We practiced last night instead of tonight, so we could all go ahead with our respective plans for Halloween spookiness. Which I’m not going into.

Richard got a mandolin for his birthday. It’s really neato. So we spent a little time working on a new cover song in which a mandolin figures prominently. If you think a minute you can probably guess which song I’m talking about. The tricky part is that it’s an acoustic mandolin (as many of them are), so Richard has yet to figure out a reliable way of amplifying it to play with the band. Yes, he tried playing it directly into his vocal mic, but while 95% of the song sounded fine, the other 5% was buried in rounds of particularly piercing feedback. So he’ll have to figure something else out, I guess. Another plus is that the mandolin came with a cute little mandolin capo, which is the perfect size for the “five-string capo” thing he does to his acoustic guitar on some songs. Nothing like having the right tool for the job. The mandolin is also handy for playing Irish jigs and reels, Richard informs us. He even gave us a demonstration in the form of a brief solo performance of something called “The Devil’s Elbow” or something like that. And people say rock music is Satanic.

So anyway, we worked on that cover (the one with the mandolin), and another one we started working on last week. We also did two not-quite-brand-new-but-still-new-enough-to-not-have-words-yet songs of Jeremy’s, including the poignant song. Pete’s project of learning to play more quietly proceeds apace; there was a time or two when I actually wanted him to turn it up. He seems to be holding his sticks higher up along their length, which means less leverage when he hits the drums. Why didn't I think of that? Jeremy is still working on mixing our demo, but he didn’t have anything new for us to hear last night. And word is that Rob will shortly have a lot more time to manage us. Sorry, Rob.

Not much else to report. I’ll stop now.