Eric Slick has major music news; Julie Slick bakes awesome pies; Robin Slick is depressed her online writing group is offline until Monday

Ike Willis and Eric Slick at Zappanale 16, Bad Doberan, East Germany 2005

Cool pic, huh. I just found it online somewhere.

Anyway, as hinted in this blog earlier in the week, here is the awesome news about Eric. This morning he met with a major producer, David Ivory. David Ivory has produced everyone from Paul Schaeffer and Anton Fig of the Letterman Show to the Roots. So Eric auditioned for him this morning, and like everyone else who hears my son, was extremely impressed, told Eric he plays very much like Chuck Treece which is an incredible compliment, and said he's going to be actively using Eric for studio work. Also, his first project for Eric is looking like it might be as drummer with Control Freaks, a rock trio featuring two chicks - one on guitar, one on bass, and I listened to their stuff and was way impressed. Great songwriting. More importantly, they played over 150 shows last year, opened for Neal Schon, won a bunch of contests/awards...so like, this means that Eric would be really gigging a lot as well as recording their brand new CD at David Ivory's studio. They've auditioned some other drummers and said they'd get back to Eric next week so we'll see how it all pans out. But even assuming he's on board with them, this doesn't mean he's no longer drummer for Shannon Penn, Chris Opperman, Doctor Dark, or Flamingo, it just gives Eric even more exposure and a chance to get out there and play and you know, show the world he's a drum legend. (Ha ha - quoting Paul Green Uberlord of Rock School there though of course I feel the same)

ETA: Eric just got home -- Control Freaks called him on his way home - he's in the running and he has to meet up with them Sunday for some more jamming.

And of course Philadelphia being the city it is -- mini New York City but small enough that everyone in the music scene is connected in some way -- Eric indirectly got this gig via Paul and Rock School. Paul introduced Julie to musician/producer Chuck Treece; Julie recommended Eric to Chuck, Chuck recommended David Ivory to Eric, Eric contacted David Ivory and sent him his resume (pretty impressive with Rock School creds like Carlos Alomar, all the awesome Zappa alumnae, Jon Anderson, and Eddie Vedder, etc.); both David Ivory and the manager for Control Freaks immediately contacted Eric, and then like it's all not crazy enough, it turns out that the band knows Katie Jacoby from Downingtown Rock School because they're all from Wilmington. It's sort of meant to be in a weird way, huh.

So Thanksgiving yesterday was absolutely fantastic, despite Gary having the toothache from hell, which prevented us from going to see Julie and Eric perform with Sweatheart at Silk City. I was so bummed out! This is when not having a valid Pennsylvania driver's license brings me down. With Gary out of commission, I had absolutely no way of getting to 5th and Spring Garden at midnight by myself other than a cab, only cabs were totally booked because the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving is the busiest travel evening of the entire year, and though I kept hitting redial, all cab companies had busy signals when I tried to get them on the phone. I was so, so screwed. But I hear that Sweatheart was really well received and had such a blast that they're going to definitely play some more shows so at least I'll get to see them eventually.

Dinner was amazing; I ate way too much and am feeling it today. We pretty much stuck to the menu I posted but Julie, who was in charge of baking, changed the desserts to roasted sweet potato pie with homemade whipped cream and because Matt loves coconut and he was able to make it over later in the evening, she concocted her own recipe of a pie made from homemade coconut pudding in a graham cracker crust studded with chopped Almond Joys. And this whole thing she topped with whipped cream into which she added a teaspoon of almond extract. Sick, sick, sick. She did make Eric the old fashioned apple pie but she did something to its lattice-topped crust and caramelized it with brown sugar and butter that was seriously obscene and with that we had Dove Ultimate Vanilla ice cream. Of course I had to sample all three. I was moaning and groaning all night from overeating and will probably fast today; I'm serious. For once, I can't even think about food, and it hurt me bad to just type those pie descriptions.

Anyway, I'm kind of out of sorts today. Zoetrope, my online writing group goes down every freaking holiday and since this is a four day event, I won't get to talk to any of my friends in cyberworld until at least noon on Monday. This totally depresses me -- both that Zoetrope is down and my social life is dependent on it. But it's true. We're all writers on that site and the written word is very, very intimate. I've known most of my friends there for three-four years already and as I've mentioned here many times, have met many in the real world. Now if I were a normal human being, I would email some of the more local ones and see if they wanted to do anything this weekend but that would require effort and I'd much rather sit here in my pajamas with my hair in a ponytail and not face the outside world, especially on a weekend such as this where the roads and public transportation will be a fucking nightmare. And besides, I've never pretended to be a normal human being so why should I start now.

Speaking of nightmares, how sad is it that I watched Annie Lennox perform on something as mainstream at The Today Show this morning. Wait. How pathetic is it that I watched the The Today Show. Oh well. At least I didn't watch Regis and Kelly.

It's even sadder that I know who Regis and Kelly are.

Okay. Know what? I'm going off to do what it is I do. Write novels. National Novel Writing Month ends in five days and I need 15,000 more words to win, or reach 50,000 words. That's 3,000 words a day. Piece o'cake.

Ugh...no, no cake. But still easy. Right. I'll keep telling myself that.

Later xoxo