missed the party but i'm having my own here

the old 97s "blame it on gravity" was FINALLY released today!!
it feels like we've been waiting forever
since the record has been done since early january
i'd almost been lulled into a slumber while waiting
well now it's arrived
definitely cause for celebration
i missed all the party hoopla at the granada tonight
wish i could've been there
they graced the cover of Quick
plus a big article in the DMN
and i also think in the Observer
a full on dallas media blitz!
but i have a good excuse
i'm in austin now
getting back to work on my record
we rolled in to town sunday night
it was super bad-ass of jayme to give me half of her mother's day
for our trip
when i got to billy's
around 7
we both found that we were in weird moods
i played a few songs
they all felt like crap to me
i just didn't feel right
i needed a little time to get back into the flow of things here
it had been a hectic and dramatic 3 weeks in dallas
i needed to give myself a chance to clear my mind
the next morning i felt one hundred times better
i woke up and finally got to work on the words to
"be here now"
they've been stifling me for months
one line at the end of the chorus
not right
no matter what i did
i was ready to march over to billy's house
and show him i had finally knocked the song on it's head
but when i got there he said
"how 'bout we do western hills?"
i was pretty stunned
because i didn't think he wanted to put that one on the record
coming into things i thought "western hills"
was one of my strongest tunes
i looked at it kinda like the sister song to "1978"
a nice little slice of nostalgic pop
and i wrote it in the big week i had
at the top of last year
when i wrote
"saint georges" and "endless dream days"
i thought those 3 tunes were the foundation of my next record
!bam!
!done!
but on day one billy said he wasn't sure of
"western h"
it might be too kinksy?
and then jayme clocked in with a "maybe" too
maybe too much like F?
so it ended up being put on the back burner
i was a little bummed
but
from the first minute we got rolling on this tune
i felt great about it
it was good to work on something fun
we cruised along the tracking highway effortlessly
billy helped me with the 2 lines i'd been unhappy with
"brother F is crying from a bullies' rock/i'm the lone avenger with revenge to plot"
and
"sitting on the blacktop at the end of class/betting that the Jam was better than the Clash"
two couplets you would've never found on snowing or beautiful noise
right?
we spent about 6 hours working on it
at the end of the day we had acoustic guitar
vocals
some hot and busy bass
some unlikely but super cool banjo (from billy)
plus a bunch of percussion stuff
and when i was messing about on the fun maker
i stumbled upon the wah-wah trumpet sound
we both instantly agreed we'd have to use that the next day
after recording lisa and lee took us out to taj palace
for some excellent indian food
to celebrate my birthday
it was so nice of them to do this
as i was sad that they couldn't come up to dallas on the 3rd
anyway
we had a great meal
and i couldn't have felt better
being with J and G and L and L
back in austin
ready to spend the next week
enjoying every moment of this rock'n'roll fantasy