a day in the life?

on the eve of our new single FORGIVEN being released I decided it would be appropriate to start a 'simple' kitchen project. ridiculous? yeah it kind of was. we had an old sink and faucet. the sink was awkwardly shallow and I could never wash many dishes at once. ok enough of the boring reasons why, since we have a week off I figured it would be cake. long story short I bought a sweet black cast iron sink which was super heavy. installed the faucet and mounted in the counter and discovered my counter top was far from level. couldn't keep the sink and had to get a stainless one which was way lighter and flexed enough to make up for the poor countertop. not that any of this is interesting, but today I finished it up all by myself - even installed the disposal. good news is that all my fingers are still intact and I didn't have to buy a new countertop. definitely not in the mood to do any dishes, which is why I'm writing this instead. (awkward face in picture is intentional I'm pretty positive)

October already?

It seems as though fall has come upon me pretty quick this month. Every year now for as long as I can remember we head out on the road for a fall tour when it's still warm and green out and then somewhere in the middle of the tour - between catching colds, eating bbq, and changing guitar strings - the leaves turn and the air gets crisp. This year it is a welcome change for sure though and I'm enjoying the scenery right now on our way home from a long stretch of shows. Matt is working on some lyrics and Mark is working on some cereal. We dropped off the other guys in St. Louis last night to grab the van and head back to Nashville. The next few days will hopefully be the highlight of my Fall in the sense of being home in the heart of the season for more than just two days. I get to see my awesome family and spend some time with the little man.

We finished up the shows with Phil Wickham last month and now we're out with Addison Road. It's been a whirlwind for various reasons but I'm just happy to be out with great people and such great crew. We have 3 crew guys on the bus and they set up a pretty unbelievable show every night. We'll only be out for one more week and then it will all be over. It's been so much fun playing new songs every night and hearing the response. You can check out our newest single 'Forgiven' on our site right now and I'm pretty sure it will be on itunes later this month. We'll be heading back to record the final songs for the record in early November. I'll try to keep things a little more current on here before the year gets away from me.

Sanctus Real: Something Heavenly

Here we go

I've been eating oatmeal in the mornings lately. Dominique makes it on the stove. We throw in some almonds, dried cherries, brown sugar. It's been a good routine. It helps me to get a better start on my days - at least the days that I'm home. I'm a routine kind of guy. I like to change my guitar strings every 3 shows. I like to cut the grass in alternating patterns from week to week. And this week I think I'll have a whole new set of routines to learn. We made a ridiculously big and overdue step as a band. We finally bought a bus! This ain't no van. I mean I need to learn how to dump the toilet and service the generator. This is serious stuff my friend. So I'll be busy learning some new routines - if you have any advice let me know.

So we rolled into our first show with the bus up in Minnesota. Sonshine Festival is always a good time. I actually found a picture of us playing it back in '03. Crazy to think it's been that long since we started playing festivals in such distant lands as Minnesota. When we pulled up this year though we heard some cool fresh music on mainstage. I'm probably a bit behind, but check out Tal and Acacia if you get a chance. Way cool melodies.

Anyways. See you on the road (hopefully with my oatmeal in hand from now on)

June, be nice and don't go so fast

I'm getting old. Older that is. My birthday was a few days ago. I'm feeling pretty good though and I'm finally done coughing. So here we are almost done with June and I'm just getting back to normal. The year is halfway over and that means we're just getting closer to 2012. Let's make some predictions. In 2012 will anyone have topped the iPhone? Will anyone buy CD's anymore? Will rock and roll come back to life, because whatever it is I'm hearing on mainstream radio stations today is not the stuff dreams are made of ;) Seriously though... when I wanted to learn how to play guitar it was all about my name is jonas and not about 3 kids playing air guitar. But again I guess I'm just getting old.

Ok - one thing is for sure in 2012 I'll be rockin' the same laptop but with moon leopard osx. And I'll have a sweet stache like this.

Also this week I got a wicked flat tire, but discovered the spare kit in my car included some creepy white gloves. proof shown here. I had to snap a pic. The tire went flat and my alternator decided to go all at once. I think I unknowingly traveled through some weird electromagnetic field. I was near a hospital when it all happened. *note to self* always be ready for a flat tire and don't be afraid to wear gloves if you find some hiding with the jack.

How often do you eat chicken? Dan and i were talking about chicken the other day. We eat a lot of it. Not on purpose though, it just happens. Wendy's, Ralphies chicken chunks, Chic-fil-A, Zaxby's, chicken wings... but it made us think that we really don't ever see chickens - real live chickens that is. Then we thought what if we were the only people left on Earth and we were stuck on a chicken farm. Would we even know what to do in order to survive?


*note to self* learn how to raise chickens by 2012.

It seems that Sunday has been the day that I'm allowed to relax a little the past few weeks! So here I am again. Got home way too late last night from our show in Michigan. But what a great night it was. We got to play with our good friends from The Afters. It was freezing cold out and the stage was setup in a wave pool at theme park. Pretty random. They had drained most of the water out though - all except for an algae filled puddle in the deep end. By the time we played it had to be barely 40 degrees out, very brisk and very good for my old buddy pertussis. Got through the show though and had a great time with our friends in Michigan. Again, sorry I have no pics ;(

Matt and I spent some time writing songs in Nashville last week with some other writers. It was a good experience, but a crazy schedule. Four sessions in two days. We got around with a sweet Kia we rented though. Funny note - when we flew up to Michigan to meet the guys our flight was late so we had to get another rental to get to the show instead of getting picked up. Had to go with the Kia again. Pretty stinkin awesome. Again, wish I had pics.

Ok - so here is a pic. It is Sunday - I am relaxing and surfing the web a bit. Check this out. I've never heard of these pre-fab houses before. But they look pretty rad.

www.flatpakhouse.com

Whoop there it is

Here we are in May already. What in the world is going on? I'll tell you what's going on. Or more like, what's been going on for a very ridiculous amount of time with me... meet my friend, his name is Pertussis. It's a horrible name really, so I call him the whooping cough. Yeah - he's been hanging around since that time way back in February. I found out I had it a few weeks back after visiting the doctor for the 4th time and finally having some blood taken and sent to the lab. It's no longer contagious, and when it was contagious I more than likely didn't even have the cough. He's a nasty little friend and I haven't been able to ditch him quite yet. Anyways - I really haven't been myself most of the year because of it, just kinda scrapping by on fumes since he likes to keep me up at night. I'm really hoping he leaves me alone soon though.

So, onto better news. We tracked some new songs this past week! What a crazy week it's been. Started with a hometown show one day, flew to Texas to play the next (on stage performing when just a few miles away the cowboys training facility blew down) ended up in Nashville most the week recording (and sleeping in Jeremy Camp's basement) Wound up back in Ohio for a show in Columbus - couldn't stop there so we flew to Florida to play with some of my favorite bands at Busch Gardens, then finally made it home for Mother's day. One box of tissues later and many cups of coffee and we managed to record 3 songs of which we are all crazy excited about. I can't even wait to see how the rest of the record shapes up! We were pretty busy on a limited time schedule so I wasn't really in picture mode, but I think DAN might have some pics. His blog is way better anyways. Oh and for the record Dan bought the microkorg. Which is a pretty cool little machine.

I also forgot to mention we have a sweet management team. One of the guys that manage us had us over for dinner while we were recording and his wife made us feel like we were home with some great pasta and dessert. Delish. Did I mention we have a sweet management team?

Well I hope you all had a great Mother's Day. Was pretty rad over here. I just got done doing the dishes. It's my nightly duty. "Maybe it's time for a new duty"