I’ve been thinking about that song I wrote “Orion on the wrong Side” thinking about redo-ing the vocals cause I recorded them at about 1 am and was whispering, so as not to wake up my family. But something better happened, Steve covered it!

Not only did he save me from work that I shouldn’t even have been doing, but he did a great job with it too! Guitar sounds great, way to test it out!

(For those who haven’t heard it, my version can be found on this page )

Originally published at hypercomics.net. You can comment here or there.

Posted a new song, a cover of Radiohead’s “Lucky”. Earlier in the week I thought I had a nice acoustic version of it, but after listening a few times, I realized it was crap. So being not contented, I resolved to redo the thing. To help me accomplish this mission and get on with my freaking life, the Gods sent to me an old police broadcasting mic. Like a real “Calling all cars” type deal where you gotta hold down the button to talk. It’s perfect for recording vocals. Also you can hear my daughter Mae testing the mic throughout the whole thing.

You can hear this song and many other over on my Virb page.

Originally published at hypercomics.net. You can comment here or there.

New song. Pilate’s dream, made for a lark. (can anyone Kargyraa?)
And why didn’t anyone tell me Two Pillars of Salt apparently uploaded wrong and only plays for about 15 seconds? I’m seriously beginning to doubt whether you people click on these colored-word-things (beginning to doubt?)

I love you all anyway, though. Seriously, like universal and graceful love. (And Two Pillars has been fixed and ready to hear at the above link, thanks for asking)

Originally published at hypercomics.net. You can comment here or there.

I wasn’t happy with the vocals on my previous effort so I redid em and added a touch of bass, which may very well have pushed it over the edge.

You can decide for yourself by going here and clicking the one called “Two Pillars of Salt”

Originally published at hypercomics.net. You can comment here or there.

Nich and I have been having a sort of musical conversation after that little dirty thing I wrote a while back.

My latest contribution is called Two Pillars of Salt and it’s on my virb page. Also, a piece of his side of the conversation can be heard on his virb.

Originally published at hypercomics.net. You can comment here or there.

New song, “I was Born 10,000 Years Ago”, a traditional deal which has collected WAY too many lyrics and variations over the years. I cut quite a few out and it still topped off at 5 minutes, so if you can handle my sloppy playing and voice for that long, you can go here to hear it.

I think my favorite line that I cut was “and for Pharoah’s little kiddies, I built all the pyramiddies”. Thats just good stuff… The whole thing is actually giving me quite a tickle right now, especially as things fall apart at the end. I’m sure I’ll be mortified tomorrow (in five minutes).

I should really get back to drawing.

Originally published at hypercomics.net. You can comment here or there.

I get my computer back tomorrow, with all data gone. Peyton, I may need to take you up on your offer of help in the recovery effort.

This the car we’ve decided on. I have an inordinate fondness for the panel version, but I can’t haul the nippers to games in that. So it’ll have to wait.

Guess who’s got two thumbs and found this at thier local library today? That’s right. And jeezycreezy is it good.

Originally published at hypercomics.net. You can comment here or there.

I’ve got a sister who just graduated High School, and I wrote my 3rd song for her. (In some ways, it’s really my first song as the other two are, well I don’t know, more sketches really…)

I was trying to record it when my hard drive broke so I’ll just have to settle for posting the lyrics. I’ll include the chords, and if you have an instrument you can play it and pretend like you’re listening to me.

Song for my sister (upon graduating High School)

Now my song is all over
it’s short and it’s sweet
and full of some real sage advice
from an old fool like me
who plainly you see
dropped out of junior college twice.

Originally published at hypercomics.net. You can comment here or there.

My computer harddrive died in mid-session today. Hopefully they can recover whatever recent stuff I hadn’t backed up. That means no art, music or replies from me for a while. Man this sucks.

But on to more serious stuff:

So apparently Working Class Hero has crashed my personal zietgiest with a bang last week. I saw some dude walking round Target with a shirt adorned as such, which kind of blew me away, but now I’ve learned he was one of those hipster walking advertisments the future has sent us, as Green day did a cover of the song.

Now that may be fine and good and thier video is very thought-provoking as they have Darfour survivors telling thier horrific stories, etc. But it’s a total deterent from the original song. Lennon wrote a song about the slowly dying middle class of America (and England) and some A&R fuck thought “sounds good and all but really we need to throw some Darfour in. Darfour is really hot right now”. and that’s just about the most depressing thing I could think of. Now please, you know I’m not belittling the issues in Darfour or any country but it’s not what the song is about. Want to help Darfour? Write a song about Darfour. Your diluting and obscuring one tragedy by mixing in another, and this makes both of them impotent. Nice job, Green Day and your handlers. If I see that Target guy again I’m gonna see if he’s saved any Africans today. And to boot, Wikipedia tells me that Green Day performed a marketing hat-trick and played it on American Idol. I wonder if anyone realized that they were supposed to be laughing at the irony.

Mr. Jalopy said it best:

Everything you love, everything meaningful with depth and history, all passionate authentic experiences will be appropriated, mishandled, watered down, cheapened, repackaged, marketed and sold to the people you hate.

And this isn’t just because I think our version is better. (even though I do)
Sorry, I’m pissy today. Did I tell you my computer broke?

Originally published at hypercomics.net. You can comment here or there.

So my buddy Nich leaves town and what does he end up doing? Multimedia journalism for the San Luis Obispo Tribune.

Originally published at hypercomics.net. You can comment here or there.

Thanks to Grant’s suggestion I made a Virb page in order to post my occasional music tracks without going through riga-ma-role.

For the record, it’s a lot easier to use than myspace.

Originally published at hypercomics.net. You can comment here or there.

Another recording, this time of Black Jack Mama, a Townes Van Zandt song.

For those of you who play, I transcribed it as a G blues progression. I don’t really know if Townes played it that way, it just works better on my OpenG tenor. I can send you the tab I made if you like it well enough.

Originally published at hypercomics.net. You can comment here or there.

Just got back from helping my friends move to Sacramento, a town I am exceedingly impressed with. It was a whirlwind trip and I almost died on the road on day one, but more on that tomorrow, probably. It was a serious life changer, though.

But tonight I got sidetracked trying get some cuts from our final performance uploaded, which lead to a site redesign and a trimming of the fat. Hangdogexpression now sports a new look, and 5 new live songs from a show we played with the brothers-in-canine-nomenclature The Gritdogs. I was going to tell you which ones I liked best, but I honestly think they all sound pretty decent, for a not-live band like us.
Anyway, Take a look/listen and see if you agree. The majority of songs added haven’t been committed to recording before this, so we hope you like them. The new front page image is a scan of the CDs we made for Christmas. it was a hand-made stencil that worked out much better that I thought it would.

Now that Nich has moved I don’t know how we’ll play again, if ever. But we do plan on trying to bounce some recordings back and forth and really get these songs demo’d.
And Teppo/Darin, I’ve not forgot! Work starts tomorrow!

Originally published at hypercomics.net. You can comment here or there.

Getting some work done this week, hence the silence.

Nich and I popped in on a friend’s gig last Sunday and had the pleasure of playing a few songs. This picture, taken afterwards, is photographic evidence of the event. You can see a bit of Nich’s guitar, which I painted for him. I’ll take a better pic of it sometime.
We also received our 50 Banjos drawing from Eric F. Myers, it’s really a fantastic little piece and a great 10th anniversary gift for the missus and I. Go get yourself one!
And, my buddy Blackbyrd has taken me up on the nesting dolls challenge. I can’t wait to paint these things.

Originally published at hypercomics.net. You can comment here or there.

(Originally published at hypercomics.net. You can comment here or there.)

It’s a bit rough and I need to come up with some lyrics. But I had to get it down before I forgot. It’s recorded with the little Stella tenor guitar I’ve kinda-sorta adopted.

(Originally published at hypercomics.net. You can comment here or there.)

The show went great this weekend. I forgot my camera though so you’ll have to make due with that minimal adjective. I’m knee-deep in a bunch of other things so here’s a thin list of some media revolving around interesting women who play the banjo.
Banjo Pickin’ Girl- Documents the story of a young Appalachian woman (Staci Sexton, grand daughter of Lee Sexton) who is struggling with how to carry on her family’s rich tradition of playing and performing mountain music.

Mercedes Landazuri- Bossa on the banjo? Absolutely. She also has a bunch of awesome videos on Youtube.

Abigail Washburn- Fusing Chinese and American culture and history, and with a banjo, no less…
The Stairwell Sisters- Evie Ladin: Banjoist AND clogger. Youtube shows her doing both.

Who else you got?

(Originally published at hypercomics.net. You can comment here or there.)

Nich stripped down his guitar in order to dial it in a bit. While it was de-constructed, He asked me to paint it:

Better pics will be forthcoming in a few days. For those who don’t recognize it, it’s the penultimate panel from our Turpentine comic

(Originally published at hypercomics.net. You can comment here or there.)

I’m cleaning up some pages to be included in a print anthology of which I actually have back issues. I work on web-based stuff so much I forget how things looks up close. (Some of you dinosaurs may recognize this panel…)

(Originally published at hypercomics.net. You can comment here or there.)

C. Mueller

(Originally published at hypercomics.net. You can comment here or there.)

So it’s recorded poorly, mixed wrong, roughly played, shakily sung, unarranged, and needs a few more verses, but dammit, I’m one step closer to my lifelong goal of writing a song all by myself, with no collaboration from smarter musicians.
One thing, I didn’t know my one song would be quite so indy-maudlin but hey, you take what inspiration gives you, right?

Here it is, Orion on the wrong side.

I think I’ll come up with a few more verses then hand it over to the fellas and try to get them to put some steez on it. And here’s the lyrics so far, for those that can’t make my auditory ham hands out.

When I was the last boy on earth
I went and sat on your
lawn and watched the astronauts mill by

Verse Chords: D, Cadd2
bridge: Dm, G, D(+G)