January 4th

Driving to Hollywood, Florida
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I don't remember much of this day because 16 hours of it was spent in the Blaze. I DO remember I felt like a tragic failure to the band when I had to pull over at a rest stop to nap twice in 30 minutes. pathetic. sorry guys.

At daybreak Zac had started driving and he followed our migrating friends towards Hollywood, FL.



The town of "Jupiter"...we were on the right track...time for a celebratory feast!

So weird that today looks like this....

When just yesterday looked like this...

Sorry NY.....not bragging....just sayin'....

We got to Hollywood with an hour to spare so we checked into the hotel room....got some showers in....and went to the Hollywood Beach Festival. Before a show Zac only has 2 warm-ups. One is drinking whiskey...and the other is this hand coordination thingy. Zac was teaching his hand warm-ups to K... they're kinda hard...He holds both his hands out and randomly brings the same fingers next to each other on both hands....then he gets advanced and has each hand touching it's own set of fingers independently.



Before a show Pat has 2 warm-ups to choose from as well. One is drinking whiskey...and the other is watching for beach-combing golf carts with one headlight out. If he finds one he shouts "Pa-Diddle!" and punches you in the forehead.

no luck on this one.

Here I am on the ACTUAL beach in a bandshell that's made to LOOK like a beach doing my broke-ass drummer warm-up....examining each of the 3 sticks I own to see which one is gonna break first.... and by which song.... and can I feasibly play the rest of that song with my hands.

I shouldn't have boasted too much about the weather cuz it started raining in the middle of Strange Teacher. The stage was "kinda" covered so we invited the audience on stage while we finished the song. That quickly led to everyone posing next to us for pictures while we played...kind of a bizarre experience. Only but a few die hard music lovers decided to stay below and get wet for Zac's flute solo....


We met our friend Peggy and her husband James after the show...Peggy's basically on tour with us and coming to 6 shows.....dedication!

Sorry for the short set Hollywood, but we might come back in the fall...

Thanks David and Holly!

D

First Day of Tour

It's 4am on Jan. 3rd and we're officially flying south for the winter!


We got in the blaze and just followed all the duck formations till we reached our next stop....

...Wal-Mart.

We saw an Amish man inside...and then found the "emissions" of his vehicle....i'm quite certain there's nothing sadder than a Wal-Mart with a heaping Hot Pile of Horse Shit at the entrance....

We needed some nourishing food for the van, so Pat lead us straight to aisle 7.....He claims that Cheez-Its are now fortified with 27 essential vitamins....including Vitamin F (atty)

We got to the Ishibashi's house in Norfolk, VA around 2pm....ate ourselves sleepy with the sushi feast they prepared.....and then we took a nap. By the time we woke up our laundry was done and folded, ANOTHER huge meal was on the dinner table, and Mr. ishibashi was drinking sake in the garage with no shirt on. We got to see Mocha and Sola at the house too...Sola is still obsessed with Princesses and wore an elegant evening gown all night. We showered up and hit the road again....



Thanks Mr. and Mrs. Ishibashi!!!!

D

January 2nd

Last Day at The Carriage House, CT
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We only have one day left in the studio!!! Soooooo much to do. Like finish up this WAFFLE HOUSE CHRISTMAS SONG we did. I had hoped to get it finished and in Waffle House jukeboxes by Christmas but we dropped the ball. Our first Nuts & Gum Tour was through most of the mid-west and we found ourselves eating at Waffle Houses daily. We also found ourselves fat. Unlike now-a-days with the $5 footlong at Subway...yay! (best thing to ever happen to us). ANyway, We recorded a song in honor of Waffle House and finally finished mixing it today with the assistant engineer, Brendan Muhldavey.



We'll get this track up on our myspace page or my personal one shortly. I'm singing lead (yikes), Zac's on back up and guitar, and Pat is rockin the Hill-Billy Bass.

Our Intern Erica was hanging around and designed a flyer for us....you can see it on our facebook fan page. She's awesome.

Here's the facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jupiter-One/6325284791

Our ever so thoughtful A&R rep, Ruby Marchand, came up for the second time to visit and give the tracks a listen. She also brought us a cake again! This time it said Happy New Year....we love her....cake or no cake.


We worked all through the night while Pat skyped with ZImmer....smile Zimmer!


Our frined Dan Konopka (drummer from OK GO) is sequencing the record for us. That means he's listening to all the songs and deciding the best order. We wrote him a little note.....put the record fresh off the press into an envelope....and sent it out. He's busy recording the next OK GO record with Dave Freidman out in upstate NY.



We're done! Thank you Chris "ChocoBando" Ribando for getting the BEST possible sounds and for putting up with the WORST possible arguments. Thank you Brendan and Mikail for all the dirty-work and making yourselves so accessible. Thank you Johnny and Heather for inviting us to your beautiful home on Christmas, for all the cooking, cleaning, and laundry, for all the studio time, for all the patience you showed when we turned the heat up (every night), and for providing musicians with an AMAZING studio to make music in. The Carriage House will be remembered fondly.....and so will the dogs!

D

New Year's Day

Back at the Carriage House, CT
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Zac slept in the city that night and got a ride back up with our friend Ricky Valente. Our friends Chris Olsen and Dave Feddock have a band called "The Hot Left." Zac happens to live with them too. They just finished their first record with the MOST incredible art work we've ever seen.

The art direction was provided by the the talented Pat Pope. Pat was seeing Zac off and slipped this impromptu illustration in his bag....something to remember his housemates by whilst touring the south.

Please keep an eye out for our newest "Fire Away" music video directed by this genius. Coming soon....

K and I picked up our manager, Ryan, on the way up...Ryan was such a sweetheart he brought us bagels...notice the sharp outfit. He was meeting his fiance later for "date night." Awwwww....

We had to start the mix session a LITTLE late today because our engineer, Chris Ribando (ChocoBando), spent all night/morning in the Police Station. Apparently strangers shouldn't offer their un-welcomed opinions when there's a trash can nearby.....unless having said trash can smashed over your head is what you're going for.
At any rate, K thought he could start messing around with the control board while we waited for Choco's bail to be set....unfortunately Chris had prepared for that already by leaving a dissuasive note the night before.
After one simple edit, we realized the note was misinterpreted....Chris actually WANTED K to mess with his settings...


All was well when Chris arrived. No charges had been pressed. Ryan was halfway through "date night" when i got the text he might be "getting lucky." Pat was watching Family Guy. Zac was reading about the purpose of scent in regards to mating. I was screening. And K was drawing free association pictures....


D

New Year's Eve

Brooklyn Show
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This morning Zac found a website that will help locate your "Spirit Animal" based on a series of extremely introspective questions.

After 2 and a half hours of soul-searching surveys, the result had FINALLY come back....

However, Zac decided to use the prefix "Mountain" which gives it a bit more "edge." In conclusion, Zac's official spirit animal is a Mountain Cat.

Today is the ONLY day we actually had to LEAVE the Carriage House and "DO" something. So of course, it snowed...a lot.

We mixed what we could and then headed down to Brooklyn for the Crystal Castle's After-Party show in Williamsburgh. We played with another band from Philly called "Liam and Me." The valiant Ricky Valente played "tour manager" and accidently wound up playing "sound guy" too....(sucks to be smart). We wound up bringing him on stage to play Radiohead's "The Bends" with me and Pat...always fun. Our friends Zimmer, Nichole, Evelyn, Aparna, Melissa, Laura, Christel, Ilinor, Ana, Hannah, Alana, Scott, Erica, Rawan, Celeste, Josh, and some others I'm forgetting were hanging with us all night....it was a fun New Year's Eve!



During the show, SOMEONE on stage had Lois ( Pat's camera).....let's take a look at the subject matter below and have a guess who Pat's favorite band member is....some pretty dedicated camera-work here:



After the show, Pat had to drive K's inebriated ass all the way back to CT. The only thing that gave him solace in the LITERALLY 50 degree freezing cabin, was THEEEE most amount of cash he's seen since his confirmation at age 13.

One Hundred and Forty Dollars!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He quickly got on the horn with the manufacturers of CHEEZ-ITs and ordered a baker's dozen.

Happy New Year Everyone!

D

The Carraige House, CT

Woke up this morning to the sounds of K playing harpsichord. weird. but kinda cool.

He's busy throwing a bunch of parts on his song People of The Mountain while the "cats are away." I missed everybody so much that I found us all our own little SMURF personas...this way we'd always be together. (that either sounds cute or Single White Female-ish)

Zac


Mocha and their baby Sola


K (this SMURF is wearing a gi AND sleeping. C'Mon! does it get any better??)


Dave (also known as "Party-Time Dave" when the Burnett's clan shows up)



Pat (duh. peace pipe. obvi)


We also have a random Green Army Rocker Guy to represent our Engineer Head, Chris Choco-Bando...


This is our assistant engineer Brandon.....sorry buddy...no SMURF :(

But if we DID have a Brandon SMURF you'd be the book-worm guy. Cuz yer smart. Not nerdy. there's a difference.

wait a minute...wait a minute....what's this? I hear the blaze......yay! The whole gang is back!


Ahhhh.....i'm gonna go jump on the beds now.

D