OK, so American Idol was a bust. 9 hours waiting in line in the August heat only to be told you’re not the right demographic they’re looking for this year! But all is not lost!

The second chance contest ends Sept 30. You can help Nick fund his journey by voting for him online. It only takes 3 minutes, it’s very easy, and it doesn’t cost you a cent. (Plus, Nick will love you forever!) – This is a simple winner-take-all contest.

No Simon. No Paula. No Randy. Just the people voting at home. Or at work. Or in a coffee shop somewhere.

Here’s How to help Nick:

• 1. Go to http://www.bix.com/entry/6707
• 2. The song should start automatically. Listen to Nick sing “Chariot” (originally by Gavin DeGraw)
• 3. Click the voting button – thumbs up!!
• 4. You’ll be taken to a page where they’ll ask you to sign up. Enter the appropriate information and click “Sign Up.”

That’s it. Once you’re signed up, your vote gets counted. Click here for a PDF of instructions you can forward to your friends.

UPDATE (9/24/06):

My Bix.com contest entry has had many fraudulent votes from an unknown source and is currently being investigated.

Please vote only once per person. Voting multiple times with the same computer using different accounts is against Bix.com’s Policy and could actually get me into trouble. If anyone has voted more than once already, please let me know so that we can correct the situation and play fair for everyone. Thanks. -nd

Hot off the editing floor. Enjoy. -ND

Been working on putting a new band together…

It’s the kind of thing you wish you could just hold auditions for and be done with it in an afternoon. But really, it’s more of an evolution than anything. As much as you’d like to, you can’t just decide who your band is because Tommy plays the drums and Mike’s got a PA system. No sir, you gotta play around with it for awhile.

So many things need to come together, and I’m a little frustrated with it all right now. I started playing with a great drummer names Tres and a Hendrix-induced guitarist named Dean, and they’re great. Really super talented. But they’ve already got a band of their own and they play in a completely different style than I do. They’re pretty much straight ahead funk, whereas I prefer to lay back a little and make my rock more soulful and bluesy.

These cats clap on 1 and 3, if you know what I mean.

So are they right for my band? I dunno. I’ll tell you in a few more rehearsals.

Man, where’s Randy Jackson when you need him?

Tuesday night Michi in Manhattan Beach. Great sushi.
Michi
903 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA
(310) 376-0613 :: 21+ :: No Cover; 8pm
with Tim Wingate, 8pm

9.11.06 - Five years already.

On days like today, I can’t help but allow myself to be glued to CNN. I’ve seen it over and over again, but those images still haunt me.

Today they read the names of everyone who died that day, and even after all this time I still got choked up.

And now there’s all these conspiracy theories out there trying to prove 9/11 was an inside job — that it was a hoax, and a plane didn’t really hit the pentagon, yada yada yada.

To tell you the truth, I don’t know what the truth is anymore.

It doesn’t change anything for me to lose sleep over it at this point. I can’t change what happened.

So rather than get political and banter for the next 6 paragraphs, I want to give a shout out to all those men and women who fell that day. I know God will sort everything out in the end.

Having that day hard-coded in my head gave me a chance today to take a good long look at how far I’ve come in those 5 years. I finished college. I moved to L.A. I served in the military. I grew up.

And after all that I’m still chasing down a dream.

(Oh yeah, and I’m getting my home life together too. Finally realized that I’m not Superman, and I can’t do everything on my own. Especially keep the house clean. (I have some kind of aversion to it.) So I broke down and called Merry Maids, and now a clean house is on its way in four hours flat or my money back!

Ahhhh… Maybe now I can get some work done.)