Lose Yourself

Just in from a few miles in Central Park…

The humidity has finally lifted. The air has been crisp and cool all week. Most morning, I’ve flung the doors wide on my deck — damn the AC. I’ve been getting a little New Age out there, starting each morning with a few sets of Masters and even a Cobra or two, plus the usual stuff to stretch my aging glutes and IT band and such. I’m sure my neighbors love it.

I have an eighteen mile New York City Marathon Tune-Up race in the morning. I’ve been buckling down on the training again the last few weeks. The Heartland Express Tour and my subsequent back injury (darned road cases) didn’t help matters much (nor did the woman at the surf shop offering me an extra large wet suit last week), but I’m in for marathon number six, so I gotta’ get crackalackin’.

Doesn’t stop me from my usual hyomanic overactivity. After the usual ten hours at The MTV (paying no mind to the fact that I was supposed to have yesterday and today off), I stopped in on Miss Tanya’s Hurricane Relief Benefit at Stitch. It was a virtual blogger orgy: Fish, Klein, Rose, Torrie — even ‘Lil G. I won a few t-shirts in the raffle, first time I’ve won anything since snagging a few bars of tugboat-shaped soap in fourth grade. Thanks Tanya! (Check out the pics.)

I raced uptown afterwards to record Wynn Walent. Wynn’s joining Chris, Casey and I on our Broken Hearts Acoustic Review Tour in a few months. We’re still pulling it all together, and Wynn needed a few new demos. So I invited him over to Skyline Studios (aka my bedroom) and we knocked a few tracks out. Talented kid. Good songs. We’re gonna’ get along fine.

Which reminds me: Nadas Jon Locker and Mike Butterworth wrapped tracking on my forthcoming CD, “Heartland,” yesterday afternoon all the way out in Des Moines, Iowa. Mike dropped vocals on “Harder To Believe,” “Milk & Honey,” and put a mandolin part on “Long Way Down.” So now the files come back to me where I mix in a few guitar parts Chris recorded, plus a few new vocals. then it’s off to Kevin in Minneapolis for mixing. I told him yesterday to be mercilous. If it doesn’t sound like it belongs, I said, cut it out.

Last winter — when I wasn’t at my best — my friend Kat made me a t-shirt that said “More Rock, Less Suck.” Every once and a while over the last year she’ll drop me an email that simply asks, “S::R?” Love it. I ran into her at Miss Tanya’s last night, and told her just how meaningful the little gesture was to me. Then she asked, “So? Rock to suck?”

And I was like, “Dude, ten to one. No question.”