Music by Brian Patrick

I just recorded an acoustic version of the Ani Difranco song ' overlap '. I love the song, and especially the line 'there is strength in the differences between us, and I know there is comfort where we overlap'. But this was also an excuse to play with new software for mixing multiple video streams.

I saw two good shows recently in Redwood City. The blues slide guitarist Roy Rogers was playing at Club Fox. Great band backing him up, and great sound at the club. Here's a solo version of Rather be the Devil , and an older band of his playing Walking Blues . Roy travels a lot and he'll be back at Yoshi's in October . He calls it slide guitar, but when he plays it, it sounds like nothing I've ever heard before. The second was Will Russ with an all-star band at Angelica's. Will's a gifted singer who held the room. A couple years ago someone recorded him playing A Song for You with a different band. He's there most Thursdays. Listening to Will made me want to play more when I got home. Inspiring stuff.

Time to get some gigs. And to get gigs apparently it's common to have a demo recording. I just made a new one pulling out 6 minutes of our last two practices. Click on that link and then on the red demo button and listen 9 short samples of different songs.

John, Jay and I practiced this last Sunday and made a live recording . Most recordings are done one track at a time. People spend hours or days to get minutes for a final recording. Here we just pressed record and got whatever happened together during practice. Later I cut out an hour from the two hour practice.

Sunday night is open mic jam night at Bobby D's in Redwood City . This last Sunday, I brought my bass and ended up playing a set or so of songs I hadn't played before. Good fun. Later it became more of a rehearsal for what felt like the house band. Almost everything you'd expect from a California dive bar, including lots of really friendly folks on the stage and in the audience. Some raw moments, but easy to feel the love.