a.belle and the great wasabi challenge.

a few weeks ago i was enjoying some sushi at a nashville restaurant called PM with my friends tim schurrer and adam agin, when adam dared me to consume an entire chunk of wasabi paste in one bite. being the young, brass, lad that i am, i accepted his challenge and ate the entire serving of wasabi. these are the results:

thanks to tim schurrer for the video…also, thanks to adam agin (not really though because the wasabi coated my stomach and i wanted to puke for 2 days) for daring me to do it.

happy halloween!

-ab

ville livin’.

a few days ago i decided to pack up and head down to nashville for the week. i have a few friends there; so a tank of gas, two statelines, and about six sandwiches (thanks ello) later… here i am.

i’m staying at my friend adam agin’s house (who’s landlord is matt wertz, funnily enough) here on the south side of nashville. we’ve spent the past few days rehearsing for my upcoming cd release show as well as working on some new co-write efforts. the first night i was here, i met up w/ an engineer from nashville’s famous quad studios and was given a full tour of the building. it was unreal. so many classic records were tracked there so it was amazing to be able to roam the same boothes that people like neil young or dolly parton recorded some of their biggest records in.

last night adam and i decided that we would come up w/ simple 4 chord progression and then both retreat to opposite sides of the house to come up w/ our own lyrics and melodies. after about 30 minutes we came back together and i had written a solid verse melody but couldn’t solidify a chorus; and coincidentally, adam didn’t really have much of a verse but came up w/ a great chorus. we fused the two together, created a bunch of lyrics and a bridge and before we knew it we had a brand new song. its tenatively titled ‘all that could have been’ and were pretty excited about it.

tomorrow, adam and i will head over to record one of my newest songs w/ a producer here in town. the plan is to finish an entire track, start to finish, in about 15hrs or so….we’ll see what happens…

i’ll be heading back to chicago on saturday i think…not looking forward to another 8hrs alone in the car but i bought a few new cd’s to keep my company…

-ab

so long sweet summer.

i don’t really care for dashboard confessional much these days but i felt it appropriate to quote him in the title of this blog. Today, as i left the front door to my house and felt the ensuing cold autumn’s breeze across my chest and face, i had to back peddle inside for my favorite american apparel hoodie jacket. In doing so i was harshly reminded that the brisk months of fall are upon us and the long (yet sweaty) days of summer are long gone for another 250 days or so. It was a great summer. A couple of trips up to my family’s lake house in Galena, a few concerts, and plenty of cookouts on my homer simpson special edition weber grill in Evanston, IL. Although I think the thing i am going to miss the least about summer is my sweaty HM jeans. There’s nothing worse then rolling a piano that you got for free from an estate sale 3 blocks in the blazing sun and realizing that you chose to wear long sleezes and jeans that really havent been broken in yet…

Even though its sad, I greatly look forward to the coming month of October. Halloween, caramel apples, pumkin carving, cider, and of course my cd release show on october 30th :) stay warm…

-ab

why ryan adams rules the world.

dear ryan, you’re my hero.

love, ab

ps – you have a dirty mouth.