///woke up before daylight in New Hampshire to hit the road for our 9am load-in for a recording session in Burlington, VT. beautiful sunrise on our way. fog. fall colors.

our friend Jamie Wiener engineered the session at Eclectic Recording Studios. with just two eight hour days to work with, we focused on 4 songs. three of which have been in live rotation for awhile now: Battle, Bus Pilot and the new version of Mahoney (My Homie). the fourth song we laid down is brand new. we started practicing it the week before tour and have played it a few times on this tour to help get it ready. it’s called Antoinette.

we got drum tracks for all four songs done on the first day as well as keys on Battle, then cruised back to Jamie’s farm house about an hour away north of Montpelier and ate dinner with him and his wife Alex. they cooked up their rooster that had been killed by a weasel a couple of days before. it was surprisingly good. we slept amazingly.

next morning we got to hang with their kids Finneas and Zephyr as well as their goats and pigs — super cute — before heading back into Burlington to finish up. we had an amazing time at their farm. really blessed to have such good people in our lives.

second and final day of recording went great. busted all the keys, guitar and vocal tracks without any major problems. curious to hear how it’ll all turn out. no direct plans for release just yet, but it felt good to get the ball rolling on some new recordings.

cruised back to New Hampshire that evening in a pretty nasty rain / snow / sleet storm, but made it safely to Lisa’s parents house and hit the sack since we had an early date at Lisa’s high school alma mater in the morning.

///gilbert

We enjoyed a nice drive through Vermont and got to Burlington early so we could meet up with Joe and Hope (the Von Stengels) once again and catch some dinner before the show. We ended up having lots of time and used it to hit up some sights along Burlington’s infamous Church Street. Burlington’s awesome, and it was great to be back.

This time we played at the Radio Bean — a super rad itsy-bitsy coffeeshop / pub / live music venue that is a classic fixture on the Burlington music scene. They have music from 6pm until 2am. Pretty wild. We had coordinated a bill with two sweet local acts called Villanelles and Lendway that started at 10pm and didn’t realize that there would be 4 other acts before that. It was intense and made for an interesting evening. Some other acts that played included Acoustic Chatter from Boston and Ben Hammond from Montreal.

The place packed out pretty early and stayed that way throughout the night. At one point, there was a line outside the door and all the windows were steaming up as it was a pretty chilly night in Burlington, and the bodies inside were definitely putting off some heat. It was a fun scene.

Stage was super tiny, so we stripped down our setup a little bit but still brought the rock, and Joe did some projections once again. Awesome as always. (if you haven’t already, check out more of his art at www.culturerecycling.com.

Both Villanelles and Lendway were fantastic and great guys as well. Check them out if you get a chance… especially if you’re in Vermont as they are pretty active in the Burlington area.

Since Burlington is an old stomping ground of mine, I got to see some old friends including one of my college roommates and good friends Kelley as well as meet her girlfriend. A constant tour perk: catching up with old friends and getting a better sense of what they’re doing these days.

After the show, we drove back towards my parents house and slept in the van at a rest area. We had the next day off and had plans to hang out with my family, have a big family dinner and see everyone. I was excited. I think we all were excited.