Dolson: In The Studio

Busy, busy, week.

Yesterday, we met up with Justin and Paul at Smoakstack. I got hear some Sixpence and play some ping-pong, so that was cool. Then back at Sputnik, Vance opened up my project to start mixing, and. . .where’s the?. . .oh no!

A disc allocation error had put files into a folder where they weren’t supposed to be. Andy Osenga rushed over to help. We were all freaking out a bit, cause in the back of all of our minds we’re preparing for the worst. We may have to re-record what we’ve already done. It was a tense moment that lasted about all night, but Andy was able to find everything but one pass of drums and a background vocal. PTL! (that one’s for my friend’s down in Charleston).

So we were able to get working on the first tune “I’ll Never Be”.


After a long night of mixing I decided to hit up the Opryland Hotel since I have this obsessive compulsive need to stop by that place at least once every time I’m in Nashville. Of course it was all decorated for Christmas with lights galore.

And I had to drop by the arcade.

Although it was a little lame racing myself on the motorcycle game, Colleen.

Yesterday, I had lunch with Mitch, Josh, and one of Mitch’s clients Trish at Barbara’s Meat ‘n’ 3. Delicious southern cooking. Then I had some time to kill before re-tracking drums over at Paul Eckberg’s place, so I bought an ugly Christmas Sweater for the party at Goodwill.

At 4:30 Andy and I met at Paul’s house to do the drum part of “Can’t Keep On Running”. Paul played drums on Tide back in 2005. In fact, Sputnik was being renovated back then, so we did the whole record at his place with Mitch.

We got the drums recorded in record time, and they sound great.

Back at Sputnik, Josh and I got some Gyros and Hummus and watched the Office before heading to the Mercy Lounge to catch Justin Rosolini’s CD Release Party.

Today, I’m having lunch with Osenga and heading off to Johnson City to play tonight at Poor Richards.

Greetings from Nashville, TN

Hey ya’ll. I hear there’s a foot of snow back in Ohio. I wish I could say that it’s crazy warm here, but that would be a lie. It’s definitely brisk if I do say so myself, but no snow. But much to the contrary of most Ohioans, I love the snow. Can’t get enough of it….i just hate that in between rainy, cold, cloudy weather that we seem to get quite frequently.

Anyways, we’ve been having some good times down here in TN. And by we, I mean myself and Joshua Vance Smith, assistant Engineer extraordinaire. Josh is my buddy down here, who actually lives in the Studio that I’ve been working at. Here’s a picture of him from my trip down here in July.

Like I said, Josh lives in the Studio, so we’ve been hanging out alot.

Last night, we went to our spot, The International Famous Twin Kegs. Over the summer, Josh, Jerry, Colleen and I all went there my last night in town and met this dude Lester who was passed out at the bar, and took pictures of him.

Well, this time was a little more interesting. It was karaoke night, and apparently it’s the lesbian hang out, cause we were the only dudes there, and the ladies didn’t seem to notice us….haha.

So today we hung out around the studio, and decided to start working on Josh’s project for the backyard. We raked out all the leaves, and pulled vines out of the tree for about 3 hours. It was hard work, but the backyard is gonna look great for the Sputnik Christmas party.

I got to hear some cool records being worked on while we toiled away. Then we got into the Lovedrug-Copeland show for FREE, which is always a good thing. I finally bought “Sucker Punch Show” and was listening to it on the drive home. It sounds great.

Since we were already downtown we hit up some honkey-tonks, and enjoyed a fried bologna sandwich from Robert’s Western somethin or other.

Tomorrow, I’ll meet up with my buddy Justin who’s working at Smoakstack, the studio where we tracked drums and bass for “Eighty-nine”, and Josh and I will be chillin with Vance at Sputnik tomorrow night. Maybe I’ll get a mix or two? cross your fingers.

Heading Back to Nashville

What up everybody!

Sorry I haven’t posted in so long. It’s been a crazy week. I’ve been back in Ohio meeting up with old friends, and seein a whole bunch of great shows.

On Wednesday, I reconnected with my dude Erik from the Speedbumps to lay out our initial plans for the Dolson/Speedbumps Tour this January. It’s really happening. In a matter of a few days we booked almost 2 and a half weeks straight hitting NYC, the North East, and down into the Carolina’s.

I seriously haven’t seen Erik in like 3 years, but since we met up on Wednesday I’ve seen him literally every day since then, and totally unplanned too. We’ve just been running into each other all over the place.

On Friday night I went to see my buddy Andy Osenga play with Caedmon’s Call.



Andy’s my friend from Nashville who helped me produce my record this summer. The best part of the night, Andy asked me to bring my guitar cause they forgot to bring an extra acoustic for Cliff, and I got to see my Seagull on stage.

The show was done early enough that I went to downtown Kent and caught a few really cool bands at the Kent Folk Festival.

Tomorrow morning I’m driving down to Nashville to hang out with some friends and hopefully get some mixes to bring home.

I’ll keep ya’ll posted.

What? that’s not Dolson?!

So I got a call today from a friend of mine telling me that they found a link to my website on a local coffeeshop’s site. Interested he clicked the link only to find a site that very much was not mine. No, no, no….not one of those sites. No, he stumbled upon this. . .

Chains of Humanity: Death Metal Grunge Band from Deleware at www.myspace.com/andydolson.

In August I renamed my myspace url to www.myspace.com/dolsonmusic. No more than a month later did someone snag that url and post a death metal grunge band to my old myspace url.

Just wanted to let you know in case you thought I sold my acoustic, bought a BC Rich and started playing blast beats. haha…..

If you want the link to my current myspace it’s myspace.com/dolsonmusic

I still can’t believe I missed this

3pm CST
Apple Store Information:
679 North Michigan Ave.
Chicago, IL 60611
(312) 981-4104
http://www.apple.com/retail/northmichiganavenue/
30 MINUTE SOLO SET
30 MINUTE SIGNING TO FOLLOW

I was right down the street and I didn’t know about it!

Dolson November Tour: Day 6 (Charlotte, NC)

Friday morning I woke up early and spent a few hours at Wrightsville Beach. The weather was gorgeous, 70 degrees, and beautifully sunny, perfect for a jog on the beach.

After another visit to my favorite shower/sink I drove the 4 hours to Charlotte to the Evening Muse. This was the best room that I played all week. The sound was perfect, the crowd was attentive, and the other acts on the bill were just fun to hang with. Here’s my buddy Dylan Sneed who got me on the bill for the night.

Check out his stuff at myspace.com/dylansneed

Check out these other friend’s of mine from Friday night.

Brett Davis
Brian McGee
Dancer Versus Politician

Yesterday was the long trip back up 77, but I decided to change it up a bit. Rather than drive through the Big Walker Mountain, I decided to drive over the Big Walker Mountain on the Scenic Bypass.

At the top there was this little country store that had a tower. You had to pay $5, but I said, hey, why not support the local economy and get some snapshots from another 80 feet up.


It was freezing up there at 3400 feet, let me tell you.



And a long way down….(I’m not much of a fan of heights mind you)

Then I met a guy who watches birds for a living, and he helped me find a trail on the ridge of the mountain to go for a jog. I was nervous the whole way, it being hunting season and all, that I was going to be mistaken for game and end up stuffed and mounted on someone’s wall.

Since I’m writing this post, I guess it’s obvious that I made it home. I’ll be home all week, perfect timing to see my buddy Andy Osenga at Hudson Community Chapel this Thursday night with Caedmon’s Call.

You should come out to the show.

Dolson

Dolson November Tour: Day 5 (Charleston/Wilmington)

So. . .Charleston. What a town! I had the most fun in Charleston that I’ve had in all of the cities I’ve been to, but it wasn’t all just about the town. I’ll just give you a run down of my time in Charleston as best I can.

You already know about my volleyball playin, and my fountain climbing, so I’ll start on Wednesday night.

Since I didn’t have anything booked in town I decided to try my networking skills and head downtown to find some places to play. The whole night was this crazy serendipitous unfolding. I was eating at this place called Johnson’s. They’re one of the venues that brings in bands from out of town. So I’m sitting at the bar, and these two girls sit down next to me. We ended up talking. The one knew a whole bunch of venue owners, and they both knew the band playing that night, so they got me up to play a few songs, totally unplanned. It was great.

So Thursday was the most adventurous day of the whole tour, maybe even the year.
I got up early to drive Rachel’s friend to the airport so I got to catch the Charleston sunrise.


Rachel and I caught the geocaching bug from our find the day before so we made a point to check out the geocaching.com site and find some caches nearby.

I think the pictures tell a better story than I ever will, so I’ll post those.

This was the path to our first official cache hunt. We looked everywhere before rereading the hints and realized that we needn’t search anywhere but near the dock. Oh well, the anticipation made the find all the more exciting!

Rachel spotted the cache first.

look how excited i was!

rachel was even more excited!….actually i think she makes that face in every picture.

Geocaching would probably be the most fun family adventure, especially for younger kids. Why you ask? well, when you find it, you get a prize that someone before you left inside. In return, you leave something for the next lucky geocachers.

you always have to leave a note, with your names and the date you found the cache.

their was a disposable camera in the cache. I took another shot with my camera, but this is pretty much the shot that proves we found the cache.

We found a web cam cache on the Citadel’s campus. The citadel is a military style school. All the boys where uniforms and address their superiors as sir, but they’re not active duty military. Anyways there was a cach set up where you log onto a website and you can control one of the cameras on the roof of the dorms. You pan, tilt, zoom, and snap a photo of yourself standing there. It was fun, but a little creepy when you think about it.

You can see the camera in the upper left of this photo right above the palm tree. After the Citadel cache we decided to get lunch at a local joint Lenny’s. Mom was cooking in the back, and daughter was running the cash register. This was some real down home cookin’, and it filled us up. The sweet corn bread did me in.


Asia was the daughters name, and apparently she was looking for a photographer, so her mom came out to give us some contact info when she saw us taking pictures.

Back at Rachel’s porch we met Marsell when she stopped by asking for food. Rachel and Stephanie made her some sandwiches and packed her some water. She sat down and started talking with us and then she started to fall asleep. I don’t think she was well, and she must have been dehydrated, but she wouldn’t drink the water or let us take her anywhere. She eventually got up and wandered down the street. I hope she’s ok.

We did one more cache before I left for Wilmington. The last one was easy, but we came up with the unofficial street symbol for geocaching. It looks something like this.

Then, yes, ther’s still more! We rode our bikes up the Ravenel Bridge across the Cooper River.

We rode our bikes 2.5 miles uphill. It was intense on the way up, but we got to see the sun sitting low in the sky over the Charleston skyline.

On the way down we cheared on a highschool cross country team with a bike horn and high fives.

Then it was time to leave Charleston :(

wheww. That’s alot for one post. I’ll have to catch you up to where I am tomorrow, but I will tell you that right now, at this very moment, I am at the Evening Muse in Charlotte, NC, and this has been my favorite room to play thus far.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll talk to ya’ll tomorrow.

Dolson November Tour: Days 3 & 4 (Charleston, SC)

I think that my sleep schedule is back to normal now….well as normal as my sleep schedule ever was.

I drove through the night on Monday from Wilmington to Charleston. It was actually a nice drive, straight down 17 the whole way. I arrived around 5 AM, and decided to check out Folly Beach.

It was dark and I couldn’t see anything so I decided to turn in for the night….I mean. . .day.

Yesterday, I woke up around 3:30 PM. Went for a jog. Ate some spaghetti for dinner and then played a few games of volleyball. . .Yeah, that’s right. Volleyball. My friend Rachel from High School lives down here. She’s working as a nurse at the hospital and she and some people from around here are in a Volleyball league that plays on Tuesday nights. Surprisingly, I wasn’t the worst player on the team, and for those of you who’ve seen my volleyball skills before know that means we just plain sucked!

Today Rachel and I went for a bike ride in town.


I borrowed her friends single track bike. It was my first time on a single track, so it took a little getting used to, but I like it.

We checked out battery park, and the docks.




I climbed in the fountain.

Then we found this little treasure. There was a pill bottle sitting on the bench that turned out to be a sortof geocaching thing.



We put our names on the list and left some things inside for the next people to find.

I think we might go geocaching tomorrow for real.

We rode our bikes back uptown in search of the gourmet cupcake store which we found, only after stumbling across the theater from the beginning of the notebook.

Here I am reenacting the scene. Check out those white legs.

It was kinda crazy, considering that there was oncoming traffic.

We went for a run and now I’m about to go downtown and find some places to play here the next time I come down this way.

Tomorrow night I’ll be in Wilmington at the Juggling Gypsy.

November Tour: Day 2 (Wilmington, NC)

Good morning! Well, good afternoon. I just rolled into Charleston, SC, this morning around 5:00 AM, and got to bed around 7:30 AM.

From what I can tell, I’m gonna like it here.

Last night I was back in Wilmington, NC, so I stopped by the Juggling Gypsy to say hi to some friends, and let them know I’d be back on Thursday night.

Then I made my way back to Wrightsville Beach to go for a jog on the island loop. It was definitely raining and dark, but alot warmer than Ohio. So. . . .I’m all sweaty and gross, and really need a shower . . . .so I found myself the nicest shower I could.


You gotta do what you gotta do right? haha

I got to play with Wes Hutchinson at Fibber McGee’s down in Wilmington. He’s got some cool stuff, and some cool stories. Like the Gibson Hummingbird that he got from Gibson, just for playing on TV with Clay Aiken. (he probably didn’t want me to post that, . . . .oops. sorry Wes. I thought it was a cool story)

I get to go back to Wilmington on Thursday. Maybe I’ll play a song or two at Tydes with Wes, and then it’s off to the Drum Circle/Fire at the Juggling Gypsy. Good times.

After the gig, I drove 17 South to Charleston, passing through Myrtle Beach. I decided to drive on Ocean Blvd for a bit to take some pictures of the place my buddy Aaron and I were in High School.

See it. . .right there. That’s where Aaron and I played our guitars and made $80 in 3 hours just from tips. People making fun of us would laugh and throw a quarter at us….who’s laughing now?

November 2: Winston-Salem, NC

Greetings from Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

I’m back again. As it would seem, this is quite the popular stop for myself, but it just plain makes sense. It’s about 7 hours from Akron. It’s right off 77, so it’s on the way to any city in NC, and I have friends in town, so I can stay for free, so tonight I booked a show at Finnigan’s Wake in downtown Winston for the fun of it, and it was fun. My buddy Jerry came out, and some folks from down here. I met some new people like Rachel, and Melissa, and I got to play some music. For free food, who could turn that down?

The drive down was alright. The days are definitely getting shorter. It was dark near Charlston, WV, this time, but I downloaded some podcasts to keep me company on the way down, and that made the trip.

I wanna show you guys a video from my buddy Jerry Chapman. He’s a fellow artist from down here in NC. He was in Nashville the same week as me working with producer Mitch Dane, the dude I worked with in 2005. Jerry had his camera with him while he was in the studio, so I thought I’d share it with ya’ll and you could get a glimpse of Sputnik, the birthplace of half of my new record “Eighty-nine”. Check it out.

Tomorrow, it’s off to Wilmington again. Hope to see you there!