Last night we met at Richard’s place for another Krak-oustic practice. Something about sitting in the living room with acoustic instruments seems to make us want to play songs we used to play back when we started out—and some songs that are even older.

Richard dug out some of his old songs with the lyrics handwritten on notebook paper—some of them dating as far back as his junior year in college. We played “More Than This,” which we’ve never performed as a group, although Richard used to end set breaks with it. We played “People of Bone” and “Maybe the World,” which we always liked but our audiences never seemed to. Which got us thinking that they’d be good for playing in bars, because we can use them to get people off the dance floor to buy drinks and then club owners will love us. More than they will already, I mean. We also played “Little Girl,” which we used to play all the time but it’s since fallen off our setlist for some reason.

We played “Clint Eastwood” for the first time in a couple of years. “Clint Eastwood,” by the way, is not to be confused with the song of the same name by Gorillaz, which sounds nothing like ours. And we had ours first, dammit. We call it “Clint Eastwood” not because it has anything to do lyrically with the actor/director/former mayor of Carmel, CA, but because musically it sounds like something from a spaghetti western. Except Richard wrote the most intentionally awful lyrics for it that he possibly could. I’d reproduce them here, but you don’t get the same effect without the ominous minor chords going on behind it. You’d just have to hear the actual song. And who knows? Maybe someday you will.

We didn’t play old songs exclusively. We played some of our current ones, including “Revolution Day,” “Free,” “One More Day,” “Princess in a Jar,” and the obligatory “Boomtown.” Not only that, but Richard pretty much gave birth to a new song right there before our eyes. No words yet, obviously, but it has verses, choruses, and even a bridge, pretty much. So we “worked” on that for a while. I’m looking forward to hearing what it sounds like plugged in. Some of our songs sound really good acoustic. Others, not so much.

But that’s fairly moot, because next week we’re moving into our temporary KrakaTomb. The fine fellows in Barbeau have kindly agreed to share their practice space with us until their lease expires at the end of February. Next Wednesday’s rehearsal will begin with us loading up the band stuff from Richard’s library, schlepping it the ridiculously convenient distance of four blocks, and setting up to rock the new space. And when I say “rock,” I actually mean “rock,” since the place isn’t ours to rock in the other sense.

On the non-musical front, Richard is finishing up a complete redesign of the site. By the time you read this, it’ll probably be on the new site already. Hell, by the time you read this, you may not know what the old site looked like. If that’s the case, I’ll tell you: the old site was cool. However, this new site is even cooler. Last night Richard showed us what he’d gotten done on the design, and we really dig it. This sucker is ready for prime-freaking-time.

Part of the redesign included the creation of a new logo. I would say all sorts of breathless stuff about when it’s being unveiled, but chances are that you saw it when you first logged on to the site. Ain’t it purty? The logo will also be handy for putting on our letterhead, business cards, and stickers. Yeah, you heard me. Stickers, baby!