i don't know what to name this...

naming things. i find it hard to find the "right" name for something. things as small as this, all the way to our unborn child. how do you pick a name that is going to be a strong name? a name that is going to be a good name as a kid and as an adult? how do you pick a name that has all these things and still has very few ways to make fun of it?

...you stay up all night one night looking at a baby name book with some of the strangest baby names. you spend the next few days bouncing names off each other. you come up with off the wall names to make your other names sound better. you stop thinking about it awhile and it creeps into your brain again without you even realizing it. vanessa likes a few names, some i like, some i don't. i'm no help. i have no good ideas for names. soooooo, we are going nowhere fast with this name business. oh well, we have plenty of time.

so this weekend i was out doing a few shows. friday i was in helotes, tx at the john t. floore country store. saturday it was nacogdoches doing our red dirt roundup, or at least the first of our two red dirt roundup shows. the next one is in fort worth on the 31st.... rain. its always rain. we have figured it out and it has rained every day that we have had a show since june 27th. thats right, june 27th. even if we played inddoors or outdoors. outdoors is obviously a problem, but even when we have played indoors it has rained on us during load-in or load-out. wet, muddy, cold. sick of rain.

helotes wasn't too bad. it rained for awhile in the afternoon. we got through all the soundchecks and setting up without having to go out of our wayy to stay dry. the first act, a girl named stephanie briggs and her husband matt, took the stage. good show. they play with us quite a bit when in the texas area. next was micky and the motorcars. they are out in support of their new album, naive. set change goes off without a hitch. then we start. we have been joking on the bus that we should play drought relief shows. i put in my two cents and said we should go play in california and put out the wildfires. we would be heros! you guessed it...it rained. fortunately it wasn't enough for us to have to stop the show, but people got pretty wet. thirty or forty minutes of rain is enough to continue our streak. well, load out was dry and quick. we had a relaxing night and headed to nacogdoches.

with a relatively early load in, nine in the morning, we started our day. our long day. with a production company that didn't care, and a hot, muggy, slow day...it was a looong day. the local production company who shall remain nameless to protect the innocent, sucked. the lighting guy, and i use that term very loosely, had no clue. he made his little assistant do everything. hell, his assistant knew more than he did. anyways, the sound guys didn't check on brian or mccoy, our sound guys. the lighting guys didn't check on me. its pretty much a standard that if the touring tech doesn't specifically ask you to stay by him during the show that you at least check in during the show three or four times. i'm kind of ranting, i know....so yeah, the production company sucked. it started raining about thirty minutes before the end of randy rogers show. the lightining was too close to be standing on a stage made of metal, with a bunch of copper wires laying around. i have to give the city of nacogdoches some respect. they had the sense to evacuate the park. sent every body away. after about thirty minutes of waiting out the rain and lightining, they opened the gates back up and the masses came running in. we put on a show, people had a great night, the guys played a great show.

sunday was our breast cancer benefit show in san marcos, tx. my wizz-ardry was not needed that night, but i have heard nothing but good about that night. you can check out some pictures of the show and learn more about the benefit at www.myspace.com/rdr3day . vanessa and twenty or so more girls are going to san diego to do a three day, sixty mile walk for the susan g. komen foundation. it's all for research and treatment of breast cancer. my girl will be twenty-three weeks along by then. that's right, i have a badass for a wife. a little over half way through the nine months of carrying our child, she will walk twenty miles every day, for three days. go donate some money or something! what are you doing sitting there reading this boring blog?! go donate! theeeeeen come back and finish reading this.

...good to see you came back.

since i wasn't needed at the benefit show, i took advantage of being right down the road from home and spent the evening with my girls. madison was excited about having her first day of first grade the next morning. we spent the evening having a sit down dinner. mimi was in town, so she was staying at our house. it was quite the to-do.

eventhough madison had her real "first day of school" last year when she started kindergarten, it still seemed just as special. she seems really excited this year about learning and knowing cool things. i think she is really going to like this year of school. we took her to school today and picked her up, but tomorrow she starts riding the bus. her idea! she thinks it will be great. tomorrow's the big experiment!!! we met her teacher last thursday at open school night. her name is Miss Vandelden. don't worry, she let's the kids call her Miss V. madison seems to really like her already. here are some pictures of this morning before we took her to school.

mimi went and ate lunch with madison. after that, mimi came back to the house, picked up makenna, and headed back to the farm. i think madison is already enjoying having a little alone time with me and vanessa. right now she's sitting on the couch right next to me, eating her macaroni and cheese with bits of fried spam, watching a little television "just like mommy and daddy do".

well, it has been a hell of a summer and things finally feel like they are falling into place as far as having our little family back on somewhat of a schedule. madison being in school, vanessa being pregnant...i think things are going to slow down for a while around here. i'm gone the whole month of september, so that will give the girls time to adjust to being back home and in the swing of things.

there it is. the last three or four days of my point of view from the road and home with our little family...

one week at home. i'll probably post something again towards the end of the week unless something comes up before then....

oh yeah, and as far as boy names, wich do you guys like better.....willard phoenix cash kendall or willard silas kendall?

hearts pounding

well, hearts were pounding as me, vanessa, and illysa (our midwife) listened for the baby's heart this morning. and sure enough, after hearing vanessa's rumbling stomach, we heard a heartbeat. it was amazing. illysa said it was between 170 and 180 beats per minute. just like it should be. it means that the baby is responding to its enviornment, bouncing around, making itself comfortable. it gets me more and more anxious as we have these appointments. we have a sonogram on october 22nd. we get a c.d. with our sonogram with a few pictures and maybe a video i think. i may have just made that up in my head, but it would be pretty cool!

speaking of cool. i got an iPhone today. very. cool. internet, g.p.s, camera, video, and all kinds of cool as hell stuff to play with. its even got a game that is just popping bubbles on fake bubble wrap.

anyways, i've got a couple shows to go do starting tomorrow. one in helotes, tx and one in nacogdoches, tx. well, i will get back to doing some updating sometime monday or tuesday. two shows and a daughters first day of first grade over the next few days ought to leave me with a few things to talk about.

i'm sure you will all be holding your breath until then.

time off

so i'm sitting here pretty frustrated. it seems there is never really time off. even being home from the road, there are emails and phone calls. unpacking trailers to sort out gear, fix things. you get the idea. well, this week off is no different. this is day number two of me working on my console, a Flying Pig Systems Wholehog IPC .


yesterday it was replacing a battery that keeps all the internal computer settings when the console is turned off. not a terribly hard job. its just that digging around in a console, even to do a simple procedure, can be a lot like surgery. it doesnt matter that the process is simple, there is always the chance something could go wrong. and what happens when something CAN go wrong? it does. just after replacing this simple battery... so my whole console stops working. i can get to my cues and such, but it wont play them. sparing you guys the boring details, i have been on the phone with Mitch Peebles at High End, the company that supports my console. after about an hour on the phone going through every possible scenario we could think of, he tells me to save what i can and reload the software. start from scratch. there is a possibility that my show has become corrupt. how, we havent figured out, but, we will find out soon. as i sit here writing this my console is getting a fresh load of new software. pretty nerve racking. if something doesnt come together right, i could lose everything and have to start over with all my programming. pretty lame considering we have a few pretty big shows coming up.

Nacogdoches Red Dirt Round Up
opening for Dierks in Red Rocks, CO
Fort Worth Red Dirt Round Up
opening for Gary Allan in Council Bluff, IA

anyways, it would be nice to not have to start over. here's to hoping!

well, the homefront is pretty much the same. as most of you know, vanessa and i are expecting. march 22nd is the due date. same as my dad's birthday and cody's dad's birthday. i'm hoping for a boy. i need a little more testosterone in the house while i'm out on the road. estrogen seems to permeate everything in this house. if it's a girl that will mean three girls all seven and under. that means when madison turns thirteen, there will be at least one if not two, teenage girls in the house for the next seven years. i can hear my hair turning gray and falling out. i'm excited no matter the outcome. it will have a little bit of me and a little bit of vanessa. hopefully it will take on each of our more shining qualities rather than the more stubborn sides that both vanessa and i have.

the girls are doing good. they seem happy to be back home from a long summer. happy to be in their own beds. happy to have their toys. happy to have mommy and daddy in the same place for more than a day or two. just happy. they seem really excited about the new baby. makenna asks to lay on the baby. she lays her head on vanessa's belly and rubs it while she lays there. madison asks if the baby got enough to eat whenever vanessa has a meal. they sure are cute.

well, its back to my console. it has finished reloading the software and things are still looking pretty weird. sounds like a trip to austin (where High End is located) is in the near future.

getting started...

so, i was thinking yesterday about something my wife had suggested a while back. she asked if i had thought about starting some sort of blog or website where our family and friends could see what i am up to and where i am...that sort of thing. i guess if i was always getting asked where she was and what she was doing, i would suggest the same thing! i had tried the myspace thing for a while and didnt like it, so, i thought i'd give this a try.

so long story short, i'm going to be using this blog to let family and friends in the loop of controlled chaos that is a balance of living on the road with a rock band and being a full time dad and husband. i thought leaving it open to anybody that stumbles upon this blog, or seeks it out for whatever reason, might be interesting. people are always asking about my job and what i do. even those people who know what i do and understand my job are curious about how to balance two very opposite ends of the spectrum in life. i'll also be putting up quite a bit of stuff about my lighting and what i come across out on the road. a little something for all the other lighting guys and girls. it might also be like a little road trip for those who can't hit the road and get out as much as they would like.

well, as you can see, i am still trying to set this all up. i'll try and add something new every few days. i'm a little out of my element on this. i'm sure i'lll be getting lots of help from my wife, vanessa.