I have bad vision so I have to wear glasses…
My friend Jonathan mentioned in his blog the other day that he had been listening to a CD of mine, so in honor of my friend I’ve title my blog with the opening line of his ‘The Glasses Song’ (track 20 of Sound Theology disc 2) I have a scrapped together drum set in the corner of my studio and what little time I spend trying to develop a sense of rhythm is usually to the beat of Jonathan’s Sound Theology discs.
But today I was thinking about the glasses song for a very practical reason. I used to wear glasses. While working at Woodbury Baptist Church and Woodbury United Methodist Church I spent a ton of time making lead sheets and reading hymnals and scrolling through praise and worship websites. This was in 2000-2001. I was new to the role of being a band leader and so everything took me a long time and I started to get pretty severe headaches. So I went to Pearl Vision and they said hey, your eyesight isn’t horrible but you should get glasses for when your reading and driving. So I did and the headaches went away. I wore my glasses as often as I could remember and they were pretty cool glasses too. And well they should be, they cost more than my first guitar. Anyways. About a year and a half ago, my daughter, who I love and would never sell, broke my glasses. Well sure that sucked, but I taped ’em together and made it through the last few months at Shepherd of the Valley, a job that again involved my eyes being assaulted by a computer monitor. When I quit that job over a year ago, I switched over to a more relaxed free lance lifestyle, which I maintain gratefully to this day. The pay isn’t as good, but the benefits are killer, including the benefit of not spending a lot of time on the computer, and so as a result I haven’t been wearing my broken glasses, or replacing them for that matter. Which is good because my guitar choices have gotten a lot pricier and I couldn’t afford glasses using the previously set standard.
Well, one of my great freelancing joys is writing for Augsburg Fortress Publishing which is a great gig and suits me well as a creative type. Currently I’m in the middle of a sizeable writing assignment. In fact I’ve been typing for about 6 hours today. (why i’m topping it off with a blog is beyond me) And today for the first time in a year I got the computer screen headache again. Oh it stinks. It’s part stress headache, feels almost a little sinusy and your eyes feel jittery like after a lock in. When it started coming on I took a break and did a little recording for next weeks song – which I’m really excited about. Then I took a few pictures, starting with a shot of my secret weapon given to me by the rock and roll god, Bill Singsaas,
and if you’ve ever wondered what’s it like to be the foot of a guitar player it might look like this:
and what’s a microphone look at all day?
well there you have it a little photo tour of nate’s headache induced recording break.
i’ll try and get the shot of the ice cleats too, they still amaze even after all these days…