the last five months or so have been pretty amazing for us. thanx to support from our fans we raised 37000 dollars to record our rock and roll songs on to a compact disc. We are very excited about these new songs. they are reflecting our progress as a band, as songwriters, and as studio musicians. we split our time recording at sony tree studios and the art house. Sony studios are super nice. there’s this sweet heart lady that runs the front desk that’s been there since the sixties and her name is judy. she was always excited to see us walk in every morning and i enjoyed having conversations with her because she was always happy. they also have endless supplies of grape faygo. i cant drink coffee because it makes me have anxiety eruptions so i just drank tons of faygos so i could be full of the spirit while i cheered on the rhythm section as they recorded their parts. we were rolling through the rhythm tracks a lot quicker than we thought we would so that created some cool momentum. high fives were all around and i got so excited that i spent 42 dollars at a sushi house for lunch. the menus had pictures of the sushi on the back. i had too much sugar and was really hungry so i chose the three most colorful ones. i wont use that method of ordering next time.

once we finished our first phase of recording we had a few days off then went back to nashville to finish up our overdubs. this time we were at “the art house” which is the legendary charlie peacock’s studios. the studio is built on to his house which is a really old church that’s been restored. this place was like a make believe land, it had a very magical feel to it. historic architecture with some good landscaping and a swing in the yard built for huffin cigs in. if i was a person who wrote books, i would live in a house like that.

we’ve been working with a really cool producer/engineer combo. Ross Copperman and Richie Biggs. Ross is an awesome producer to work with and he has very strong ideas. we work solid together creatively and it’s always constructive. he also has really good cologne. seriously, he just makes the room smell like dillard’s. it reminds me of back when i was in middle school before i knew what cologne was. i just thought everybody was coating their chests with deodorant so i did the same. then i started to develop a rash because my chest could not sweat and quickly found out that i was an idiot. Richie is a jedi master engineer as well as a huge inspirational force behind the music. during my overdubs he would come in the tracking room and dance around so i could feel like i was playing live. he pulled a ton of creativity out of us during the rhythm tracking and overdubbing sessions. the songs are sounding solid. thank you to everyone that donated to our cause.

we also did our first run of the year which was about 7 shows over ten days. we are very happy with how it went. atlanta, birmingham, and nashville sold out. houston, austin, dallas, and especially memphis had great showings. it was a lot of fun to play our new songs live because the crowd tries so hard to sing along and they have no idea what the words are. they just kinda leave their mouths open during the song and follow their hearts. in nashville i saw a dude in the crowd that was havin such a good time that he headbutted his own fist. it was pretty weird, but he might have just drank one too many dewskies. there were lots of new faces and it was really cool to see them singing our songs. i had the best fried chicken that ive ever eaten on this trip. it’s a place called gus’s in memphis. we also ate at a benihana japanese steak house. they didn’t have the white sauce so it hurt my feelings. to cheer me up, doody told the waiter that it was justin’s birthday and they sang us this japanese song and gave justin a really cool hat.

we believe its gonna be a really good year this year. its exciting to be releasing these new songs. it’s also exciting because we have a hometown show comin up in about a week and a half. we’re doin two nights at the bijou theatre on friday feb. 24th and sat. feb 25th. the shows are gonna be rockin. we have the black cadillacs opening on one night and the delta saints on the other. dont be a nerd and buy some tickets.

(you can follow cozmo on twitter at @its_just_ol_coz)