A Day In The Life

Yesterday began not like most days, but not especially unusually, either. I woke up feeling beat, tired, and generally unmotivated to do anything resembling productive. Nonetheless, I made sure that I at least started to get down to some business: I made it to the gym, returned a call or two, and probably managed to accomplish a handful of other less-than-exciting things.

The turn came in the afternoon, when I got on the phone with T-Ward to discuss some stuff totally unrelated to music, recording, touring, or anything else that you'd probably think would make this blog post interesting. Tyler, however, in his characteristically spontaneous way, ended up asking me if I could jet on over to Drew's studio in order to record a few new drum parts for the upcoming album.

And so I did.

After about an hour of working with the scratch track in order to come up with a competent idea, I made my way over to 232 Studios. Drew and I set up the kit, got the software working, and got to work. Four hours later, we sent a handful of different ideas back to Tyler for a couple of new songs entitled 'Someday' and 'Trench Coat Angel'.


And now I find myself wondering if I'm going to end up playing those same drum parts (or some version of them, anyway) almost every single night from October through December while we're out on the road. I sort of laugh to myself when I think about it: a day that started out feeling slow, routine, and generally unproductive could end up affecting every show of the tour. And sometimes that's just how it goes with this music thing - it's very rarely planned out, well-organized, or intentional. More often we're flying by the seat of our pants, responding to the moments of inspiration, and scrambling to get the ideas down on tape.

It's not a very Type A-sort-of life, I guess. Maybe we musicians truly weren't wired to work in cubicles or live according to pocket planners. The joke is in the title, 'A Day In The Life', because there really isn't such a thing. Even the more normal or routine days have their little surprises. Let's just hope the spontaneity ends up working well... I guess we'll find out on September 18th!