) and Ted Leo. The show is a lot of fun to watch and the house band — John Mun­son, Steve Roehm, Janey Win­ter­bauer, and Joe Sav­age — is crazy awe­some, so hope­ful­ly there’ll be a lit­tle more of that.

This is prob­a­bly also a good time to men­tion my friend Dave Olson…his new album No Octo­ber was released last month and has been get­ting great reviews. I can’t say enough good things about the cast and crew on this record, and there were some pret­ty incred­i­ble moments work­ing on it. I had fair­ly good inten­tions of writ­ing a lot more about it, but I think it’s just best if you check out his web­site and lis­ten for your­self.

Adam Yauch, man.

The first album I ever bought was License to Ill, on cas­sette, at a Wal-Mart in Abbeville, Louisiana. I was in the fourth grade. My mom asked if there were any dirty words on it and I said I didn’t think so. I played it on the liv­ing room stereo that night while we ate din­ner. My mom said it was ugly music. I was hooked.

I brought a boom­box to school the next day and played this record for the next five years.

I always want­ed to be MCA. He was the coolest, the most assured. MCA was the one who got me inter­est­ed in music; he intro­duced me to the bass gui­tar and to hip-hop and to New York. I always day­dreamed I would move to New York and run into him, buy him a cup of cof­fee and casu­al­ly ask him how cool it must have been to recre­ate Pink Floyd’s ​“Live at Pom­peii” for their Grat­i­tude video.

Adam Yauch and the Beast­ie Boys have been with me my entire life. They were hip hop when I was intro­duced to hip-hop; punk when I was intro­duced to punk. Los­ing MCA hurts.

The first gig I played after mov­ing to Min­neapo­lis was with a band called 40 Watt Bulb, which at the time had a some­what tem­po­rary line­up that includ­ed Paul Manske on bass gui­tar. The club (which should remain name­less, but it was the 400 Bar) had tried to stiff the band on both our time slot and our pay, and in both cas­es it was Paul who some­how talked some­one into let­ting us play and get paid. So his intro­duc­tion to me was as the man who Made Things Hap­pen, but it was twen­ty min­utes lat­er, onstage with him, that he was rein­tro­duced as Paul the Musician.

Paul had this way of play­ing a bass that made oth­er musi­cians sound good. When you gave him the right kind of music, he played with a pock­et so deep and a groove so wide it was impos­si­ble not to fall right in. More than once, my play­ing has been com­pli­ment­ed and I’ve had to sheep­ish­ly admit that it wasn’t me hold­ing things down, but Paul, whose bass lines telegraphed to me the appro­pri­ate things to play and I just fol­lowed instructions.

I didn’t know Paul as well as oth­ers who have lived here longer, but I’ve known him long enough to say he held music and friends in deep rev­er­ence — his home was con­stant­ly filled with both — he treat­ed each with respect and admi­ra­tion, and I’m going to miss him.

I found this today while doing some rough mix­es on what might be a new Back­yard Com­mit­tee album some day. Whoooooooooo!

Here are a few snap­shots from our mix ses­sion last month with Dave Olson and Ted­dy Mor­gan. We had a great time at Bar­rio East in Nashville, and we’re real­ly hap­py with how things are sounding.

I’ve had some swirling thoughts about the VMAs and it wasn’t until I read this that I fig­ured out what I’ve been thinking.

but can i just ask, the read­er, us, we … as non-rhetor­i­cal­ly as pos­si­ble: don’t we seem dumb? didn’t MTV lose the fight against them­selves? Didn’t Rock’n’Roll STOP? Why are the lights so bright? isn’t our tal­ent as artists enough? Why do we try SO hard?

It seemed, years ago, that MTV was a cura­tor of sorts for the arts…nowadays it seems like it’s a manufacturer.

These are the iso­lat­ed drum tracks from ​“Lol­la­palooza,” one of my favorite songs from Late­ly. It was such a fun, lazy song to track and this style of drum­ming is some­thing I have a lot of fun with.

The shak­ers that come in some­where around the solo are these lit­tle 1” rawhide mara­cas, which should give you an idea of how much ridicu­lous­ly awe­some com­pres­sion there is — I’m bare­ly touch­ing the drums and they sound huge.

Apolo­gies to Solomon Burke, but when there is a throne in your dress­ing room you sit in it and take a pho­to. Those are the rules.