Recently we visited Chuck’s parents up in Portland, Maine. It was my first visit up there and I thought it was gonna be a lot cooler in temperature. Surprisingly it was about 85 the whole weekend.

The trek was pretty long, and my back was in a state so it wasn’t the most fun of car rides, but listening to some Comedy Bing Bong on the ride was pretty good.

After arriving, people drinking their coffee, and getting situated we went for a walk around the town. On weekends out by the water they do live music and food trucks. The view was wild, like nothing I’ve ever seen. So many tiny island in one place.

I guess we didn’t get the full sunset experience that Maine normally gets, but it worked for me.

This was the view overlooking part of the city

This is also that view. It was a nice walk back, and on the way Charlotte’s Dad attracted a stray cat who wouldn’t leave him alone. We almost had to take him back to their home, the little butthead.

The next day we trekked up to Wayne, Maine. Charlotte’s family friends live up there, and it was around there that she spent a lot of summer time in her childhood.

After a long winding gravel road we reached the home, which was beautiful. The beach side lake once again featured many tiny islands. To me, as someone from one big ass island, this is very strange and in a sci fi kind of way mystifying.

We soaked a tiny bit of sun up, met the local dogs and then prepped ourselves to go out in kayaks.

We were told there was both an Osprey’s nest and Bald Eagle’s nest somewhere around the lake which got me quite stoked.

Out on the water, very cool shit. Beautiful water that was awfully blue. Charlotte saw an eel. That’s cool.

The lake had an island in the middle of that shit so we had a goddamn picanick.

Here is a view from the mini island.

We had to try and get a shot of us in the rock circle on the island. Go a little too much of the tripod-rock in the foreground but I think the idea is there.

This was us using our binox to check out the swooping Ospreys. Prettay, prettay ya know.

Back at Chuck’s parent’s place later. I noticed this framed drawing she did at age 9 of her cat Walt. One of the best parts about it is his little kid interpretation of her dad’s artwork, a study of a fragmented tiles.

This old house was right in the middle of the town, where we ate some bomb breakfast.

After breakfast we went out to the old lighthouse in what I think was southern Portland. There were some old houses and forts scattered around. This is the inside of one of em.

I can’t remember what this is a view of but it was on the coastal path heading toward the old lighthouse

Oh hey bees

Charloot and Garhoot

On the drive back I noticed Portland has got that PMA.

It was a semi- short trip, but a good one overall. I’m very interested to see it in the winter as well because now having a summer experience I can’t even imagine it under 2 feet of snow.

This is from our annual trip to Mecca, known to many as L&B.

Yes we do get to go more than once, but I feel as if I’ve taken this same photo of Charlotte for years now ever August.

Got together later in the month with Brendan and Matt to do a short little session on the boards. Brendan mentioned not having skateboarded in a long while so this was a warming back up for him.

One of my favorite parks simply for the location

Big ollies from Bren

Lots of footage taking and instagramming all day

I think he was describing the process of what happens as he tried to get off the ground?

Overall a good day but the two seconds I put on my skates I messed my back up something fierce. I kind of decided I have to quit unfortunately. Almost everytime I roll I get fucked up for two weeks. That sucks. Gotta stick to riding the board poorly.

A few snaps from one of the vocal sessions. Not much going on there. Time tickin by.

I got Andre to do this famous pose.

me drums

Probably the best part of this session was snapping this photo of Drew holding this ginger ale bottle that looks like wine.

Last weekend I guess it was I went back out with a few homies to record some new shit, a project we’re calling NYC Headhunters. Most of these fellas aren’t too familiar with LI so the trek out there to P-Town seemed like an eternity to them. Understandably.

We did an arguably fast session, which was pretty sick. 5 songs in about 4.5 hours? This is gonna be a demo so for me it wasn’t something I wanted to put too much thought into. Basically, does everything read? Is anything blowing out? Ok then.

We ended up doing a few takes of everything and got to a good place after about two hours.

Then just a couple of random touch ups and fixes. Standard practice shit. I just wish I had a better way of isolating out sound for overdubs. The headphone set up in basements is never ideal.

After banging out those overdubs me and Evan set up for him to track a second guitar tone. So we had Colman on fuzzy, reverbed out guitar, and Reggie on clean and fat bass now Ev was gonna add a good middle ground to the recording. Overall it came out pretty good. Not entirely stoked on the snare, but I am gonna try and fuck with it until the bitter end. Vocals coming. Demo done soon.

New shit and Bass overdubs

I ended up staying out there while the NYCHH dudes headed back to the city. I would later record some vocals with Drew and record some drums and bass for a new fast song. When Drew got back from work we chatted about online dating and watched Twin Peaks to the wee hours of the night.  The next morning Andre came out and we plowed through some more bass tracks and fucked around with some new ideas. Things are getting closer.