Instrument free rehearsals part 1

Rehearsals still going good - knocking all the barnacles off the boat. Great to be out of studio mode again.

Your bassman can't dance like this...

Thrilled to announce I have been added to PCRM's honorary committee (alongside Woody Harrelson, Alec Baldwin, Tobey Macguire, Ellen DeGenres)
http://www.pcrm.org/gala2010/vips.cfm

Road Trip...

How it was and how it will be…

396 dennys, 30 ihops (no veggie burger), 200 village inns, 2000 convenience stores, 3 breakdowns, 2 fires, 2000 motel rooms, 100 hotel rooms…

500 floors with sleeping bags, 100 nights on the van floor (no more), 3 speeding tickets, 5 trailer tickets (I think jesse got them all), waaay too much money to oil companies, 5000 stickers in dressing rooms…

3000 free drink tickets, 10,000 bottles of water, 3 tom waits cd’s, 1 lionel richie cd and all four heads waking and bobbing gently in sync at 3am – “it’s easy like Sunday morning”…

750 late checkouts, 50,000 stolen apples from the front desk, 100 radio stations, 20 tv stations, 100,000 infomercials, 2000 earplugs (for JR and I) 2 earplugs (billy still wearing the same pair), 100 gyms, 10 farmer’s markets, 20 whole foods….

12 national parks, 15 scrapbooks, 50 disposable cameras, 200,000 phone calls, 1000 postcards, 35 bottles of makers mark (most from steve Jordan)…

300 free breakfasts and free papers, 300 sets of guitar strings, 3 vans, 2 trailers, 5 flashlights, one banjo and corbett’s temporary teeth, one map, 2 garmins, 2 iphones, west wing seasons 1-7….

2 tornados, 65 thunderstorms (all in OKC when we play), 2 roadfires, 1 ufo (well billy believes all that stuff…), 1 haunted room in flagstaff, AZ (they drained the videocam battery!!), a dozen drunk club owners, and last but not least- the greatest friends on the road any band could have.

My old realistic cassette recorded finally failed me people. After all these years I say goodbye. Couldn’t get the cassette out either or remember the jam on the tape. Could have been the case cracker on there… next.

by Martin Luther King, Jr.

We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

There are some things in our social system to which all of us ought to be maladjusted.

Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear, only love can do that.

We must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation.

The foundation of such a method is love.

Before it is too late, we must narrow the gaping chasm between our proclamation of peace and our lowly deeds which precipitate and perpetuate war.

One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek but a means by which we arrive at that goal.

We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.

We shall hew out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.

Guilty pleasures...

Guilty pleasure revisited over New Year’s break: The Electric Horseman. Redford and Willie in one movie? Hell yes. Time to revisit West Wing; but we’re proud of that one…

Want to see a cool red pattern engulf your new laptops screen? Spill a full cup of coffee on it. Yes I did this and it’s an expensive experiment to undertake.

Every Tuesday in the valley at Las Hadas is the Johnny Vana Band.

Featuring big band players from Count Basie Orchestra, Buddy Rich Band, Harry James, Woody Herman, Nelson Riddle, Stan Kenton Orchestra, you name it, they've done it. You swing dance with the senior citizens and eat a nice lunch. Wow and I am horrible dancer...

Yuma AZ, January 2010