Last Saturday House Party

Last Saturday May 15th I used my new sound system for the first time!!  It was very exciting for me, and it worked really well for us.  There are still some kinks that I am going to have to figure out.  Like, when I sing really loud it peaks and goes kind of fuzzy sounding, and that is no good because singing loud is what I do best!!

Anyway, the party was a lot of fun!  They had a BBQ and a lot of people came and most of them stayed for the entertainment too!  Danny Heslop played first and did great as usual and then Steve Soelberg did some stand up and he did really great...he even got everyone to stop and listen, which was cool.  Then I played and it was fun.  I have to admit that I felt kind of bad when I finished and someone said, "I thought you were going to play a lot more from your album." I really should play more from my CD.  Here is the problem.  When I write new songs, the old songs just don't seem as good to me anymore!  But I forget that the people that have bought my album are excited to hear me play because of the songs on the albums!  So, therefore...I am going to try and play the songs from my albums more and I will just sprinkle in a few new songs and a cover song or two.

So the party was a hit, my sound system was fantastic!  Oh and guess what else!  You can totally plug your ipod or nano or whatever you have into it and play music!  I could totally DJ a party or something!

One thing that I am excited about is that I can take it wherever and have my own little show.  My neighbor Kraig and I are going to put on some amphitheater and park gigs this summer.  I am excited!  I think it will be great!

That is all for now...sorry I didn't take any pictures for you! I was too busy being a sound man!  :)  And now it is time to go do some catching up on Lost!  Mindy and I are almost all the way up to real time!

MS Benefit Concert 2010

If you couldn't make it to the MS benefit concert last night then you missed out on a really good time!

I think that was the most fun I have had on stage at that concert yet! Ryan Tilby came and played bass with me and it was a blast! I felt like I played really well (Ryan played great, just like he always does) and my vocals felt really on! It was awesome!

I don't have any pictures to show you, but I will post some on the website when I do get them.  Everyone played really great and we all kind of played and sang with each other throughout the show and that made it a lot of fun too.

The main reason for the show was to raise money for Multiple Sclerosis, and I think we did a pretty good job!

Thank you to everyone that came to the concert and contributed! It was a really great night!

New Toys...

I BOUGHT A SOUND SYSTEM!!!  YEEEEAAAAHHHH!  

I finally did it!  I probably should have bought a sound system a long time ago, but that is that and this is now!  I went to Murphy's Guitars in Bountiful last Saturday to pick it up.  Mike Murphy was my first guitar teacher when I took the beginning group guitar class in High School.  He told me about this awesome little system and I was sold!

It is so cool!  There are two speakers that hook together like so...

Then there is also a mixer and it just fits right into the back of one of the speakers like so...

Ooops!  My foot got in the pic!  Ha ha... now you think that is cool...but watch this!

Simply unlock here...

and you can take out the mixer and put it where ever you want!!

Ooops....foot got in the pic again...sorry about that!  :)  I'm kind of in a hurry right now so deal with the feet! 

I can plug in 4 guitars or 4 mics or 2 guitars with 2 mics or I can listen to my ipod, I can even plug in a piano if I want!!  I am so excited I can hardly stand it!!!!

Here is the grand finale!

WOOOOHOOOOO!!!  I think I played with it for about 3 hours on Sunday!  It was fantastic!  So if you want me to play at your house or your park or your garage or your porch you just give me a shout and I will be there with my little, light, compact system!!!  :)

I will be using this fancy system at my next gig which is a double header - Me for 30 minutes and then my friend Steve has a stand up routine.  Very funny!  It is going to be a great great night so you should all definitely try to come to this one!  It will be well worth the drive, the money (probably $10) and the sides hurting from all the laughing you will do!

This is the very happy end of this very happy blog!  

MUSE!

I went to the Muse concert on Monday!  I wonder if the day will ever come that they are not my favorite band in the whole entire world!  Right now it just doesn't seem possible!  :)  The concert was incredible!  They play song after song and they hardly say anything to the audience.  They played 17 songs! And that isn't including all the middle jamming stuff they did between songs! Wow! My heart starts getting excited just writing about it!!!

Anyway, here are some pictures from the concert!

Proof that I was there, rockin' out at the concert with my awesome Muse shirt on!!

Yep! That is my girl Candice! She was there, and not to far away from us!

I went with my friend Scott!  We bought tickets to this concert way back in December! I'd say we are devoted Muse fans!!

They had some awesome laser effects and stuff!

Ah Matthew!  You are so beautiful!

I took some video of some of the songs and they turned out pretty good, but I can't ever seem to get them to work in my blog!  So my pictures will have to do!  :)

If ever you get the chance to see this band in concert my advice would be to do whatever you possibly can to go because it will blow you away!!  

Hmmm...am I obsessive???  I dont' really care!  I love them!!    

Upcoming Events and My Difficulties Waking up this Week!

Things are looking good for April.  I am playing at a friends house in Salt Lake on April 10th (more details are coming for that one.) The end of April my friend Steve, who does stand up, are going to do a double header where I play and he does his stand up routine at a place in Trolley Square (I want to say it is at Wise Guys.)  I am playing the Tulip festival at Thanksgiving Point on May 1st and then it is the MS benefit concert at Viewmont Hight in Bountiful on May 7th.  So I am excited for all the upcoming events!

I am starting a beginning group guitar class the last week in April.  I am excited for that.  If you are interested make sure to let me know!  I am charging $65 for an 8 week class.  I am going to teach the class out of my very own basement and I think it will be a lot of fun!  I am only going to have 6 people in the class and we will see how things go from there!

The days are flying by.  Work has been busy so that makes the work day go by fast.  Then, I get home and start doing stuff around the house, practice, get online and blog and facebook, and twitter and myspace and all that good stuff and by the time I get all the things done (rather, half the things done) that I wanted to do it is 10:00 and I don't know where the time has gone!

Oh I have to tell you my difficulties with waking up in the morning this week!  It has been a bear!  Tuesday my roommate comes in and says, "Kat!" and I groggily say, "ya?" and she says, "it's 7:30" and I jerked up out of bed and said, "WHAT!? No way!! Why didn't my alarm go off!" and she says, "it did!! And you then you turned it off!"

Let me just tell you...I had no recollection of turning off my alarm, or hearing it at all that morning!  Then this very, lovely, snowy :( morning I woke up feeling as though it was Saturday morning and I thought to myself, "did I wake up before my alarm?" and then I looked at the clock and you'll never guess!  I didn't even turn the dumb thing on last night!  All I have to say is that I hope tomorrow I have better luck with the alarming and the waking from the deep, delirious, depths of sleep!

Muse Music and my Weekend

I am a little late reporting, but my gig at Muse Music on Thursday went well. It was a lot of fun and I met some cool people.  I didn't have a huge following for me, but quite a few people stayed from the other performers so that was good! I am so grateful to the people that did come to support me.  It is hard, because I don't expect my friends to dish out the money to come every time I play.  I just hope they know how much it means to me when any one of them shows up to any one of my gigs!

I am working on getting fans...March was a pretty good month for me, I did quite a few performances, and April is looking like it is getting more stuff lined up too! I believe the next thing I have lined up at this point will be a show at my friend Lindy's house in Salt Lake. My friends Danny Heslop and Kraig Brinkerhoff are going to play too.  It should be a really great show! I just met Danny a couple weeks ago at the acoustic night I played at and he is fantastic!  I can't wait to hear him play again.

I am working out another show at the end of April with my friend Steve Solberg who does stand up.  We are going to see how a double header goes over.  We will have an MC and then I will play for about 30 minutes and the Steve will do his stand up.  I hope it goes over really great!

This weekend I went and picked up my nephew Grant and brought him to my house to hang with me Friday and Saturday.  We went and saw How to Train Your Dragon.  We both loved it!  What a great movie!  I would go watch it again in a heart beat!  We hung out pretty late Friday night and then Saturday morning went and played frisbee in the park with my friend, who is also Grant, and Mindy.  It was a lot of fun.

Being in charge of your nephew, or niece for that matter, really makes you check yourself out.  Am I a good influence?  Am I being a good example?  We watched some episodes of Lost and I kept wondering if his mom would be ok with him watching!  (Carlin, if you are reading this, I hope I'm not in trouble!)  I just wasn't sure what kinds of shows were ok, he is 14 years old after all (as he would say!! :)) I realized that I have to give more credit to kids these days!  My nephew is very smart, and is just a really great kid!  I enjoyed our time together very much! He was always asking me, "have you read this?  Have you read this?"  It made me feel way behind with my book reading!  He didn't complain about anything (except going home of course!) And helped out with anything I needed help with. Not that it was a lot, but simple things like taking his dishes to the sink, bringing the sheets and blankets in to see where they needed to go, offering to carry the mattress back downstairs where we got it!  Anyway, it was great and my nephew is awesome!  Props to my sister for raising such a great kid!

P.S. If you want to take a kid to go climbing at the quarry you have to get a signature from a parent! We were totally bummed!    

So I just had to jump on and tell you how great things have been going this week!  I have this radio thing tonight at 9:00-10:00 in Weber (tune in at www.weberfm.org if you read this in time! :)  )  Then I am playing at Muse Music in Provo on Thursday!  I got a call on Monday to play at Velour on Wednesday but since Muse is literally 30 steps away from Velour we thought it would be a better idea to put me on a later show so I could get more people out.  I was still excited to get the call however!

So I will probably be playing at Velour sometime in April and then my friend Lindy and I are planning to put together an acoustic night in April at her house in Salt Lake.  I am also possibly playing at the Tulip festival in April as well.  I hope things keep going good!

I better hit the road, its time to go be on the radio!  :)