My lady and I just got back to Chicago from a Thanksgiving trip down to Texas…. nice drive, y’all.  If anyone has the chance to go to the Menil Collection in Houston, or see any works from Robert Gober, I would HIGHLY recommend it!

Before I hit the road, I got to record two friends of mine (one old, one new) – Jim Elkington and Nathan Salsburg – in my living room.  They’re working on an album of ol’ timey acoustic guitar duos… a great way to spend a day, if you ask me.  Jim has played in both the Zincs and the Horse’s Ha (with Janet Beam and Fred Lonberg-Holm also in the band), and he and I did some tracking earlier in the year for a forthcoming solo record.  Nathan and I bonded over our mutual love of Elephant Micah, and we went to the release party for his new anthology Ouled Bambara: Portraits of Gnawa, a CD/DVD combo of Moroccan spiritual music on Twos & Fews/Drag City.  Pretty amazing stuff, and a good review here: http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13723-ouled-bambara-portraits-of-gnawa/

I’m picking up where I left off, working on the first 12″ single from CX Kidtonik’s KRAK ATTACK for Stones Throw Records.  It’s for a song called “Black Girl White Girl”, with a track featuring MF DOOM on the B-Side.  Pretty fucking banging…. a full length LP and another 12″ single are also slated for early next year.

I’ll also be starting on mixing a record by Chicago’s CAW! CAW! (not to be confused with Chicago’s Cacaw – also awesome).  They tracked the album out in LA this summer, and we’ll be mixing for the next month or so.  The tunes are sometimes epic, sometimes intimate, but mostly rockin’.  It should be a blast to mix this thing.

Other stuff surely coming up, talk at you soon….