I am staring at a small red suitcase in the corner of a bedroom I am sleeping in tonight. Seeing a good bit of my clothing in something like this is all too commonplace in my life. I start to think that maybe this is weird, but since for the past 7 years this has been my reality in some sense or another, maybe I am getting used to it. For anyone who is not vaguely familiar with what I have been doing over the past few years, here goes: After a lengthy(ish) run with a touring band, I sold the van and moved to Nashville to live in a place where songwriters can and sometimes (very rarely) do thrive. After getting the feeling that economists were laughing out loud (lol) at my decision to live in a place where my skill set would be so completely commonplace, I moved to the beautiful southern city of Charleston, SC to live in/on/around the beach. After a year of that, I moved back to Jackson, MS where I plugged back in with our family business (its actually in Mansfield, LA). My family generally approves of this move, and I like being home.

Back to Charleston. During this year I - 1. Worked at two restaurants, one awesome, one not as much. 2. Tried to get to the beach and downtown as much as possible. and 3. Wrote a bunch of songs. At the time I did not have a band so I did need some sort of outlet to release this music. After a few random conversations with my long time friend Adam Dale of "The American Tragedy" and "Adam Dale" fame, we hit on a few common threads and decided to share song ideas which he would then record. (Performing all of the instruments, and singing all of the vocals on the recording of said songs.) The collaborative part of this project is an endless stream of emails, video chats, and phone calls about chord changes, tempos, lyrics, and melodies. Our spouses are both justifiably annoyed by the sheer volume of our communication.

The project now called "The Word Modern" is basically two songwriters/producers making music that is at its core an effort to be effortlessly fun. We titled the album "A View From The Basement" to represent the feeling that we got from making this record. We never set foot in the same room during the construction of this project, and this in itself is probably a tremendous testimony to how talented Adam really is. I have worked with some people who were absolutely gifted, and he is a rare talent.

I am also looking to produce young, ambitious bands who are able to go out and pound the pavement, playing for any who will listen while sleeping on floors of the charitable. I myself am not in this category any more, but I do feel I can really help bands take the next step in honing their craft. Hit me up, let's wear gold plated diapers. I work out of a studio in Grand Cane, LA. It is in a barn. That should tell you all you need to know.

Music! For The Word Modern can be found here.

So as usual it has been a while since my last posting here. I think that is probably ok, due to the face that since I last bloggered, I have come and gone into employment situations that were requiring somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 plus hours. It looks like I will now be down to around 55 hours per week now which is much more manageable. Enough about that....

I recently picked up the newest Iphone and have been really excited to try out some of the camera features. I wanted to record a song that I am working on for a record that may or may not be made in the next twenty years. Who can tell? In retrospect, I probably should have used the HD recorder, but you live and you learn.

This song is a work in progress, but I really enjoy playing it and I think that in a full band setting it would be really nice. Until then maybe I will just keep recording "The Bedroom Session Videos" for all of you hungry Lish fans out there. On second thought, that name might not work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx9pYFc1G-w
Or look up!