Photo depicts Jimmy playing the board game TwixT. Courtesy of Sam Whedon.

The snow has ceased, but the cold will not abate. This past weekend saw several nights of single digit temperatures, and we have largely remained cooped up in Sam’s farmhouse, frittering away at our project bit by bit. Recording has made for long work hours in these short winter days, but the stop-and-start nature of the process results in a lot of downtime for those of us who aren’t immediately engaged at any given moment. As such, we’ve been whiling away the dead time largely by reading,

For Sebastian, Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot, a contemporary character novel; for Galen, The Beatles Recording Sessions: the Official Abbey Road Studio Session Notes 1962-1970, which is pretty self-explanatory; for Jimmy, the sixth and penultimate book of Steven King’s The Dark Tower series, which, to hear him tell it, sometimes feels like six books too many.

watching basketball,

March Madness has more than lived up to the billing this year (especially in the context of this insane weather), with upsets galore and no team safe from elimination. Jimmy and Tommy were sorry to see their beloved Florida Gators bite the dust in the second round, but despite the band calling Charlottesville their sometime home, we were all kinda thrilled (if a little sad) to see the #16 seed University of Maryland, Baltimore County Golden Retrievers (what a name) produce a historic upset over the #1 overall seed University of Virginia Cavaliers. (Our condolences to the UVA basketball crowd and all its fans.)

and playing games.

Yesterday around dinnertime we witnessed an epic game of TwixT, an abstract path-connecting game that was apparently popular in the ’60s and ’70s (explaining it now makes me feel like a giant dork). The game pitted cocky veteran Samuel Whedon versus plucky upstart James Curry, who forced his opponent into several moments of deep thought and mild concern before eventually succumbing to Sam’s superior skill and experience.

At this point, we have tracked drums, bass, acoustic guitar, electric guitar and/or mandolin (depending on the song), and lead vocals on a broad array of songs, consisting of about half a dozen tunes from last winter’s Songwriting Experiment, another half dozen brand new songs, and one old favorite. They may not all make the final cut for the record, and another couple may be added before all is done. We’re going to wait to see the final results and then put together the best album we can.

I won’t tell you how long, on average, we’ve all gone without showering.

Warm (I wish) regards,

Tommy