Conrad Blog:

The Ryman / Quick Update

I finally got the camera situation wrapped up. For a number of rather boring reasons, it took a little while longer than expected (and a return or two) to get everything firmed up, but Kristin and I are now the proud owners of a really sweet Nikon d200 with a 18-200mm VR Nikon lens. This naturally makes us very happy.

So when Kristin's parents and my parents were in town and we all decided to check out the world-famous (Yes, "world"-famous. Never underestimate the popularity of American country music in Eastern-European nations, for instance) Ryman Auditorium, it was a natural decision to tote the little (read: not-that-little) guy around and put him through the motions. Some nice pics can be found on the Ryman gallery on my site, but I'll post a few highlights here. Note: I shot as a simultaneous raw + low qual jpeg, so I only uploaded the low qual jpeg. Don't get all freaked out about why the nikon's res sucks.

First Stop: The Ryman.

A cool building, was once abandoned and deemed not worthy of restoration. Took a lot of money to fix it up right.

The interior of the building is super cool. Good acoustics. LOTS of original wood. Note the radiused pews - that had to be hard to do (or at least costly) in the pre-computer days.

Me in the obligatory "Look at me play the Ryman!" shot. That guitar was out of tune.

Check out all the wicked-awesome printed show posters. This is the interior of Hatch Show Print - a print shop and living museum (still in operation) run by the Country Music Hall of Fame. My dad and I both put in some time working for printing companies in our day, so this was a really interesting stop for both of us. A LOT of that printing gear looked awfully familiar to my dad... Kristin and I are going to snap up a LOT of this stuff to decorate our apartment.

This Stuff is Old!

Check out the gallery for more pics. I just wanted to put up a short update since I haven't blogged in a while.

Recording notes:
* Added strings to one of chase's wedding songs - 12 tracks. Suck at violin less than I had feared.
* Started a re-do of the song "Please," so it may make the album.
* Inspired to start doing recording for bands around here again - need to redesign we presence, and actually style this blog a bit first though.
* Working on turning some random (not very good) prose into a song about fear and uncertainty. I've been listening to too much NPR lately.