Dear Mr. Hood, I have been enjoying your music for some time, and I love the way you mix intricate musical harmonies with meaningful lyrics.  You may remember me from your show in Boston. I played violin for Back Into Blue. I have been studying violin for 9 years, and also play guitar, piano, drums and sing.  I am in high school, and I am considering colleges to continue my musical education.  I write and record songs, and would like to hone and refine this skill for God’s glory.  Could you give me some insight from your experience about these upcoming years? What was the best decision you made in the pursuit of your music career? What is the one thing you wish you had done differently which you learned by experience? What advice would you give someone like me? Thanks for the time and advice you might be able to give.  Believe me, I will...

Months later I’d think, “Why was I so particular about the chorus? Why did I demand it be played exactly in that way?” Over time I’d start to see that if I was willing to adapt a little, then the song would live, instead of going off to doggy heaven, never to be heard from again.

Often, I’m very passionate about a song when I first write it. But within a week or a month, the initial high of passion and creation will wear off, and I can sense weaknesses in the songs. I get bored by them. I’ll play them on my acoustic guitar for a friend, and I’ll find myself making excuses like, “Probably the drums will make this more interesting.” Or I’ll play half the song and say, “Yeah, you get the idea.”

As you might expect, some songs make the journey from inception to production very much the way we imagined them, while others change tremendously. The two basic ways our songs end up different than when we first imagined them are changes in the “songwriting” itself, as well as changes to our vision for the “production” of the song. And often the two are closely intertwined.

But mostly reggae. Since we just got finished with our tiny tour, and we are on the eve of re-entering the studio, it seems like the best time of all to write a little bloggy blog blog. First, a math question: If two trains are traveling towards each other at a speed of 130 km/hr, and train A contains Owen Plant, and train B contains Ryanhood, what is the most precise expression of the energy created by their collision? The answer is: One million awesomes. (Feel free to check the math on that. I was fortunate enough to get to sit in on a math class at MIT with my younger brother while I was in Boston, and even though it was mostly beyond me, it DID get me thinking.) So, the tour: Owen Plant. Man, oh man. This guy can SING. If you're lookin' for a boy with a voice… Each night we followed roughly...

Realizing that Ryan and I have been flying under the radar as of late, we thought it was high time we let you know how our recording is going, what the songs are sounding like, and what we think of it. So without further ado: - We began recording in late summer, and we worked on and off up through Christmas. We're roughly 70% of the way finished. (Slow and steady wins the race, right Mr. Tortoise?) - We have completed bass and drums and main guitars for 11 of the 12 songs we're planning to include. - We've sung what are called "scratch" vocals for all of them, in order to find out which harmonies work, where different melodies are needed, etc. - We're currently back home in Tucson rehearsing our acoustic butts off, making sure that we know exactly what we want to sing when we get back to LA to begin...

>>>>RECORDING STUDIO VOL. I (CH) I'm sitting on a black couch, with our producer Ross in front of me. Ryan is to my left in an ergonomically perfect studio chair, and our bass player, Bob Glaub sits between him and Ross. We're listening to drum and bass tracks for the updated, re-felt version of Helpless Hopeless. It feels really really good. To be honest, I was pretty much against it even being on this record. I was wary, because we've changed the arrangement of it, which means that weve changed aspects of the song in relation to the order of verses and choruses as well as the instrumentation. The intro to the song is different, one small half-verse is gone, and we now go straight from the 'wrapped myself around mama's feet' lyric into another chorus. So some things are missing. It's true. And I was worried that this newer version...

I dream that me and you Will go up on our roof In the evening To get a better view We watch the sunset in the yard while Im watching all the cars drive Left and right Making wrong turns at the light And sometimes getting tickets But getting back onto the road And as the stars climb The lattice of the sky We know that its our wide world thats turning And we think of how our little lives Measure up to Time With a moon thats been for ages Spinning in the pages Of dust and space And reflections of the light Overwhelmed I am Sitting on my sleeping bag But in the quiet you look at me and sing You were born to be here You were born to say What nobody will say If you dont You will long to see clearly To have it in your hands But its far too big a plan For you to hold So lets go up on the roof Only me and you And in the quiet we will ask...

I know that I need to journal. I know that it's good for me. I know that it’s good for other people, and that people like to read other people's journals too. Throughout the last year, though, I've found myself often stuck...creative block or something. I blame it on a lot of things. I think it's primarily that I stress myself out. I become so occupied and driven by taking care of whatever business is required for Ryanhood, that I feel guilty taking 'time off' to actually practice guitar, or to actually attempt to craft a song. My other problem is that I am a gigantic musical perfectionist snob when it comes to my own music, and rarely does a song birth so beautifully that I will take the time to raise it up proper. A week or so ago, I set some time aside for 'me', and brought my laptop...