Kevin, Shake That Bacon!

Know Eye Inn Teem rocked our very first performance before a live audience on Saturday, debuting our original tribute to Kevin Bacon, "Kevin, Shake That Bacon." The occasion was Kevin's 50th birthday party, which I hosted.

The song was not only the highlight of the party, but in fact one of my favorite moments of all of 2008. The audience ate it up. They even sang along to the chorus. Kevin said we put the Bacon Brothers to shame.

This was the also the debut of our brand-new drummer, Chris White. Chris was fantastic. The song with his drumming sounded innumerably many orders of magnitude better than without the drumming. It was like he took the song that Cerin and I wrote, and made it MUSIC. Unbelievably, he had not even heard the song until he showed up that night, but he dove right in and blew everyone away. Chris has signed on for our next album this November, and I am wildly excited about it. Expect big things from KEIT in November!

Marching To The Beat Of A Different Drum

Know Eye Inn Teem violinist Brad Scriber is Band Member Of The Month for June, because he found us some drums. No more banging on pan lids in 2008! Yay!

Brad has a neighbor, Dirk, who finds auctions and estate sales irresistable, and the man had acquired himself a boatload of drums. Wanting to clear some space in his basement, Dirk offered me all of his drums (maybe a dozen?) for a hundred bucks. I was tempted, obviously, but keeping in mind that I have limited means of transportation, and limited storage space and, well, I don't actually play the drums, I settled on 3 pieces, a stool, and some miscellaneous accessories for $50. Pretty sweet.

But what's missing from this picture? Right, a DRUMMER. Which leads to my second piece of news: we MAY have lined up a drummer. My coworker Chris White is a drummer, and was on board for our next album for about 10 golden minutes after I told him about the band, until I stupidly told him about NaNoWriMo (http://www.nanowrimo.org/), which got me my start in music (see my very first blog entry). At that, Chris decided he wanted to write a novel in one month in November, not record an album. Consequently, I am considering recording our second album in October instead, so Chris can participate. However, I got a lukewarm reception to this plan from keyboardist Mic, who thought there might still be good weather in October, and he might want to go out and enjoy it rather than spending hours in the gloomy, 70s-style, fake-wood-paneled KEIT studio, i.e. my basement. I'm pondering this.

Meanwhile, there's more. I have written lyrics to a new song, and I even kind of know how I want it to sound. It is a depressing song about a break-up. It is not autobiographical, because for me to write an autobiographical song about a break-up, I would first need to get someone to go out with me.

I am also working on a tribute number for Kevin Bacon's 50th birthday, which I hope to debut at the party I will throw for Kevin in July. It is called "Kevin, Shake That Bacon."

And finally, KEIT got some great publicity when loyal groupie and talented photographer Kristian Whipple featured a photo of me in his series, "Half-Truths." My half-truth? "I am a rock star," of course! All the photos in the series were displayed at Artomatic (http://www.artomatic.org/). That made me giddy.