What is the one thing you wish you had done differently which you learned by experience? This is an excellent question, and a very difficult one. My answer may end up sounding a bit touchy-feely for your tastes, but it's my answer nonetheless. I wish this: that I had asked myself "What do I want?" more often. I wish I had started asking earlier, "What EXACTLY do I want? Is THIS what I want? How close is this thing I'm doing right now to what I've dreamed of, hoped for?" And I wish I'd developed the courage to believe in my answers to those questions earlier on. In other words, I wish I'd started to trust my intuition earlier. Asking "Where am I going, and what do I really want?" is a powerful question, because it prevents you from getting swept along by others' plans for you in the hopes that they have your...

Hey Guys, I travelled to LA on Monday, to finish the last of the vocals on the record (all that remains are my parts on Okay and Stopless. Cameron's are all done). However, after just one afternoon of singing 'Okay', my voice was gone. When I awoke the next day, and it was even worse. I went to a doctor, and found out I had a fever and viral laryngitis. Back home to Tucson I went, silently, dreaming of what could have been a step towards the completion of the album. And on my Southwest flight home, my iPod was snatched, from right under my nose (the perpetrator leaving only it's empty case underneath my seat). Fortunately I've got an old iPod Mini to get me by. And so it goes! It's still a beautiful time of year. And being home is never a bad thing. I'll be doing my best to recuperate...

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...

...having to seal my finger-tips up with super-glue, that is! My normal, guitar-player calluses (which come and go) have definitely gone on my left hand, as the result of performing Stopless for 5 hours in the studio yesterday. The ..B.. and ..G.. strings were digging a hole in my left middle finger, so I pulled out the old super-glue, and gave myself a protective plastic coating. It makes me feel very tough, and industrial, and ingenious. Uggggggggggggggg.... Apparently Ryan and I suck at the guitar pretty bad. I didn't used to think that was the case, but apparently it is. We're taking a million years to make this record. And let me tell you something: we're not getting any younger. Soon, it'll be curtains for us, I say, curtains. The studio is a hard situation. Not only is it like a microscope or a super high-resolution lens, but it's also like trying to draw...

Sometime ago, one of our fans in Tucson mailed a CD to their friend in Bothel, WA. This friend, a local Bothel guitar teacher, liked what he heard. He drinks coffee at a place called the Lyons Den. Last week, while getting coffee at that establishment, he noticed a flyer that said Ryanhood was coming. Tonight came, and he was there, with his son, and he even made a request for Separate. And this is awesome. So Good job! to our Tucson friend for passing along our CD, and Good job! to Cascadia College for making flyers, and Good job! Lyons Den for putting them up! Its amazing when this whole machine actually works. Please feel free to try this at home! Speaking of home, we've been gone for a little while. 11 days to be exact. (Somehow I didn't get the memo and I packed only 3 days worth of...