Was really glad I could attend John Pritchett’s 65th birthday bowlarama at the Dart Bowl today. I gave him a microphone with an on/off switch.

Every now and then you get sandbagged by a gig you didn’t know much about going in.

This weekend I got to work at the new ACL facility at the Moody Theater in downtown Austin where the Experience Hendrix tour was doing a two-day stint. What a lineup! Did 14 interviews with some of Rock’s living legends including:

Billy Cox
Jonny Lang
Kenny Wayne Shepherd
Robert Randolph
Robby Krieger
Cesar Rosas & David Hidalgo
Dweezil Zappa
Brad Whitford
Taj Mahal
Chris Layton

And one of my heroes growing up as a funk-inspired drummer, Bootsy Collins.

We once again returned to England to wrap up production on the Lord Montagu documentary. From Skrillex to the Queen herself, this was an interesting visit. Beginning in York at Castle Howard, down to Chatsworth and then to London. Pics here. I took a barebones kit, including my brand new Schoeps CMIT.

Interesting double-header today, did a webcast with Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard of The Cabin in the Woods and worked a big party at Buffalo Billiards, co-sponsored by Nature Valley.

Nature Valley was promoting their ‘Trail View’ campaign, taking Google’s ‘Street View’ and applying it to three national parks. Got to meet and interview the guy who wore the rig for three hundred miles (poorly pictured).

Today was spent at the ScreenBurn arcade, toiling for Red Five games, promoting their new game FireFall. They wanted a RED Epic so we (Michael Morlan and myself) did the dbl system dealy. I hung a Comtek on it for scratch which worked fine for that purpose. Part of our day was spent following two of the game’s characters, Typhon and the lovely Mourningstar (pictured).

Worked on a fun spot with the gang at Ralph Smyth Entertainment to promote the Bypass Lane service at ballparks. The baseball version of the spot is here.

Worked on a unique little shoot involving one of the world’s largest rodents, in Buda, TX of all places…

Meet Gary the Capybara.

His website is here, where there’s a pic of your’s truly in the blog.

There are days and then there are great days.

For the second year in a row, and eerily, around the same time, I got to record Mr. Billy F’N Gibbons of ZZ Top fame. This time around it was for the show Whisker Wars on IFC. He is sort of an astral guide of theirs. We were shooting the 6th Annual Misprint Beard and Moustache Competition at The Mohawk in downtown Austin, TX. I was warned it would be a busy affair and indeed it was, with at least 1000 attendees over the course of the evening. Many categories of facial moss were showcased and I found myself laughing out loud many times during the gig. Based on the phone conversations I had with the brass a few days prior, I had over-prepared in a big way, bringing a 788t with several channels of wireless. We also included my trusty boom op and colleague Patrick Wiley as they were going to be using an F3 along with two Z1’s. This really was an OTF-fest due to the sheer volume of participants, which made it mostly a boom gig for both of us. We bugged the judges table and ran a direct line of it as well as the house output to a stationary Z1 and that covered the event itself. Sadly there was an onstage DJ that boned at least 90% of the event stuff, due to copyright issues. Not sure how they’ll sort that out.