After a quiet six weeks, Will and I got back to business in the studio Thursday night.

It wasn’t a marathon session; I laid down what Will believes to be a keeper vocal for “Piecing Together the World,” and we pulled together a scratch guitar/vocal for “Clever.” The scratch track will help drummer Kevin Leahy–who performed on Shawn Mullins’s Grammy-nominated ”Lullaby (Rock-A-Bye)”–learn the song before coming in to drum for it early next month.

NOTE: Yeah, Will and I negotiated a reasonable price for adding “Clever” (a fifteenth song!) to the project. It’s kind of the studio equivalent of ordering the $5.99 All-Star Breakfast at Waffle House and adding grits for just a few cents more.

Oh studio, how I’ve missed you! Driving there with the windows down, “warming-up,” Amy rewarding Levi with a marshmallow for hitting the toilet, Levi rewarding me with a marshmallow for doing the same, the garage, the Amstel Lights, the microphones, the couch, the magazines, the guitars, the basses, the knobs, the faders, the mouses, the monitors, the speakers, the ukulele, the piano, the lava lamp, Will’s nine o’clock shadow, the head phones, the click tracks, the dimmer, the reverb (just enough), the laughing, the breath catching, the swearing, the half-time speeches, the do-overs, the late snares, the mixes, the playbacks, the mute button, the pacing, the disrobing, Will’s falsetto, Microsoft Excel, the check marks, the printer (the weak link), turning cell phones off, the beer snobbery, the fingernail clippers, humoring myself, the shock value, the good nights, the bad nights, the compression, the decompression, working late, and even the cats… and I hate cats.

Further bulletins as events warrant!

-Nate