Buon giorno, amici! Come sta-Lei?

We just made another one of our mad-dash trips to Athens Co. Thanks to everyone who came out and to all our new friends from the show with Kate Voegele and Mike Genovese. Apart from that, we barely had time to enjoy the greenness of the valley, the humidity, and the good, cheap local beer (something I've been missing in Nashville--Yazoo, I'm looking at you) before jetting on back to middle Tennessee where relatively few people drunkenly recognize us on the street. Fortunately, it got pretty repellently muggy down south while we were gone, to ease the separation.

In more recent news, shortly after our return, I dreamt of moving a piano with The Ink Spots (which I only mention because, in premise, that seems a lot like playing chess with Abraham Lincoln and a beaver). And, the forecast for this week calls for temperatures in excess of ninety degrees all week. 

 So, that's what I got. What's new with you? Feel free to send us a note any time theprincesofhollywood@gmail.com , whether to tell us about your dreams, complain about our songwriting, invite us for barbecue, or notify us of pending litigation. We'd love to hear from you.

Stay cool,

HD

First, my apologies to all of those who’ve asked me what been happening with the blog, and thanks for the encouragement to keep it going.  Life has just been getting in the way as of late, and I mean that in a good way.  But I’m still here, and thing are definitely looking up.

Second, I’d like to address what may be on some folks’ minds, including mind: what’s happening with The Princes of Hollywood?  Some of you saw us this weekend, for what turned out to be a sort of reunion show, though we’d expected only to be in Athens, Ohio for the support of the Passionworks Project CD release show.  As most of you have noticed, we’ve been laying low for most of the last four months, after our tour ended in Rochester, New York on December 18th.  First of all, we had a fantastic but tumultuous year in 2007.  We toured more extensively and successfully than ever before, but we also found ourselves exhausted, still in debt from our last record, and unsure of our next move.  Scotty “The Mullet” Houchens amicably left the band for pursuits academic, and Harlan and I decided it was time to get the hell out of dodge, so to speak, and leave our hometown of Athens, Ohio for the big lights and warmer climes of Nashville, TN.  The move took a lot out of us, both financially and emotionally, and we’re only now getting back on our feet.  We also got pretty used to performing as a three-piece, and singing in three-part harmony, and we felt very little excitement about re-working our songs for duo performances.  Meanwhile, the state of the economy and the price of gasoline have made it the prospect of making money on tour excruciatingly suspect.  A career in music (or the arts, for that matter) is not for the faint of heart or the soft of stomach.

So we’ve been laying low, remembering how to have rewarding daily life, and not thinking too much about the future.  And it seems now that we find our selves in a better place than ever, and excited again about the prospect of making music that we love.

I can’t say that things will be quite like they were in the past.  I’ve begun work on a number of new projects that should keep me busy performing, writing, and producing music with other folks.  Our cavalier attitudes toward driving through snowdrifts in Duluth, MN in the February have mellowed a bit, and extensive touring without the support of a label or sponsor seems unlikely, but you never know.  However, we are writing new songs that are some of our best yet, and we are becoming a part of a very vibrant and healthy creative community here in Nashville, so who knows what might come of that.  More to the point, we’re spending some time getting back to what it is we loved in the first place and seeing where that takes us, and I promise that is a good thing.

In other exciting news, I’ve begun working on some co-writing with other writers here in Nashville, and the results have been excellent.  I wrote a song a few weeks ago with Chad Harris, with whom I currently performing, that has been coming together nicely the more that we play it.  It’s a big, catch alternative pop-rock song, unlike most of the stuff I write, though it has a few of my touches—a minor/major 6 chord here, a earthy metaphor there—and I’m excited about it.  I’m also working on a song with Chris Meyers, of The Bittersweets fame, a fantastic band originally from San Francisco who now live in Nashville.  They have a new record coming out in August on Compass Records, and it is excellent.  We’ve started work on a song that is very country-noir, tentatively based on the story of a Iraq war veteran whose post-traumatic stress disorder drove him to drown his wife in the bathtub, call the authorities, and then go bowling.  What we’ve come up with is a creepy yet somehow sweet tale of husband and dead-wife talking and dancing in the shadows of a sad and beautiful world.

In the next few months I’ll be doing plenty more writing, and I’ll also be performing with Chad Harris, The Princes of Hollywood, The Queen City Zapatistas, and possibly Southpaw and the Sinnisters.  More to come on all of that soon!

--Tristan 

Chopped sirloin is, to use the parlance of my youth, where it's at. I know it's (relatively) expensive. And it never goes on sale. And I know that true hamburger sandwiches, made on a flattop griddle by a nicotine- and coffee-stained patron or patronesse of road food, consist of ground chuck. But for those of us who don't have properly seasoned (ie scraped but not washed in 30+ years) short-order cooking surfaces, chopped or ground sirloin is the way to make an at-home burger taste like it came from a restaurant. A good one.

Burgers being what they are, I seldom make them at home, so when I do, I should like to do it right. Besides, alpha-lipoic acid, arguably the most important nutrient to ocular health, is most densely found in red meat. As my eye sight has been suffering somewhat since moving (and going on the Stress and Poverty Diet), I make it a point, every couple weeks, to take a healthy helping of something beef on "manager's special."

But back to the point, for the kind of richness that cannot be found in the traditional, backyard, hand grenade "burger," ground sirloin is the way to do it. Try it sometime without telling your cookout guests, and let the compliments wash in. (If you want any more tips [such as make sure the middle of your patty is at least as thin as the edges in order to avoid the pine cone/hand grenade shrinkage endured by so many American "barbeque"* hobbyists, and always, always butter and toast your buns] or to take exception with my ignorant self-righteousness, please don't hesitate to contact me at theprincesofhollywood@gmail.com.)

--As an aside, don't buy Yuengling (America's oldest brewery and one of my favorite cheap, American beers) in Tennessee. It's, evidently, all skunked. We thought we had bought a misbottled selection...but it turns out that the vast majority of Tennessee's Yuengling just tastes like crap. This is probably a result of extended shipment time from Pennsylvania and slow sales, because no one down here drinks it.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is this: I just had a long day, and the only thing that cured it was half a pound of char-grilled chopped sirloin. Try it sometime. (You don't have to take as much as I did in order to observe the benefits.)

Happy eating,

HD

*"Barbeque" or "barbecue," the process of slow cooking meat in large quantities by means of indirect heat, often conveyed by smoke, is derived from "barabicu," in the language of the Carribean Tainu people, their name for the community-sized meals prepared by burying an assortment of meats and produce and building a fire atop the pile (not unlike a New England clam bake). This is not the same as "grilling," which is cooking by suspending food upon metal slats over an open fire, intended to expose the food directly to heat and flame. Probably you've never barbequed a burger--I never have. (I did buy a smoked burger once, in Dayton. It tasted like meatloaf.) I just wanted to set the record straight.

(Author's Note: At the time of publication, I have lived in Nashville, Tennessee for roughly six weeks; I make no pretense to "know Nashville."--After three and a half years in Boston, I would make no such claim about that city.-- The following are merely first impressions. Please forgive my mistaken interpretations, and feel free to disabuse me of them.)

The Nashville skyline consists of a small cluster of "skyscrapers," out of place and in competition with the surrounding hills, so that, often, one cannot see downtown from within the city. It looks rather like a snow-globe rendition of a city's downtown scaled up to life size. The view is dominated by the AT&T (formerly Bellsouth) Tower, also known as "the Batman building" and "Optimus Prime." The mean looking spires atop the AT&T building irresistibly attract the eye, especially at night,  illuminated in blue, and might discourage one from looking up at all.

After the surprisingly diminutive size of Nashville's skyline and the slightly uncomfortable confrontation of the AT&T Tower, one finds the cranes. Chances are that wherever you are in Nashville, you can see a crane. Online listings for condominiums that showcase the homes' views invariably feature the sight of a crane in the distance, probably building another set of condominiums or expanding a college's something-or-other facilities.

(Above: The view from Bernard Road, the walking route from my house to Belmont Boulevard, where we go for Thai food on the cheap from the International Market, or for egg biscuits and high-octane, counter-cultural coffee from Bongo Java. Far right is the AT&T Tower, left of which, if you look closely, are a pair of cranes. Far left is the William R. Snodgrass Tennessee Tower [no kidding], where one CANNOT obtain a new driver's license after moving from out of state.)

Below: From the corner of my block, a crane at Belmont University, expanding their something-or-other facility.)

The cranes, rising up among historic estates and landmarks, are ultimately a symbol of Nashville's sense of continual, almost haphazard, renovation. Neighborhoods are updated and developed suddenly and often without explanation or regard for urban planning or (apparently) zoning restriction, creating a bizarre patchwork of commercial, industrial, and socioeconomic swatches all immediately abutted and unclearly marked. Neighborhoods change, literally, from one side of the street to the other. In this way, one really cannot judge the character of an area of Nashville proper from the map. On the edge of historic Germantown, which measures roughly four blocks, square, Tristan and I went into a Kroger where, along with one store employee who gave us a knowing nod, we were literally the only white people. Dollar General has a store on Eighth Avenue South, among generations-old antique stores.  There is a large Jewish seminary and estate in the middle of rich-as-sin, Baptist, Belle Meade. We saw John Prine shopping at our local grocery store.

"Keep Nashville Weird."

The geographical mishmash of Nashville, with its cockeyed intersections (the insult comes not from the fact that the roads are obviously old horse paths, originally connecting vast estates with the small urban center on the Cumberland, but from the fact that they have the gall to number these streets and issue them North/South/East/West demarcations, as if there were an overarching pattern) and businesses housed in former single family homes, reflects its generally confusing, hybrid attitudes of progress and tradition, deregulation and strict expectation. Judging by the bumper stickers and yard signs, Nashville was dead set on a presidential race between Ron Paul and Barrack Obama. White culture is striated from Old Money, to "new money, no taste," to Whole Foods, SUV driving liberals, to trying-too-hard subculturists, who ride their heavily modded bicycles to the artists' minidistricts, tattoo parlors and coffee shops, to the down-and-out poverty of the semi-rural American South (which is not unlike my native Appalachian Ohio).

Econopolitical contradictions come in all shapes and sizes. There is no Tennessee minimum wage or state income tax. However, entry level work pays significantly more than in Ohio, which just upped its minimum wage, and the sales tax in Nashville (applied to everything) is a staggering 9.25%. As a new resident of Tennessee, I am required to obtain a new driver's license within 30 days. However, I have not been able to satisfactorily demonstrate my residency in the month and a half since I moved here. Working in a wine shop, I have been alerted to policies of the Alcoholic Beverage Commission that evoke emotional, sometimes debilitating, responses from my deep-seeded compassionate rationalism.

(Below: In the Key West Lounge of The 1804 House, our kick-ass rental, doing some paperwork that unmistakably did not result in the issuance of a Tennessee driver license to me.)

Oh, and the music. The town is full of legendary musicians, folks who really understand and care about their art and who also make a living painting by number, so to speak, on creatively destitute pop-country tunes intended to dupe the masses and hopefully sell some cars or tortilla chips or whatever. So, if you're a singer or a "writer" or a player, you can definitely find your place in the industry. But if you consider yourself an artist in a sense that doesn't relate to commercial success, you can find a home among vastly talented and truly friendly people, too.

To sum it up, anything goes, here, as long as you're nice and aren't in violation of any apparently completely arbitrary laws or mores. Confusing, right? I know.

Nashville is weird. Not in terms of the collective sense of individual freedom and rejection of the status quo for which, say, Portland, Oregon is known. But it's definitely weird, all the same. I like it here. A lot.

HD

Having once again left Athens Co. in my figurative dust, I thought I should take a minute to reflect on some of the things I love about life in the Hocking River valley. 

If you ever find yourself in Athens, Ohio, Harlan Dalzell of The Princes of Hollywood recommends the following:

Casa Nueva and Casa Cantina - (As recommended by the band Cake.) For libation and repast, this ought to be your first stop. Patently Athenian and worker-owned, with a focus on locally produced groceries, Casa Nueva serves frikkin' tasty and very affordable hippie-Mexican. (Don't be ruffled if you receive middling service--See above.) Also a vegetarian's haven, Casa offers nearly every dish in a meat-free rendition. (I hear the vegan parfait is first rate.) This is where The PofH take out-of-town musicians. I eat here at least weekly. Meanwhile, next door at the Cantina there is live music, pretty much nightly, exclusively Ohio-brewed goodies on tap (with a formidable bottled beer selection from all around this thirsty, spinning rock), 'Bodega' appetizers from the Casa Nueva menu, and the superlative liquor selection in town. Cheers. 6 W State St. 740-592-2016

O'Betty's Red Hot! - Hands-down the best hotdogs and hand-cut french fries in town. Vegetarian friendly, too. 15 W State St. 740-589-6111

Avalanche Pizza - (As seen on Food Network) A traditional delivery-style pizza joint with conventional and gourmet toppings, available whole-wheat crust, and a variety of sauces? Score! The three-pizza deals can't be beaten. 329 E State St. 740-594-GONG

Magic Video - Athens' independent movie rental choice for over 20 years. No, they don't have 60 copies of the new horror fiasco. And, yes, rentals really are only for one night, but Martha Laufman has made a business of getting movies that matter. Their selection rivals the best I've seen in major metropolitan independent movie stores. 20 W State St. 740-592-4544

Athena Cinema (Uptown) - Just got an afternoon to burn and can't wait for the new arthouse flick to make it to Magic Video? Hit the Athena Uptown. As I see it, this is one of the most productive ways Ohio University is spending money, these days. 20 S Court St. 740-592-5106

Donkey Coffee and Espresso - Fuel up. 17 1/2 W. Washington St. 740-594-7353

The Front Room Open Stage - Bruce Dalzell has been hosting this open stage--8:00 (almost) every Friday night--for years, and it is the standard by which the numerous others in town would be judged, if anyone really judged open mics. Go tell a joke or perform hip-hop with cello accompaniment or, better yet, do something I've never even considered. At least go say hi to Brucie and see who's playing in town these days--they all come through eventually. (Bruce also hosts numerous other open stages at Baker Center during the week. See the website for details. And, during the summer, you must go to the Athens Public Library on Monday nights for the Family Open Stage that he hosts with his wife, Gay. *This is on my list of "Happiest Places on Earth.")

Mistretta's Italian Market - Serious panini and daily deli specials, along with various Italian imports make this a sure bet and my regular sandwich fix. Also, they feature a specialized wine selection and reliable imported beer choices. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it. 9 N Shafer St. 740-594-4949

Seaman's Grocery - For in-town meat selection, you can't beat Seaman's. When The PofH smoke a pork shoulder, this is where we buy it. Also, their beige-colored plastic shopping bags are my favorite in Athens County. 305 W. Union St. 740-594-2238

Athens Farmers Market - Saturday (year-round) and Wednesday (April-November), 10:00 AM-1:00 PM. Do it. Parking lot of the University Mall, E State St.

Alvis Auto Repair - Car trouble? 186 Columbus Rd. 740-594-3222

Glasshouse Works - For readers inlcined toward horticulture or statuary, you have to check out the GHW, the world-famous mail-order greenhouse, two blocks from my childhood home in Stewart, Ohio. They have some amazing stuff, including regional artisanal offerings, such as rock sculpture, bird baths, etc. Church St., Stewart 740-662-2142

Passion Works Studio - "Passion Works Studio supports collaborations between artists with and without disabilities." Seriously good place. The PofH were honored to be included in the Passion Works Music Project Volume II. Look for it soon. (Our track is called "My Little Pancake Button.") 21 S. Campbell St. 740-592-6659

Not Doing "The Court Street Shuffle" - Although it is true that there are 23 liquor serving establishments on an easy walking route uptown, this in no way makes visiting each of them in one night--Athens' famous pub crawl--a good idea. Indeed, if this is your idea of a good time, you will likely find the rest of my advice on this page of little use.

The Athens Do-It-Yourself Shop - Tired of buying crappy beer from Anheuser-Busch? Me too! Let's make our own! This bloke will be happy to help us on our way. 6 Euclid Dr. 740-594-2349

The Bike Path - It is what it sounds like. As 'progressive' as Athens is, that whole cycling thing isn't really a big deal, but there is a lovely bike path if you want to get away and enjoy the Hocking River.

That should get you started. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Best,

HD