BrainDrain

I visited my first haberdashery on Sunday, an honest to God haberdashery. I've been wanting to go to The Hatbox (billed as a Modern Haberdashery, not sure why "modern" is emphasized) for quite some time, and since I've also had an itch to update my image before Life On Loan goes out giggin' again, I figured that there was no time like the present to visit the Hatbox. I've also been wanting to get more headwear besides baseball caps, but wasn't really sure what to get and what looks good. A couple of cohorts who wanted to go with was all I needed to make the trek down to 6th Street.

The Hatbox is a really cool place. I tried on all sorts of hats, from bowlers to balaclavas to top hats, but ended up settling on three - a driver cap and two small-brimmed fedoras in slightly different styles for every day wear and also for dressin' up a little bit. Both my compadres and the folks at the store gave me the thumbs up on the hats I chose, so I'm reasonably confident that I don't look like a complete dork wearing them around. I think the fedoras are going to be primarily gig wear, though, because I don't think the world at large is really ready to head back to the time when men always wore hats and trenchcoats. Then again, I could be the herald of a new age in style. Stranger things have happened, you know.

The other cool thing was that I had a little brush with fame (not mine). It would seem that The Swell Season was in town to play a show, and Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova stopped in to buy a hat for a friend. They starred in the movie Once and also composed the soundtrack which won an Oscar. Anyway, I had no idea who they were and was just making polite chit-chat when the clerk at the Hatbox asked me for ID to go with my check card. Glen, in his Irish accent, was caught a little off guard and says, "Oh, my...ID might be a bit of a problem. Perhaps I can borrow yours, yeah?", to which I promptly replied, "sure, as long as you haven't done anything nefarious back in Ireland." It was at that point that Ballenger pipes up and says, "I think I know who you are. You're Glen Hansard, right?" Glen brightened up and responded, "See? There now, I don't need any ID - this guy'll vouch for me!" Scott asked him where they were playing, we bantered for a few minutes, and then they went on their way and we went on ours. Man, I love this town.

I also had to get some new jeans now that it's getting colder (I was down to two pair) and also needed to continue the image update, so I went out tonight to get some and also picked up some button-down long-sleeved shirts in gray and black for cheap, which will also be used for giggin', church, and times when I want to dress up a little bit. I think the wardrobe update is nearly complete for this year after this trip - all I need now is a couple of club/bowling shirts (or maybe cabana shirts? Not sure what you call them) and I think I'll be good. Fewer tees and polos, more button downs and collars, I think.

The only thing left to do is to drop off the other clothes that I'm no longer wearing at Salvation Army so that someone else can get some use out of them and as I said, it's getting cold outside so there's no better time.

The other day I was turned on to the magic of ZINGWater, what I like to think of as the perfect caffeine delivery system. It's water plus caffeine, and that's it. Nothing more. No cups and cups of sugar, no horrible taste or aftertaste, and no pretense at being EXTREME fuel for the EXTREME lifestyle. In fact, if the bottle didn't say it had caffeine in it, you'd never know it.

I call it the perfect delivery system because it gives all the caffeine pick-me-up potency of a Red Bull but with the hydrating and super-clean taste of purified water. How many of us slam down multiple cups of coffee or diet Cokes in a single day for the caffeine rush? Hate having your teeth squeak from pop syrup or dislike that coffee tongue and post-java halitosis? Me too! I don't know about you, but when I'm working, I find that I drink far less water than I should and that can wreak havoc on the body. Thus, finding a way to hydrate AND also get the energy boost that I need to keep me alert at work is a pretty important thing - and it's all found in ZINGWater.

Who would drink it? The computer programmer in me would drink it for the reasons I've already mentioned above. The musician in me would drink it for the hydration factor plus the energy to rock out extra hard during a show. And the health-conscious side of me (yes, there is one in there...somewhere) would drink it because I know that it's healthier than any other drink out there that delivers that kind of caffeine punch with zero side effects (other than the caffeine, of course).

Oh, and did I mention that ZINGWater is local? Yep. Made right here in the Texas Hill Country. Hit up the link to check out the site, read the story, and then find out where you can buy your own. You can even order direct from the company, and I hear tell that they're also trying to get hooked up with some humanitarian organizations to help provide clean and available drinking water in places of the world where they can't get it.

SO...

Not only are you helping YOU stay lubricated and energized, you'd be supporting a LOCAL company to keep money here in the Austin economy, and you'd be helping OTHERS get water in places where the idea of bottled water seems like some ludicrous extravagance of heaven. Everybody wins! So give ZINGWater a try the next time you need that little something extra to put some pep in your step.

If I'm lyin', I'm dyin'.

My home team has been going through the book of Ecclesiastes and for me, there is not a more timely study to undertake at this stage in my life. I'm finding that having the mindset of living for today with a view towards Christ's Lordship in my life is as difficult as it is exhilarating. I'm really starting to identify with Solomon and his conclusions.

Follow the jump to read how.

The recording session went beautifully - picture perfect, one might say. We were able to get into the studio to setup our instruments the night before, and we started tweaking mics about noonish on Saturday. We were able to record the drum tracks for seven songs in roughly 7.5 - 8 hours, which was pretty good if the reactions of our producer was any indicator. It was tough, though - we played each song a minimum of three times before taking a break to listen to the recordings, and there were one or two that we had to do more than that (my fault). In fact, any extra takes we had to do were my fault because in this session, it was really only my performances that mattered - the rest can be fixed later and elsewhere. Well, that's not entirely true; I think that the bass tracks were also being monitored but there was a lot more leeway for Travis on the mistake front than there was for me. However, we did get all the drum tracks we came for, and probably the bass tracks as well, and even had some time to do some vocal tracks, background vocals, and auxiliary overdubs of various instruments. We ended up leaving the studio about 11:30pm on Saturday night, almost 12 hours after we got there. That, my friends, is a long freakin' day!

Here's some pics that Gavin and I took during the day to help you get the feel for the Life On Loan recording experience (and to prove that I'm not just making all this up - we were actually there! Honest!):

In some ways, this was what I expected and in other ways it was not. On the one hand, it was a very long day - playing drums for 8 hours in a day (with probably the equivalent of 25-30 songs in that time) was physically demanding. So much so, in fact, that I knew it was time to quit when I got cramps in both my forearm and leg attempting to redo our fastest song at the end of my time in the session. I was worn out! On the other hand, I brought a legion of extras - extra snares, extra cymbals, extra mallets and sticks, extra drum heads, etc. - and was under the impression that we'd do a lot of retakes with different sounds and such, but we did not. I'm guessing that's pretty much dependent on the producer and what kind of sounds he wants, and the Tama recorded beautifully. Listening to the tracks as they were finished, I was amazed that the sounds I was hearing actually came from the kit I had just played and honestly, I don't think that any additional sound textures or anything were needed for this record. Perhaps if we do a full-length album, we'll do more of that.

I also gained a newfound appreciation for Pro Tools. I had come into the session with the impression that Pro Tools was just a tool to make bad bands sound good, and that a heavy reliance on PT was kind of a crutch. From reading Modern Drummer, you'd think that only real bands complete records without using it and that anyone else who does is somehow "cheating". Well, that's not the case. What PT allows a band to do is fix some minor discrepancies without having to do an entire re-take of a whole song just for one small spot. Case in point: on the third take of a song, everything came out good except for one spot where I missed a beat due to getting my sticks crossed up. It was a three-measure repeating pattern and the third one didn't sound right (although the rest of the band decided that they kind of liked it). Patrick was able to copy one snare hit from the previous "good" measure and put it in right where the missed shot was to fall in the "bad" measure, making it sound as if I had played it just right in the first place. That meant we didn't have to go back and record a whole song just for that one hit. Technology is amazing when used properly and sparingly.

All in all, it was an amazing experience, ranking right up there in the handful of "best days of my life" at the top of my memory pile. I want to give a shout out to Michael Landon over at Premium Recording, who was an immense help to us during the day and is probably one of the nicest guys I have ever met, and also to our producer and lead engineer, Patrick Conway, who is helping us to craft the most awesome album EVER!!! My world has been rocked and I hope to rock yours soon, with the help of my band. Stay tuned, true believers!

So the big news around my water cooler is the fact that Life On Loan is finally heading into the studio this weekend to record our first EP. We'll be working on getting at least five songs recorded at Premium Recording on Saturday from 1pm - midnight, and maybe have to trickle over into Sunday if something relatively untoward and unforeseen happens. My personal goal is to have the EP ready to release by the end of the year, but that may not happen. We'll see.

I will admit that I am really enjoying being able to throw out the "yeah, well my band's going into the studio this weekend, so..." line in conversation - whether it's an excuse why I can't do something, or in response to the ever-popular "got any big weekend plans?" question, or just telling someone what's new, being able to say I'm going to be in the studio totally kicks ass! I totally feel like a rock star now, and I'm loving every minute of it. God's allowing me to participate in so many cool things musically this year, and the studio thing is just a great way to cap off the year. Truly amazing!

I'm trying not to totally let it go to my head, though. It's funny - people sort of respond with the same awe and wonder when I mention going into the studio as the non-technical folks do when I say that I work for IBM. Going into the studio is something that pretty much anyone can do if they have the money and the time, and the current state of the music biz pretty much makes it possible for any band to get well-produced music out there to a niche market. You could have five fans and make an EP or a full CD if you have the money to block out the time at the studio.

However, I think that the phrase "going into the studio" still carries a lot of weight behind it from the old days when the only people that ever did that were bands that were backed by a record label. I think that phrase shows that you're really serious about your music - either someone likes you enough to pay your way into the studio (rare) or you believe in your stuff enough to spend the hefty chunk of change to get a professional recording done. I think the studio for musicians is akin to the minor leagues for baseball players - it signals that while you're not quite there in the "big show" yet, you're definitely more serious than just playing pickup games on Saturday nights.

So, yeah...this is kind of big for us. Big for me. Another personal dream, and I'm looking forward to having something in my hands that I can play for people and say, "yeah, that's me on the drums and my band made a recording. Me and three other guys took songs from nothing, created them, crafted them, and recorded them and here they are." The songs have been reworked, sound very little like the ones that we recorded for the demo, and will hopefully come out the other side sounding professional and ear-catching. This is one of the most awesome things I have ever done, and I am thankful to God that He is allowing me to do this.

I'm also hoping to tweet and twitpic the studio recording process, so hopefully I'll have a good real-time diary going on of how things are going and what the experience is like. I also need to update the MySpace page as well.

This is going to be so much fun!

Now that I've been back at IBM for a couple of weeks, the questions are starting to roll in regarding my impressions of the gig and how I like it. Since I happen to have this nice blog here which is quite useful for putting out general all-points bulletins that pertain to the Drewverse, I figured I'd just write out my impressions here and y'all can read about 'em at your leisure. So buckle up, buttercup, because the train's leavin' the station and we ain't turnin' it around anytime soon.

Honestly, I'm not really sure what to make of my current position. On the upside, I'm learning a lot and have been challenged pretty much from the get-go to work out my brain on a daily basis. I'm learning some good skills which will make me pretty valuable in the future: J2EE, WebSphere, DB2, Struts 2, DWR, dojo, perhaps some Hibernate, and all sorts of other acronyms that I don't even know the meaning of yet. And, I'm doing full site development from the ground up, and that will be really valuable as well.

The downsides are that I feel like I'm constantly chasing after the bus that is supposed to take me to school; I don't really know the technologies I'm being asked to work with, and it's taking me a lot longer than I would like to grasp the ideas. My team is almost 100% remote, even the ones here in Austin - I and one other woman are the only ones that come into the office on a regular basis. Therefore, it's not only hard to connect with my teammates on a personal/social level, it's hard to catch up on the development side of things because I can't just go next door and bug one of the other devs to sit down with me and help me out. People don't respond too quickly to instant messaging or email and NetMeeting and phone conferences can only take one so far and thus, I think I could really benefit from an hour or so of XP coding until I get my Struts 2 feet under me and really get a better feel for the nuts and bolts of the application that I'll be working on half of the time.

(As an aside, the reason I'm in the office is because my manager has a three-month "probationary" period before working from home. I guess he wants to ensure that I get going rather than work from home and have to battle potential distractions, which I completely understand. The odd thing is that nobody else is in the office, which leads me to feel slightly more isolated than I would feel if I worked from home because IBM is not comfortable. It's kind of a terrible work environment. I would understand the requirement a bit more if everyone was in the office, but since they're not, I'm kind of constantly wondering why I have to go in. I could potentially be more productive at home, having access to more computers and/or monitors.)

So, the summation is that it's hard work and it's challenging, which I like, but it's also somewhat isolating and frustrating because I'm not able to adequately get the help and contact which I believe that I need right now. I've been a "software developer" for twelve years now, and yet this is the first time that I've really been able to do what would be considered full-on, hardcore development work. I still need help because in this respect, I'm a n00b. This does, of course, lead to a lot of inner monologues and haranguing of myself about what I should and shouldn't be able to do and how quickly I should be able to pick it up, and that's probably not helping matters much. I really don't know what the expectations of me currently are, and so my mind has gladly made up extreme possibilities on its own; all I know is that I'm getting tired of reporting that I'm still stuck on the same form I was last week on our daily status calls.

We've just started studying Ecclesiastes in my home team and I'm really trying to put those lessons into practice by not worrying so much about the end product and just taking each day for what it is and trying to live it in the moment. Hopefully, this pattern of thought will help the next two weeks to get better and the two weeks after that to be even better still. God has put me here for some reason, and so I know that I have the capability to do the job, but maybe I need to ask Him for a little more help this time than I have in previous stints. I just don't really like that catching-up feeling, which is the situation that I have found myself in for the last two weeks, so I must learn to deal with it and, hopefully, overcome it sooner rather than later.

And that, as they say, is that. Aren't you glad you asked?

I headed down to the Parish Room on Friday night with Ballenger to see one of my new favorite bands, Telegraph Canyon, play with Quiet Company and The Morakestra. While Quiet Company was the headliner, I was really there to see Telegraph Canyon:

The other bands were good, don't get me wrong. If you like Rooney, I'd suggest you check out Quiet Company - they were really tight, had a ton of style, and stage presence to last for days. The Morakestra was also good, with a lot of tight instrumentation and jamming (although their stage presence needs a little work).

Telegraph Canyon is just really interesting to watch because they have so many musicians on stage and such different instrumentation. Their music is quite varied in dynamic volume, and they have a lot of good fun and are not your run of the mill band. I guess that's why they got a writeup in Rolling Stone's online edition last month. It's not the kind of music that I would normally listen to (and thus I don't have any comparisons to make of the "if you like {x} you'll like Telegraph Canyon" kind) so I think that speaks to how good their music is because it has earned me as a convert. Plus, they've released their latest album on vinyl, and that's got to count for something.

So if you're looking for some new music, check out any one of these three bands and I think you'll be glad that you did.

A conversation had with Jacob whist we were tooling around Houston before the gig on Friday has had me thinking ever since. It was about the sacrifices one has to make in order to pursue music seriously and with the advent of my second coming at IBM, it has me wondering if I'm willing to make them.

Editorial note: From this point forward, the term "musician" will refer to those individuals trying to make music a major part of their monetary sustainment. A "professional" musician, if you will, but not necessarily a signed artist or one with big-label or studio backing of some sort. I get tired of repeating myself.

Being a musician is a big commitment: a commitment to style (hair, tattoos, attitudes, clothing/image), a commitment to learning to play the instrument well, a commitment to the fans, and also a commitment to gear. Musicians don't have company subsidized health insurance, so most of them go without. Gigs pay but they don't pay much once it's all divided up amongst the band members, and even though you may be playing four nights a week, two to three of those nights might be weekday gigs with low numbers and therefore low pay. Everything costs money: gear, touring, recording, threads, practice space. Sometimes shows come up at the last minute and a band that is limited in time is also limited in audience. Particular style choices can be detrimental to corporate jobs (or even some service jobs). Mohawks and tattoos are generally frowned upon by corporate types.

Musicians also tend to have lower-strata jobs tending bar or working retail or service and the like because those jobs can be more flexible (due to fluid schedules) and can be easily blown off in the event that a big opportunity comes along. Some places are more understanding of the life of a musician and are much more flexible to absences on short notice. The problem is, these jobs don't typically pay much. I recall reading somewhere about one band who would get minimum-wage jobs when they weren't touring to barely make ends meet because they could quickly leave them to go back out on the road. There's no attachment to the company or much loyalty, and there's not a career ladder to be left. Jobs that don't require the arduous trek up the corporate ladder structure are a dime a dozen (and pay about that much).

Not to mention the fact that lugging your gear around (especially if you're a drummer) is a gigantic pain in just about everywhere.

All of this flies completely in the face of any type of career job where the work ethic seems to be the unspoken mantra of "overtime is expected". Companies expect their employees to give more and more to them, and that conflicts with the similar demands that music makes on a musician. The career job supplies all those things that makes music possible - money, insurance coverage, etc. - but demands more than its share of time which means that music must take a secondary place. New bands have to start at the bottom of the ladder, which means early-week shows at night; the more popular your band gets, the later the shows get because headliners always go last. That makes it really hard to get up for work the next day, my friends, and that lifestyle doesn't make good bedfellows with a corporate culture that prizes high output over a healthy work/life balance.

So here I am, newly back into the corporate culture, struggling to come to terms with my new hourly status (you mean I have to actually be working at work for 8 hours a day and I have to clock out to eat?), unsure of how much my new team toes the IBM party line when it comes to the unspoken policy of the expected 55-hour work week, and I've just come off of one of the better musical experiences in my life and wishing I could do that for a living. I really like to make music, and I really want to be part of something big musically. Life On Loan may be it; Five Dollar Friend might be it; or it could be some other opportunity with another band that I haven't even thought about yet. I want to be a part of that, but deep down inside I'm not sure that I'm willing to risk the hand-to-mouth potential that being a professional musician requires just to be in the (hopefully) right place at the (hopefully) right time with the (hopefully) right band. I don't know that there is a such thing as a "moderately successful" musician - you either have to make it big or you're always going to have to supplement it with some other work.

There's not really too much that can make me miss an opportunity to play music, and so I know that music is a driving passion in my life. But how much of a passion is it if I'm not willing to risk it all for its sake? Can it move me to the edge, and can I stay there long enough to wait? I had seven months to do that, and I failed to turn it into anything beyond a few experiences here and there. Am I Jack-Black-in-School-of-Rock hardcore? Is that a desirable place to be for me?

I don't know. That's my quandry.

Five Dollar Friend asked me to play a show with them last night at the venerable Fitzgerald's in Houston. Fitz's is kind of like Texas' version of CBGB - a lot of really good pre-signed and signed acts have played here over the years, and usually the bands that play upstairs on the main stage are pretty good local acts. If you show up to a weekend show at Fitz's, you're pretty much guaranteed to hear some good music. Thus, for me, this was another personal goal realized as I got to rock a relatively famous club with a good band and with decent sound.

Deep Ella headlined the bill as they capped off their latest tour with the last show in Houston until next year. They're currently going back into the studio to record their next record and won't be touring again until the new joint is done. The rest of the bill had a band from Austin called Eyes Burn Electric (formerly Dremnt The End) and Floorbound, with Five Dollar Friend starting the whole thing off with a 6-song set at 9pm. It was kind of rough for the other bands as we had to work around Deep Ella's stage setup, but things went well and all the bands were great.

Fitzgerald's is a great club, with an actual backstage area for the bands to congregate in and relax before or during the show. They have a bathroom back there and a room with a bed (ostensibly for "napping"...yeah, right), but I pretty much stayed away from all of those places because they made that hotel that rents room by the hour that you know sound like the Ritz Carlton. But it was nice to have somewhere to stow gear without it being in the way of the crowd and also have a place to get away from the noise for a few minutes. I wish I had thought to take some pictures when we first got there, but I failed in that mission. Next time I play there, I'll be sure to take more pics. I was more concerned about getting my gear in and setting it up for sound check than I was about taking pictures, though.

My new Tama Starclassic was the belle of the ball back stage, with every drummer from the other bands making a comment on how great it looks and sounds. I was able to swap some gear tips with some of them as well, and even may have found a buyer for my nicked up K Custom crash that I had to replace. The green sparkle looked pretty fantastic under the green/blue light setup that they had at Fitz's, and it was a total blast and a half to play with FDF again. I posted some pictures that I took with the Pre of Deep Ella on my flickr page (see left sidebar), and as soon as I can get my hands on any pictures that were taken of FDF rockin' Fitz's I'll post them as well. Here's a sample:

And, this was the highest-paying gig that I've had so far, especially if you count the money that might result from selling the K Custom. All in all, a spectacular night and I hope to do it again before FDF calls it quits officially before the end of the year.

One last thing...it was kind of intimidating for me to play on a bill with such accomplished musicians, some of whom have been playing drums for 20 years or more. I always face that demon whenever I get on stage, wondering which person is watching me like I watch other drummers and critiquing my performance. But every one of the other drummers in the bands after us had great things to say and that they enjoyed my performance and my sound, and that just boosts my confidence like no tomorrow. I think the perception outside the bands is that each band is out for themselves, but almost every band that I've been on the bill with in Austin or Houston has had many complimentary things to say to the other bands. Yeah, we're all trying to get signed and make it big, but it's not a cutthroat thing and people have been willing to share instruments, drum keys, guitars, etc. and that's a great environment in which to make music. Being able to play in front of "elder statesmen" in the band scene and have them say that they enjoyed our show or specifically my interpretations of the music are worth their weight in gold to me.

Last night was an amazing show, and I had the time of my life. Super ultra mega awesome! I hope I can do it again in the near future!

Well, the first week back at work is in the bag. After a day or two of logistical issues, I am back in the Big Blue fold and it's almost like I never left. My new team is going to be an interesting one, and I received my first actual work assignment on Wednesday. I'll be working on the Business Infrastructure and Tools Services team of the ITD group within IBM. Basically that means that we provide tools and services for use by internal IBMers - either for the IBM Intranet or for field personnel out on customer sites. My current project is to help with the conversion of an old Lotus-based application to a WebSphere/DB2 application that is a little more efficient and user-friendly.

The new team seems to be pretty cool, although I find myself being in a situation that I did not want to be in - that of coming into this position on a project that is already somewhat under the gun because my predecessor couldn't do the job. So now I feel that I not only have something to prove (e.g. that I can actually do the job where the previous guy failed) but also that I need to be able to ramp up super quickly and get some production going. I don't really have a benchmark for how long a ramp-up operation should take in my particular case: on the one I hand, I already know the IBM system and don't have to mess around with learning Notes or the ins and outs of the internal machinations; on the other hand, I'm not familiar with the base technology that the site design is using and therefore am having to learn a lot of new terms and systems in order to make my part of the project actually do something.

I'm also still trying to get a feel for the level of work that is expected, and how much overtime people actually put in. My team is almost 100% remote - not necessarily all outside of Austin, but definitely outside the office - and so far I've only met two of the eleven team members in person. It's hard to get to know somebody remotely, and it can be especially hard to find out someone's legitimate work habits because it's easy to appear working when you can just leave yourself online and answer emails in a timely fashion. It's a cultural thing but with the culture removed from the picture, it becomes something that is ridiculously hard to define. Just because someone is online at 11pm, does that mean that they've been working 12-hour days? Probably not. Or maybe so. I can't tell.

Speaking of hours, the whole contracting/hourly thing is kind of a new idea. It would seem that I don't get paid for lunch time and that means in order to get my 40 hours in I am going to need to put in an extra hour somewhere. This isn't a new idea where hourly work is concerned, but it's definitely a different feel for me because that means that if I have a 9-5 core time, let's say, that means I either have to work through lunch or come in at 8 or stay until 6 just to get in an 8-hour day. This is a lot different than my salaried existence, and it is going to take a pretty significant adjustment to my line of thinking. As I have mentioned before, I'm really wary of immediately jumping back into the "I'm so busy I can't even think straight" mentality going from work straight into the evening's activities and then to bed and then right back to repeat the next day, so this idea of thinking about what (to me) seems to be an "extra" hour already is going to take some work.

But, overall, I'm glad to be back working and having a daily purpose. I'm learning quite a bit already and I'm sure I'll learn a ton more in the next couple of weeks and months, so it will definitely be a positive experience in the long run.