Mercy Train

Spent most of the day hangin' out with my band Mercy Train. From left to right: Skip Prokop, Andy Bartha, Matt Shelvock, Ryan Ethier, Jamie Prokop, Donny Paulton. We ate tons of tastey perogies and cabbage rolls, talked about the current record, spoke on spirituality, and chatted about exciting developments for the upcoming record. We spent some time listening to vintage Paupers music and, of course, recent mixes of our own material coming out of the studio. It was all around a great time of fellowship with some great players and brothers. For those of you wondering: Mercy Train will be finishing up the first record soon and we're already ramping up for recording our next batch of tunes...and man, I gotta say,... of course biased a bit... but man, this new material is great - really "out-of-the-box" some powerful stuff in these. Well, I guess you actually gotta hear what we've done first eh? Er...ummm...well, it'll be done soon - really it will.
As for upcoming guitar tones and stuff to expect: Matt and I are looking foreward to tracking some guitars using the MesaBoogie Lonestar (check out my previous post about auditioning this amp - it's UNREAL). We're also hoping to bring back the MesaBoogie Tremoverb for sure...maybe even someone's very incredible Diezel VH4????...eh Nathan? (hehe). Keep ya posted. ;)

Finally...

I've been out of the blogging loop for the better part of a month. I've been tied up a bit waitng for our third little package to arrive. Aneilya Mae Bartha was borth January 31, 2006. I always find the swell of different emotions sureal thru the whole experience... makes me want to write more songs. As I grow deeper into my roles as husband and father, I understand a bit more clearly the need for "ballad" times - times for the quite, contemplative moments that nurture growth. Being kind of a crazy energy guy, that's tough at times - just the change in pace that is - but I'm getting better at finding that balance between the work and rest. All that to say, cool... I'm a dad three times over and lovin' it. We call her Nelly for short -it sounds cool. Actually, I wanted to call her Nelly officially just 'cause I really like Nelly Furtado's vocals... well, my wife thought we'd name her after her grandmother Aneilya and we could use Nelly for short. We're both happy with the name.