Howdy Everybody,

The band and I will be playing at the Taste Of Minnesota this Sunday, July 5, at 12:30 PM on the Pioneer Press Main Stage.  We’ll be opening the event that morning after Elvis Costello & The Imposters headline the Fourth of July.  If you’re in the area and not doing anything, come out and see us!  We’ll be playing a 45-minute set and may throw in some new songs I’ve been working on. 

In other news, we’re working on a couple of new tours to keep us busy throught the summer.  I can’t make any official announcements, but they look very promising and perhaps will take us all around the countryside again (with some new stops along the way). 

Besides that, I’m catching up on sleep, growing a beard, writing songs, daydreaming of writing songs, listening to the songs in my head as I’m waking up, renting movies, practicing the guitar, writing songs, and hanging out.

And I’ve also been working on creating a live album of our May | June tour.  I’m almost done and I’ll be soon posting it on the Web.  Stay tuned.

Take Care,

jason

I’m rolling shotgun on Highway 90, somewhere in Ohio, listening to “Simon Smith & The Amazing Dancing Bear” by Randy Newman.  The disc keeps skipping but I don’t care.  I rub my eyes and throw on my shades.  The light is too intense.

So we left Chicago this morning at 6 in the AM.  I don’t know if I’ve ever been so tired as I was this morning—so cashed I could barely talk.  I guess it’s for good reason.  We were at a rest stop twenty minutes ago musing about how we couldn’t have any more fun than we did over the past two days, hangin’ and jammin’ down in Wicker Park—window shopping for vintage duds, eating pizza at Peace, smoking in the rain, bloody marys at the Blue Line, chats with new fans, mambo nights with Blueberry Stoli, dancing drunkards on the RV roof, the train cars roaring overhead, sound checks with Crash (our mohawk-ed monitor man with classical training in the bassoon), and jamming with Bob.  It was one of the best times I’ve had in recent memory.  And if we met and you liked the music, well…it was nice meeting you and I’m psyched you liked the band. 

The first night was a pretty pumpin’ set.  I was really nervous before the show.  It’s a good thing, though.  It usually means it’s gonna be a good one.  It also means I’m gonna sweat a lot.  And that I did…..so much so, that when we finished, I was shivering.  You might as well thrown me in a dunking booth.  We opened with “Chained” and kept it rolling from there, closing with “Mister Miracle Mile” and a new tune called “Babylon”.  Somewhere along the way, we decided to create a drinking game out of “Slip Away”—making an unsuspecting audience member don a trailer park mullet and swig beer every time I sing “Slip Away”....the artsies in the crowd probably feel insulted but I don’t care.  We’re there to have fun, right?  Right.  So we got this dude named Jeremy from Milwaukee up onstage and he pounded home a few beers during the course of the tune.  I think my rhythm section caught him barfing in his mouth.  But I know he won’t admit it and it doesn’t matter anyway.  He was a champ and the crowd seemed to be into the act.  In fact, they were really into it both nights so that feels good.

As the balance of the cosmos would have it….that night, when I got back to the RV, I had the minor misfortune of reading an email my manager sent to me that had performance previews from the areas we were playing.  One was a brief album review in the Illinois Entertainer by a writer named Kevin Keegan.  He basically branded me a singer-songwriter struggling to make ends meet, doing everything I can to hold an audience’s attention, learning reggae from a Sublime cover band, singing secondhandedly about my own experience, and “groaning” about how I may be fooling everyone who listens…...basically, the guy, in my opinion, tore the album a new asshole, took lyrics out of context, and labeled me a desperate charlatan in the rock and roll charade brigade. 

Needless to say, I had a weird feeling.  Here I am, traveling with my dedicated band across the nation, trying my hardest to give everything I have at every show, sweating my ass off, tired as hell, shower-less for days and days at a time, rolling in an RV that, at any given moment, could smell like a fart | dirty sock | sweat | beer | pizza | septic gas | etc….and there he is:  at home on a Friday night, wank in hand, getting paid to spin bunk yarn.  Granted, I really don’t expect anyone to sympathize with me and I understand music criticism is part of the game I’m in.  I get it.  But, this one got under my skin….mostly because the dude wrote the songs off without any decent explanation or real sincerity.  I mean….damn…..if you’re gonna hate on something, at least show up to the battlefield with good bullets and a sharp sword.  Then I’ll listen and take the feedback into consideration. 

In a moment of anger, I decided I’d find this guy on the internet and give him a piece of my mind.  If he’s got the balls to be a shitty critic, I’ve got the balls to be an artist concerned with the quality of music criticism.

I tried to find this guy on the Internet.  In fact, I hunted down an innocent Kevin Keegan and gave him some feedback, but it was the wrong guy.  So I ended up posting my thoughts on the “preview” page of the Entertainer’s website.  Basically, I invited him down to the Double Door to see my band live and decide for himself whether or not I was another whiney singer/songwriter.  And I wrote that if he wasn’t convinced by our musical presentation, then he could tell me to my face.  And…of course, I didn’t see him because I’m sure he’s got better things to do than to have a good time.  Either way, people like you, in any field of work, give written expression a bad name.  I realize I may be doing, in a similar way, exactly what I’m railing against.  But consider me a white-blood-cell-reporter fighting the collective muse’s immune system against a silly bug.  Maybe the dude just needs to get laid.

Anyway….sorry to go off.  All in all, Chicago was most definitely one of the best places we’ve been to thus far.  Every moment was great. And to those who made it out to support Bob and got to see us and liked it, thank you!  I even had the pleasure of seeing a thousand-plus bikers on a midnight naked bike ride through the streets.  As I stood and watched, a naked dude rolled past me and yelled, “Jason Shannon!!!!” 

I didn’t recognize him.  Maybe it was Kevin Keegan.  Maybe it was you.  Maybe it’s all my imagination.  Just glad and thankful to be out here.

Hey-O,

jason