Opening Day!

…had a little luck today.

Loving life.

Acoustic Demos

Went to Floyd’s today, recorded two acoustic demos: Wonder, and Burned.  You can check them out on my myspace.

Just remember these are basic demos, just me doing vocals and my guitar. (Laid a harmony vocal track on Wonder too.) Original versions are always nice, but when Jarret, Bree and Erik ad their parts these songs sound very full. I can’t wait for you to hear those versions too!

I’m so glad I started singing. It’s really fulfilling to write about bad relationships through music.

Morchella elata, the Black Morel

Well, as expected a couple people over at morels.com found it hard to believe that black morels were growing in Pennsylvania on March 31st when I posted my findings on the PA board.  I admit, it’s a bit early in the season to be finding them, but appearantly my # 1 black morel patch (the location of which will not be dislosed!) has a warmer ground temperature from sun exposure than a lot of the other places people find black morels.

The spot which I hunt morels consists mainly of white ash,  and aspen.  This is easily my favorite scenario for finding black morels, as they seem to have a keen interest in growing under these specific species of tree.  The understory of my patch is pretty dense, protecting most of the morels from view, unless, like me, you are willing to crawl through brush and thorns to get to them.  Some do reveal themelves along the trails edge, and on rare occassion on the trail itself.  Seeing that the trail does see a handful of people walking in a day, and that at least ONE other person knows of this patch, I like to keep trail-side morels hidden with leaves.  I also have a higher tendency to pick the trail side shroomies earlier so someone doesn’t stumble upon them, crush them, and or realize they are even there!

With wrinkly brown caps, they do pretty good in hiding themselves from people.  Including people that go looking for them.

Black Morel, April 4th 2009

 The above photo is the March 31st find, but taken April 4th.  This morel has obviously been growing for days, and rain and bouts of warm weather have quite obviously done their part in amping up the season a bit.  His little brother behind him is a little behind in growth, but was also at the location on March 31st.  Had I thought about it, I would’ve brought a newspaper and included it in the shot to prove this to the buttheads who “found it hard to believe”.

Though it's early, young morels are popping out of the leaf litter.

 

Today has been pretty cold.  I set out with the D60 after work and found five more baby morels beginning to jut out of the leaf litter.  As you can imagine, finding black morels is a little more difficult than finding yellows later in the season.  Black morels are perfectly adapted for hiding against leaf litter and my friend and I undoubtedly overlooked and walked past many that haven’t revealed themselves yet.  Some are so tiny, their caps are scarcely bigger than my fingernail.

In digging leaf litter, one morel was un-earthed before I wanted to pick it!

Realizing that most of the morels were still under-sized, we began digging around in the leaf litter to uncover any that might be hiding around the spot that we found the first ones.  Sue accidently broke one off in the process, so I posed it for a picture, and we opted to let spring draw them out a bit more before we do the really hardcore searching.

As it stands, the morels are there.  However small they may be, they are growing, and not quite ready to be picked for the skillet.  I’ll be checking the patch regularly.

Morel! Morel!

Early Surprise

A photo from last year since I didn't have my D60 with me today.

I went out this afternoon for various hikes around my ‘morel spots’, knowing damn well that I’m a couple weeks shy of the season. Generally speaking, this “morel fever” is pretty common among shroomers. Some are cruising their patches long before the first pin-head of a morel is even thinking about bursting from the soil.

Well, this afternoon I found not one but two black morels sprouting from beneath a stand of white ash and big-toothed aspen. March 31st? Very early indeed for Pennsylvania morels! So, imagine my surprise and excitement when I actually made them out against the brown leaf litter two weeks earlier than last year!

I’m the first person on morels.com in Pennsylvania to find a morel. Taking the D60 out tomorrow morning!

So…

Bree came up with an idea Jarrett liked for a band name, “Perfect Imperfection”. Ironically enough, nobody knew it I had this blog.

A few bands names we’ve come up with:

1 – Mindfield
2 – Perfect Imperfections
3 – Rendezvous
4 – Spyro Tribe

The last two, I’m not so big on. Mindfield is definitely my favorite, but Perfect Imperfections would be kind of cool, since I’ve been blogging about being in a band for years.

I’d like a few more options before we make a final decision.

Pre-slumber Rambles

I can hear the soft pitter pattering of rain hitting the overhang of my front porch. It’s kind of relaxing really, and a perfect end to a nice evening. With the day now reaching its end, I reflect on all the days events as if to sum up my thoughts on how today was. It went well.

Of Morels and Trout

Having found the first of last year’s morels April 12th, I’m just a couple weeks away from the usual season for black morels. I’ll probably start hunting them next week, although now that I have my own personal secret patches, locating them will probably take a little less effort this year.

Search white ash woodlots for blacks, the first of the three morels (the big elongated one in the photo above). Within a couple weeks, the half-frees and yellows will (the other two) will start appearing under white ash, elm, and old apple orchards by the middle of May.

April 18th, 19th, and 20th I’ve requested off work to dedicate some time to trout fishing as well. The streams will soon be stocked with hatchery fish in addition to their already wild populations to help sustain the pressure from fisherman during this brief period.

Below is a wild Pennsylvania brook char (not a true trout, as the spots are white rather than black), which just so happens to be our state fish. With beauty like this, size doesn’t matter!

Finally…the depression of winter will be broken! Also looking forward to trying my hand at fly fishing some of central Pennsylvania’s top trout streams for the first time in my life. (After drooling beside the fly-fishing only signs the bear at the creekside.)

Bree

It’s 12:34 AM and I’m just now winding down from the jam session at Jarrett’s tonight.  To be frank, this is actually a good bit earlier than I usually get home, but tonights jam session with Bree (our latest guitar audition) went so well that I opted to celebrate by getting some extra sleep before work tomorrow.  So, after a 20 minute haul from Altoona, I’m here…and quite possibly with an unexpected new band member in mind.

Female guitarists.  Let’s talk. 

You see, to me, a females place in a band is as a frontwoman.  Perhaps it’s my enfatuation for female-fronted rock bands that breeds this notion, but when I found out that Bree was a “guitarist” and just 19 years old I was 100% against the idea of bringing her over.  To begin with, 19? That’s young, even for us. And, with what is perhaps my most narrow-minded point of view ever, I was skeptical about her being…well…a girl.

Bree is not your classic 19 year old girl.  She’s actually very mature for her age (as girls often are) and was musically a big surprise for me.  Why? Well, mainly because she not only could play guitar – but she had some very good original songs that were very much in the vein of what Jarrett and myself have been penning over the course of the past few months.  In fact, she could even sing which means an additional backing vocal AND songwriter for our band.

Appearantly there are quite a few big named bands with female guitarists/bassists.  Smashing Pumpkins being one of them, I guess it can work.  It certainly did with Bree in our case.  And I was pleased when she said it was nice to work with someone “who was a great singer”, and that singers are hard to come by.

Bitch, just stay away from my microphone and we’ll get along just fine.

Can’t wait to hang out with her again.  Good stuffs.

Go on, go…go..on.

Jarret, Erik and myself had a nice little jam session tonight. Erik brought his kit over, set it all up and Jarret messed around with some of our songs on electric guitar. Sounds great…now if only we could find people to fill the missing spots in the band.

Suffice to say, Larry, our bassist audition did not work out. We gave him the benefit of the doubt after he clamored around in Jarret’s basement with a 4 year old child, his buddy, and his girlfriend during his audition. We even invited him back, despite the fact that his girlfriend insisted she and the child come to every single practice. Unfortunately, and for reasons unknown, Larry just up and disappeared. He didn’t return my call, and never showed up for practice when he said he would – so he’s out. He made up our mind for us, as we were borderline anyway in terms of the ‘baggage’ he brought with him. We’re over it.

So, Barry seemed pretty excited about coming to jam with us tonight. We were eager to have him over, as we knew the influences were similar and we knew he could play. However, when time came to get information on “where” and “when” to pick him up, none of my text messages were answered and just like that we lost what was probably my most anticipated of our auditions. I’m not really sure what happened there, because as of a few days ago he was all for it. Appearantly he wasn’t as into the idea as I thought.

SO…here we are again! It’s been officially half a year since Jarret and I first got together and began working on the foundations of what will eventually be our band, tentatively called “Mindfield” (unless you can suggest something better). Still, no success with any auditions. We’re really upset because our original stuff is good – but appearantly the only way to really draw high numbers of auditions in central PA is to start a metal band. (Which we are not!) Blah blah blah…screw heavy metal hard and deep. If all you want to do is tune your guitars way down and slam around some power chords on stage while someone growls in front of a microphone, then we are certainly not the band for you!

We are who we are, and thanks to our good friend Cory, we should be posting some of our original material soon for all to hear. I’ll do the vocals, Erik will lay the drums, and Jarret will have no problem laying down lead, rhythm and bass tracks. At least then we can offer a piece of ourselves to people so they don’t show up expecting to be the next Pantera or Devil Driver, when all we want to do is make listenable rock music.

Having said all this, if you’re reading this and happen to be living in the Altoona area – keep your ears open to bassist and guitarists who may be looking for a band. I’m doing research on PA systems this week so I can get that taken care of, whilst continuing my search for people who actually want to take things seriously and get down to business.

Well, off to bed. Peace and love to everyone.

- Mike