Couple new things to share with you this week, I shall go in order of priority:

1.  Have begun planning several trips out of state to visit Grad Schools.

2.  Have purchased a plane ticket out of the country for 3 weeks to “find myself” in Europe.  By find myself, I mean find beer, wine, and cool landmarks, all while trying to find the most awesome music each country has to offer.

3.  Elena (my girlfriend) fought off a mob of alligators in Florida.

4.  Oooh, a potato chip!

In the media player you’ll find that I’ve taken down some more of my old music files to replace them with some new stuff.  This most recent batch is from a friend’s wedding I played at back in the Fall.  Lindsay Schwartz plays Cello on the “Colors” tune, by Amos Lee.  Also added is 4 minutes of me messing around on a classical guitar in a little improvisation before getting the ceremony started.  Hope you enjoy it.  I’ve been playing a little bit with another guitarist, Ben Abrahamson, and hopefully we’ll have some recordings up soon.  There’s a pretty interesting take of My Favorite Things that I might share soon.  That is all, come back soon!

Whoops.  Kinda let the blog go there for a month or two.  Not to fear though, I have returned and bring news from the trenches.

Started the search for graduate schools this past month, and though things have been moving slow, I’m starting to get in touch with different teachers at universities across the country.  As always, if any of you readers have any suggestions on places to look, I’d be interested in checking them out.  So far the short list includes;

New Jersey City University

Rutgers University

New England Conservatory

University of North Texas

University of Northern Colorado

University of Southern California

Cal Arts

University of Oregon, Eugene

University of New Orleans

So… yeah.  That’s the SHORT list.  Obviously I’ll be narrowing that down, but ideally I’d like to go visit each of the schools and meet the faculty, maybe take a lesson with the guitar instructor there.

On the other side of things, Lulu’s Playground finished up in the studio last month, and our new/first CD will be available very soon.  Just as soon as we raise the money to print it.

I’m also looking at starting some new projects, including but not limited to a solo jazz guitar record, a trio record of standards, and possibly starting a challenge where I write a new piece/tune every day.  Basically anything to keep me from playing Skyrim non-stop and Elena from murdering me in my sleep as a result.  Must… kill…. dragons…….

Rawr.

Tomorrow night I’ll be performing with my live hip-hop group, Out From Inside, featuring emcee Matt Ecklund (Unus), Cory Grossman on bass/cello, Andy Thornbrough on drums, and Jana Nyberg Meckler on vox.  Doors open at 7:30, there’s a $5 cover, and there’s a full line up of really awesome bands playing with us, including Lothario, King Tuesday, and much more.  I hope you can all make it out!

Ok, so, now that the advertising stuff is out of the way, I’ve got some new updates to share.  Performed last night with the Adam Meckler Orchestra to a full house at O’Gara’s in St. Paul, and it was awesome!  In honor of Mr. Meckler and his accomplishments, I thought I’d post a recording we did a while back that I’ve had sitting on my harddrive.  This recording was done at Signaturetone Recording in South Minneapolis by the awesome Adam Tucker, who was also recording the Orchestra last night.  ”I Remember Clifford” features Adam Meckler (trumpet), Graydon Peterson (bass), and Pete Hennig (drums).  Adam was just getting over the uber-flu when we recorded this, but I still think he sounds great.

New updates coming soon, with transcriptions, analysis, essays on performance and teaching, and maybe even some nerdy musicology stuff.

Coming up this Tuesday the 6th, I’ll be playing at Jazz Central from 8-11:30pm with Park Evans, Matt Peterson, and Pete Hennig to celebrate my birthday and just to play some sweet music!

Jazz Central has been around in Northeast Minneapolis for well over a year now, I believe.  It can be a bit hard to find, as it’s in the basement of the building and there’s no sign outside, but once you get inside it’s a very cool atmosphere.

For the show I’ll be bringing some delicious beverages, but encourage you to bring your own if you like.  There will also be cake.  NOM NOM NOM.

The first set will just be the quartet, but we’ll be opening it up for the second half if anybody would like to sit in.

I’m very much looking forward to the show, I hope you all can make it out!

As a fun little bonus thing this week, I thought I’d post up on the blog a video of “Nude” with some dudes at the Artist Quarter in St. Paul.  Featuring Kevin Gastonguay, Andrew Foreman, Zach Schmidt, and Max Corcoran.

\”Nude\” by Radiohead

Hola senors y senoritas!

So after I think more than a year, we’re bringing the website back in a new format, with new music, and new info!  This is a very exciting time, and I’ll be posting more frequently on the blog here about it as we go, but we’ll ease back into things with a brief music update.  I’ve uploaded three new tracks from a recording session I did this past Summer with Matt Peterson and Jay Epstein here in Minneapolis at Bathtub Shrine Recording Studio.  Thanks to Greg Schutte for sending me over the rough mixes right away, I thought they sounded good enough to put up on the website here so I could share them all with you!  The new tunes are “Nude”, “Stella”, and “You and the Night and the Music”.  I’ll be attempting to do updates 3 or 4 times a week from here on out, so be on the lookout for all new material!

Thanks for checking out the website!

P.S. If you’re gonna check out one of the new tunes, make it You and the Night.  It’s my personal favorite.