AW Full Band Album is UP AND RUNNING! and....studio candidates?

First of all, thank you all so much for your patience with us, and me. I know it's easy to lose interest in something when the activity drops too low. Life gets in the way of so many things. It's frustrating. But I fully intend to make it up to you with what I have in store. I admit that I was in a rough spot there for a while. A long while. I guess I could throw some apologies your way, but the truth is that whatever happened in my head seems to have cleared up a bit recently and made me not be able to stop writing. And when I'm writing I'm creating, and when I'm creating it's usually music, and since you're here reading this you're obviously interested in the music we make and so therefore I will forego the apologies. Sooo....Ha! Hurray for small victories.

Applewood Whiskey has been deep in rehearsal lately working on some the new material. Although we're still in the end of the writing phase, we've done some prelimary recordings for ourselves and I have to say that we are all VERY happy and excited with how things are coming about! Some of the arrangements we've come up with are just.....well....you'll see. And so, without further adieu, here are some of the tracks you can look forward to hearing (AS A FULL BAND) on our upcoming album:

Addiction
Her Arms
Friend Zone
The Ballad of Chickabee Jones (Main Street Massacre)
Wake
Get it Right
What It Do
Little Miss Sunshine
Minnesota Gray
Choke

....and a couple other, as yet, unnamed, songs.

BUT, before we can release all of this wonderment to you, it must be recorded, and we haven't quite decided on what studio we'll be using.....so we encourage YOU to give us your ideas. If you know of a good studio in the Boulder or Denver area, let us know!! If you have your own studio, send us a message!

Well, you know, whatever.

So I haven't been writing much. In truth, there hasn't been much to write about. At least nothing refreshing or positive for you to chew on. I guess most of the time I try to write about something exciting; something that will make you want to come here and read about all the wonderful things that are happening in my, or AW's, world. I regret to inform you that there has been none of that, and so I've been putting off writing just to avoid having to tell you the truth about myself. But today I realised that if you're here in the first place, then you would probably be interested in the truth, even if it doesn't necessarily warm you up on the inside. Besides, I should probably respect you enough to let you in on my life anyway. After all, isn't that where the music comes from? I imagine it does.

So here's where I am. My relationship of three years ended a few months ago. March, I guess it was. As much as I thought I would be able to pull myself out of it, I haven't, and I can't. It wouldn't be fair for me to say that it came out of nowhere, but the day it happened I felt like it did, and I haven't been able to bounce back from it.

The problem with putting so much of yourself into something is that when it breaks, it's not a reality that you can face or understand or accept. Not to mention the fact that the longer you are with someone, the stronger the promise becomes. The promise that you will stand by each other, and the idea that it was "meant to be" that way; you and her together. But with a promise like that, it becomes easy to trust yourself too much. Trust that you've made a good decision. Trust that she feels the same. Trust that it's safe to invest so much of yourself into another person. Trust that allowing your relationship with this person to become so much a part of your identity is a good idea. Too much trust altogether, it seems, though the actual problem was not enough trust. In me. I hurt her. Not physically, ever. But emotionally I hurt her and she could never trust me again after that. I don't blame her, and I can't blame her, which is what makes it worse. At least if this was somehow on her shoulders then I could hate her and move on. But it's not. It's on mine.

And so, every day I am buried inside my own head with regret, jealousy, guilt and all the other things that cause a person to self-destruct. The details of just how much I have fallen apart aren't really important here and would probably seem like a "cry for help" in this context anyway, so I will avoid that. But I gave everything to her, and with every ounce of my being I knew that she was the one for me. I still feel that way, and I don't think that will ever go away. The hurt has not faded, even a little, and every day I am sinking more and more, and it's killing me. In the past this would be the time to pick up a pen. I tried, but I don't feel like writing and in all honesty I don't care if I ever write another song. So here's one last verse:

It's a long way from the Minnesota gray
and the nights keep getting long without the sleep
and as the bottle empties out
I find it hard to live without
the girl I would have died for just to keep
And it's a long way from the things I meant to say
and it's such a heavy price to have to pay
cause every day I'm finding out
there's nothing left to sing about
when parts of you have died in every way

I hope she finds happiness. As for myself, I respectfully decline.

Hope that explains the silence.

Can't escape the snow...music switching gears?

So...I left CO for a little NC Christmas vaycay with the fam, thinking I would be able to get away from the snow and frost for a while.....FALSE. It hasn't snowed a LOT, but it's still damn cold and I really could have used a break from the cold. No big deal. I'm used to it, but slightly disappointing nonetheless. C'est la vie.

For now, I hope you all enjoyed/are enjoying the holidays. Get a good rest in before we all have to go back to the grinding stone. For now I'm just sitting in my favorite brewery back home having a little Nut Brown Ale to take the edge off.

In further news, I think there may be some changes coming to Applewood Whiskey pretty soon. Very soon, actually. I don't want to count the eggs before they hatch, but if everything goes as planned, Applewood Whiskey will be starting out the new year with a lot of energy and a brand new texture. I'll just leave it at that for now. In the meantime, raise your glasses children and enjoy your time with one another. As always...

Cheers
Matt

OCTOBER 30th SHOW!!!

Greetings Kittens....

We would like to cordially demand each of you to come to a real-life full-band Applewood Whiskey show at the Providence Tavern in Edgewater this Saturday, October 30th!!! We will start around 9:30 and play til around 1:00.....THREE HOURS of KICKASS coming your way!

Perks of attendance:

1) We will be there. In costume.

2) So will you....the best costume wins some pretty sweet prizes (rumors of a snowboard giveaway!)

3) Spending your Halloween Eve listening to great music and having delicious beverages.

Come out and support live music! Or to hell with live music...just come support us!!

-AW

I'm a murderer...

I had to kill a mouse today. I hate killing things. It bothers me.

Murder Story:

My dog was FREAKING OUT running back and forth in front of the piano, so I had to go see what was going on before she either gave herself a heart attack or crashed into my piano or guitar. I knew that we had had in a mouse in the house before. That's background story #1...

Background Story #1:

So I'm laying in my bed the other night, about to go to sleep. On my nightstand I have a lamp, a coin jar, and my pet mouse. That's background story #2...

Background Story #2

This is not the mouse in question in the Murder Story. My pet mouse is a mouse I rescued from the jaws of Shari's pet snake. When we first got the snakes, they had to be fed. Shari stopped by the local petstore to get feeding mice. We were told to feed the snakes in the bathtub, because if we fed them in their own tank then they would learn to associate peoples' hands with food, which is bad. So the snake is in the tub. Shari puts the mouse in. Shari did this because I made it very clear that I would have nothing to do with feeding the snakes, AKA murdering mice. It's not my thing and I don't care what you think. So the mouse is now in there. After a few minutes, the snake attacks the mouse. It curls up around the mouse and tries to squeeze it to death. I'm out of the bathroom by this point. Again, not my thing. Shari then tells me that the mouse got away (we found out later that Anna, the snake, was pregnant, and therefore not really herself). Shari says she'll try again later. Not on my watch.

So I waited for Shari to leave for work, and I seized the opportunity to go the petstore and purchase a little mouse condo. I took the "feeding mouse" that escaped the jaws of death and gave him a home. His name is "Lucky" and he sleeps next to me in his cage on my nightstand.

BACK TO BACKGROUND STORY #1:

So I'm laying in my bed the other night, about to go to sleep. On my nightstand I have a lamp, a coin jar, and my pet mouse. My phone also charges there. So I'm about to go to bed and I have to send a last minute text, so I lean over a little to grab my phone. I turn on the lamp. There's a rustling from behind the nightstand. I wait and listen. Suddenly the lamp cord starts to shake a little. By itslelf. But not really.

It turns out that the little thing shaking the lamp cord was a tiny grey mouse, with big ears, who reminded me a lot of Despereaux, that mouse from the movie. Anyway, this little grey mouse comes out from behind my nightstand, after just climbing up via the lamp cord, and is now standing on his hind legs right beside me. My face is less than a foot from this mouse. And we're staring at each other. For a solid five seconds he stares at me, and I stare at him. He's not afraid of me. Just curious, I guess. But he soon grows bored of me and goes to check out MY pet mouse. They stare at each other through the bars of the cage for a moment, sniffing each other or whatever they do, and then the little grey mouse must have had an appointment or something because he left in quite the hurry, climbing down the way he came up. "Huh," I said. "I guess we've got a mouse."

BACK TO MURDER STORY:

My dog was FREAKING OUT running back and forth in front of the piano, so I had to go see what was going on before she either gave herself a heart attack or crashed into my piano or guitar. I knew that we had had in a mouse in the house before, so I figured that he had returned to apparently raise a little hell. So I go to the end of the piano, where he must have been hiding, and made a little racket. This, all too well, did what I intended it to do, which was to scare him out from behind there......sure enough, out comes a little mouse who's day is just about to suck.....he darts around for a little bit and then unfortunately runs straight into the unforgiving jaws of my dog, Chloe. Now, Chloe, instead of doing anything useful with the poor thing, just bit down on it, hard enough to paralyze it, and then dropped it. So now the mouse is just laying there in what I imagine was excruciating pain, so I ran over to it, and sure enough, it was my little friend from the other night. I was really pissed off. If I knew how to do mouse surgery I would have but I don't. So I did what I had to do. I took my little friend ouside in a plastic bag and brought my knife. I couldn't just let it lay there and suffer. It was the right thing to do, but dammit.....I HATE killing things. It's not my thing, and therefore, I am a murderer and today has sucked.