It's Always About The Songs - Part 4 of 4 These days, I'm a lot more open and excited about the thought of my songs changing and evolving. I try to get a song as prepared as I can - I hone it and sit with it and make sure it's as good as I can make it - and then I open it up to criticism and change. I tend towards certain songwriting habits, and I'm excited by the prospect of letting those habits get turned on their head by Ryan, a producer, fellow musicians. Lately we've been talking about our next record and how we'd like to widen our production palette even more... play more instruments than before. More mandolin, piano... go in directions that make the listening experience different than what we've done previously. Up until now we've tended to stay pretty close to the 2 guitar, 2 voice...

According to Dr. Farvin Blogsalot, Ph. D. "unsearchable, slow-loading, untagged blogs have been clinically linked to an increase in 'Screwthisimgoingtoyoutube Sydrome' among young adults aged 3 to 79." Naturally, we here in Ryanhood want to do our part to battle the destructive forces of Screwthisimgoingtoyoutube Sydrome, so we have transfered all awesome and amazing blog content from myspace to ryanhood.com/blog. You know us, always wanting to lend a hand. Our new blog is well-organized, tagged, and easily-searchable. Want to know in which videos Ryan plays mandolin? Search "mandolin". Or want to read long diatribes where I rant about spirituality? Search: "spirituality". Or simply want to know what it was like making "The World Awaits"? Then search "recording studio" and all blogs, vlogs, studio journals, and videos that have anything to do with the recording studio will appear. "Wait, wait," you say, "This is so complicated." I know, I know. But you can do...

Buenos Dias, Week two was a good one, featuring a good mix of business and pleasure. We've seen some pretty creative advertising for our shows so far, so I thought I'd start by sharing a couple of them. This from the Wichita show (below) And who could forget this one from Albuquerque So back to the shows... Show 6 - Fort Hayes, KS (Fort Hayes State University) They have a beautiful brand new student center that we got to play in. So we were stoked when we got there and saw the great stage/lighting. As we re-strung our guitars before the show, I saw the news about Heath Ledger's death on TV, which tripped me out. Then I drank about half a bottle of a Naked Juice Protein drink... ...and spent the rest of the night, including the show, so dizzy I could hardly keep my eyes open. I found out from a grocery store worker the next day...