New Shows

the babysitter's booked and confirmed - I'm greatly looking forward to friday night at the Birchmere; luckily, I grabbed those tickets a couple of weeks ago!

A Dallas Show would fit in so nicely after the Houston and Austin shows. Im just sayin'...

Why do you hate the southeast? Come back to Atlanta, darn it!

I'll be at the Austin show (as always)!

Why did you say with Paul and Storm after every event?

I mean, wouldn't it have been easier to put it in the opening paragraph.

Philadelphia, please!

@Joel I don't know if JoCo or Paul and Storm will ever come back to Dallas after the huge SNAFU with the ticket sales last time they came here. Tickets weren't available until like three days before the show, which made for a, shall we say, intimate show. You'd think that for a city that is sometimes called the Silicon Prairie, there'd be a lot of geeks here. Apparently not so much.

While I had to leave town for an emergency, Tomorrow morning bright and early I'm loading up on coffee and driving the 4 hours back home to VA to make it in time to the Birchmere show. JoCoPaSto Concerts: worth 4 hr early morning drives and coffee hyperness. ;-)

I've got my ticket for the April 24th show. I'll see you there! I'll be the one giving you a great big hug after the show ...or maybe even DURING the show! ...well, no, after.

Toronto, but not Vancouver? Oh, JoCo, when will you be coming to the western part of Canada? It's nicer here; you'd like it better.

There's this place called Florida... nice beaches... mostly sunny (like all the time)... it's in the farthest southeast corner of the USA... yes... it IS part of the USA...

You should visit some time. Sing a couple of songs. I'll bake cookies. Please? Pretty please? With a cherry on top?

Jenna is smart. Florida is sun shiny. I highly recommend singing songs in this state. It is a joy. Do not deny it to yourself.

Still no Louisville, KY, appearance. This makes me sad. I even got my girlfriend into you. She loves My Biege Bear.

I just realized... that sounds a little dirty.

Just got tickets for the NY show with my family gonna be awesome.

OHIO!!
Sometime in May would be nice.

I'm home from the Birchmere and that setlist was several kinds of awesome! Space Doggity with P&S was crazy amazing. Thanks for a great night of music, cylon rants and more snuggies and Neil Diamond than you could shake a stick at. We do love ya here in DC! (That's a subtle hint, BTW).

Thanks for a great time at the Birchmere last night.

BEST CONCERT EVER!!!!!!
I can't wait!!!!!!!
®

I've recieved permission from the Ark to record from the soundboard, but since I've never done this sort of thing before, are there any special bits of hardware or software I'll need for my laptop in order to actually make this recording?

Zach: yes, it depends on exactly what kind of audio feed they can give you. The likely options are:

- Monitor or aux outs that will consist of 1/4" TRS female or XLR male sockets, although they might only be able to give you 1/4" TS (unbalanced).

- A tape out that might consist of female phono plugs.

The balanced (TRS or XLR) connections offer you better sound quality but you can't plug them directly into a laptop -- you'd need an audio interface like the Apogee Duet or something. This would give you the best possible audio quality.

If your laptop has a 1/8" stereo audio input, which I think is the most likely scenario, then the sound is not going to be that great. You will have to work with the TS or phono outputs, provided you have the appropriate cables. It's always the damned cables. You'll need a two-TS-male-to-1/8" TRS stereo male, or a two-phono-male to 1/8" TRS stereo male, and it would be a good idea to have assorted gender changers in case they have something you're not expecting. The quality you will get out of this setup is a little lower -- and you will have to watch your input levels set very carefully to prevent clipping.

In all honesty, if you're going to go with your laptop mic input, you would probably get better sound quality by just asking if they have a cassette deck hooked up in their rack somewhere -- there is a good chance they do -- and bring 3 or 4 hours of good tapes. You'll have to flip tapes to make sure you don't lose anything, though. I have the setup to digitize the resulting tapes if you want help with that.

Another option I'll throw out there -- I have my Sony PCM-D50 which I used for the Pontiac show. That is a high-quality recorder. If you want to borrow it and they will let you plug this in to the sound board, you could probably get better results than with either cassette or a typical laptop sound card. You will still have to watch levels a bit. This will only work if you have 1/4" TS or the phono plug outputs (it is unbalanced consumer-level stereo in). I would have to get the raw audio files off the recorder and send them to you later.

Alternately, the recorder has good built-in mics so you could use those to get the full venue sound, like I did for the Pontiac show, but the results you'll get will depend heavily on where you are seated (I recorded the Pontiac show from way in the back, and it shows in the resulting recording.

I would record it myself but I have already volunteered to sell merchandise or do whatever else a minion needs to do.

I concur with Austin. OHIO. In May. Preferably the First. :) (Well, I can Dream, can't I?)

Meh, I would ask, but he comes to Seattle periodically anyway.

Have you considered coming to the Worldcon in Montréal in August? NG will be there as well, as one of the GoHs...

I really want to go to your show in Houston, at the House Of Blues? But I wasted my allowance on cell phone...lol, but maybe next time...when I got a job. (ugh, its kinda hard to find one close to my high school...)

Toronto awaits. Husband and I are currently deciding our JoCo and P&S Twitter requests. We like to plan ahead.