In order of importance:

— condolences to those on my friends’ list who are dealing with fear and loss this week.

— completed the recording of the CD today. mastering is in progress. hope to have a couple of sample cuts on the Myspace before mid-week — will keep you posted.

this is not ego talking: it’s going to be terrific. chris has been a godsend as our producer and engineer, and faro’s taken this whole collaboration thing to a new level. we laid down fifteen tracks in 3 and 1/2 hours this afternoon, to give you an idea of what i mean.

we decided to re-record all but one of the tracks we laid down last weekend, then wrote and recorded the remaining five tracks during the session. Faro and i essentially did the last couple of pieces as free improvisations, laying down the tracks as we created them; in both cases we elected to go back and do second takes to be sure we were on track, but i would have been happy to use the first takes (although in both cases, we liked the second takes better).

we elected not to use any of the live tracks we recorded at the Cantab on Wednesday because of the issue with Faro’s bass and because of the bleedthrough of the blues jam upstairs, but i did listen to the tracks and you can tell the show really did kick butt. not just saying that; we were on, probably because of adrenalin and nerves more than anything else.

i had tears in my eyes during the session as we pulled together the final poem, “Where Do You Live?” which is an older poem I do fairly frequently but which fits into the theme of the overall show and closes it beautifully. Faro outdid himself with the guitar backup he created for this, and i’ve completely revamped my usual performance of it to match his vision which was different from my own. it works amazingly well.

point of interest: far more guitar backup than bass on this CD; just the way it worked out.

— the book and CD will be available at our October 6 show at the Perishable Theater in Providence. i’ll be ramping up details on this within the next few days.

— on top of all this i’m getting a cold, fever, something on those lines. typical after an emotional rollercoaster comes to a stop, plus i’ve been exposed to illness over the last couple of days. figures, but i’ll muddle through.

— big doings at Gotpoetry Live in a couple of weeks; we’re going to have a poetry + music night. extended open, no feature, with musicians available to back you up when you read. (hint: everyone’s favorite bass player is already signed on and more to come.) or bring your own instrument — we’ll even welcome you singer songwriter types for the evening. more details soon, so set aside the date: OCTOBER 9.

see you all soon…