A note from Luke: Blog #5 "Eye of the Tiger"

It's been a long day. I'm riding shotgun in the van right now and Tyler is our captain for the evening. The others are sleeping right now. Ty and I took the first shift. It's 2:05 AM.

We started the day around 6AM yesterday morning because we had to be in Killen, AL at 2PM for a pep rally at Brooks High School. I know, sounds weird, but it was actually amazing. We had a blast. We haven't really played the area but the radio station, WMSR STAR94, in Tuscumbia, AL has been playing us in heavy rotation. So the kids at the pep rally were extremely welcoming and quite excited that we were there. We met Fat Guy (yes that's his name. I'm not just being mean and calling him fat). He's a DJ at Star94 and a great guy. He introduced us to the crowd and we went out to the middle of a roaring gym full of students with just my acoustic guitar and a mic. They didn't have a mic stand so Zach had to hold my mic the whole time haha. We performed "Seventeen at Three in the Morning." I asked all the cheerleaders to come out to the middle of the gym with us and help with the stomps and claps. They followed Taylor's lead and the rest of the gym followed them. It was really cool. They knew the song and sang along and stomped their feet and clapped their hands... It was kind of like living out our music video. A pretty neat experience to say the least.

After the pep rally, we went over to the radio station and recorded a hilarious, inappropriate, and mostly unusable interview haha But Fat Guy pieced something together and aired it later that night.

We tried to rest for a while after that because we knew we had a long night ahead of us. Unfortunately, we couldn't really sleep so we headed over to this little diner called "Southland" I think. We try to eat at every little "mom and pop" type diner we can find on our journeys. They're so much more interesting than chain restaurants. The staff, the customers, the history of the restaurant. And the menus are usually rather interesting. We all loaded up on some good ol Alabama country cookin. As usual, we scared most of the other customers away shortly after we arrived and we drove our waitress crazy... but she was pretty amused by us.

By then, it was almost time to load in at the club. We played at Old Town Tavern. It was the cd release show for a band called "Firewood." They were really nice guys and we had a great time with them. Check them out on myspace. Hopefully we'll have some Van-Cam Footage for you guys soon.

That pretty much catches us up to now... The long and winding road home. We'll probably get home around 7AM, hit the sack for a few hours, and then get up and drive to Charlotte, NC. We're playing a show with our friends Hot Vegas at The Evening Muse. All in a day's work...

Wish us luck!

-Luke

A note from Luke: Blog #4 "Big Willie Style?"

I awoke this morning with the theme song to Men in Black stuck in my head. What an odd way to greet the new day. I haven't seen that movie in years and I'm pretty sure I haven't heard any Will Smith songs in ages either. I always liked Will Smith as an actor, although he has starred in some films that I felt weren't the best portrayals of my favorite books. I Robot and I am Legend to be specific. But I'm not a film critic so I wouldn't pay too much attention to this haha. I'm a pretty big fan of Isaac Asimov, who was the author of I Robot as well as Bicentennial Man and tons of other great books. Yes, I am a total dork for reading robot literature, but I would recommend you check him out.

I am Legend, written by Richard Matheson, was a brilliant book way ahead of its time. Most people don't realize that virtually every zombie film has been based on his writing. Matheson was the first author to pen the idea that being a vampire or zombie could be viral. Clearly you can see the impact he's had from Night of the Living Dead to Resident Evil and 28 Weeks/Months Later and the list goes on and on. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed the film version of I am Legend. Unfortunately, I was a huge fan of the book first so I kind of had some pre-conceived notions of what I thought the movie should be.

Anyway, if you have our new album Over the Top or Under the Weather then you've heard the first track Sunrise. I never really considered it a song… it's more of an intro to the record. When I wrote the lyrics for that song it was shortly after I read I am Legend. The lyrics are based on that book. But I read that book and wrote those lyrics years ago… long before I ever got wind that they were making a major motion picture. So once the movie came out I couldn't very well tell people it was based on I am Legend. They would assume I was referring to the movie and I would therefore sound like a trendy loser haha.

Sunrise and Sunset were really last minute additions to the album. We hadn't actually discussed an intro and outro, it was just something I started experimenting with in the final stages of mixing the new album. Oddly enough, Sunrise ended up being one of our more popular songs online and our most downloaded song on iTunes… and it's only like a minute and twenty seconds long haha.

The book I am Legend also inspired the name of my side project, Saturday Evening Ghost. Some of you may be familiar with some of my SEG songs, but most of you probably aren't as I've pretty much neglected the project over the past few years. However, I am happy to announce that I have begun recording a SEG album and plan to have some of those songs up online soon! I don't know if I'll ever press any hard copies or not. It may just be a digital album or EP. I guess we'll just see where it goes. You can check out some of my older SEG songs right now at www.myspace.com/saturdayeveningghost

Thanks for reading my ramblings :)

-Luke