Snowmageddon! (or Who Needs to See the Road? )

Wow, we had an incredible weekend! Friday found us in Milwaukee, WI, enjoying Monty Python's Spamalot [ link ] and getting a chance to hang out with our Sapphire Princess buddy, Andy Hoesl. The show was awesome and Andy plays a monster trumpet throughout. We even went out afterward and had some delicious German beers and brats. Ja wul!

'Tis but a scratch!

Upon awakening in the morning, Erika took over as driver of the Pocket Rocketeer, and off we zoomed towards St. Paul, Minnesota. We understood we were to be driving into some snow, so we left early with a song in our hearts and some coffee in our bellies. Little did we know precisely how bad it was going to get.

We saw lots of these

The snow started getting thick and heavy by mid-Wisconsin and then it was all downhill from there. We drove by dozens (and dozens) of cars that had fallen off the road and just as many tractor-trailers, some falling off the road and on to their sides.

Yeah, like this. Scary, non?

The roads were barely plowed and in some instances, the blowing snow had covered the road for what seemed like miles. White-out conditions made the driving ridiculously hazardous and all four Pockets were on High Alert, staring intently out the windshield or windows, guiding the van to the left or the right to stay on the road. Danny had the special task of being on Wiper Patrol, which included hanging out of the window of the moving van, mid-blizzard, and clearing the wipers of snow and ice. Thanks to the diligence of all the Empty Pockets, we finally managed to get off the highway and into St. Paul, where we thought we might be able to find some plowed roads. WRONG.

That bus is stuck, yo

The City of St. Paul had been forced to shut down the plows at 11 that morning and the streets were just as dangerous as the highway. After powering our monstrous van to it's destination, we unloaded in the blowing snow and started our gig for the evening at the James J. Hill library. It stopped snowing at 8 pm, but with nary a snow plow in sight, we wrapped it up and headed to our hotel where the staff told us they were stranded (!) because of the snow. Well hell. With everything in St. Paul closed, we climbed into bed and decided to check the travel conditions the next day.

This snow was smerious

Sunday found only a handful of plows on the streets and with most of the major roadways as hazardous as our trip in. We even got a textie from band-bud-for-life Andy Hoesl saying the Spamalot tour bus was stranded in Springfield, IL after sitting on the highway behind a 13-car pileup. What was a band to do? Snow day in St. Paul! One of the best things about St. Paul is the indoor Skyway system, [ link ] an elevated series of halls and malls that is more than 5 miles long and connects 47 city blocks. You can even rent apartments there. Yowzers! While most of the business inhabiting the Skyway were closed due to the snow, we got a tip that a pub down the way called The Bulldog [ link ] was open, so we hitched on down and enjoyed what has become our favorite restaurant in St. Paul. They even had truffle flavored tots. Delish!

Oh yes, and beers. They had many beers.

We spent our snow day relaxing in the hotel, with a small ten-minute excursion to a local drug store being dragged out to an hour and a half, including pushing several vehicles up an icy road and then getting stuck ourselves and having to push the van, loaded with gear, up the same icy-hill-road-of-doom. Thanks to the wonderful St. Paul residents who came to our aid, we couldn't have gotten moving without you! With that experience firmly in our brains, we hunkered down in the hotel room and refused to move except for to fetch more delightful food and beer at the Bulldog. You guys rock for being open. Seriously.

We awoke Monday morning and began our descent into Illinois. The roads had been (mostly) plowed and the drive was fairly smooth, except for the occasional slow-down where road crews were recovering trucks that had driven off the road during the snow. (see horrifying picture above) The drive was smooth and without incident and we all managed to get home safely on Monday evening, having survived yet another dangerous situation by being on-top of our game and working together as a team. A harrowing experience was brought to a close and despite the cray-zee weather, we enjoyed ourselves.

Plow that snow!

So, to all of you out there, be safe in the upcoming winter driving season and make sure you have a blanket and an emergency cold-weather kit in your car, just in case the weather gets the better of the situation.

Rock on,
-Nate Bellon(bass)

Food, Glorious Food ( or We Be Cooking )

Cooking is glorious. It brings about things triumphantly delicious, infused with effort as much as flavor. Often, cooking can be done fairly cheaply as well. In cooking, the real investment is time (as Josh can no doubt attest with his eight to twelve hour baking sessions. ) Solid time investment, whether through learning techniques, experimenting with recipes or just from good old-fashioned hard work always leads to a great learning experience, and often times a delicious one at that. We need not spend our whole lives pursuing the deep complexities of cooking, though. Sometimes we can cook just to cook.

Oh my yes.

While I haven't logged as many kitchen miles as some of my fellow Pockets, I've managed to hone my kitchen prowess to the point where I don't cut anything vital off or burn everything to a flaming lump of carbon and despair. I've done that through finding crazy simple recipes that I can memorize. Good for every occasion, they serve as my "Ace" in situations where cooking prowess is impressive. (Family holidays, meeting-the-inlaws, and high-powered business luncheons are all a go!)

Below is my recipe for sauteed asparagus. It takes all of about 15 minutes once the ingredients are gathered and is a sure-fire hit even with supposed asparagus-haters. (I used to be one before I found this recipe.) The origin of the recipe is unclear and I'm fairly sure it's an amalgamation of a bunch of different recipes, but I would bet berries to bushels that Alton Brown [ link ] was involved. Love that show.

Sauteed Asparagus
1/2 lb fresh asparagus
Virgin 0live 0il
2 tbsp soy sauce
Ground black pepper
Aluminum foil

Before anything else happens, tear off a sheet of aluminum foil and fold it into a packet. This is where you'll be steaming the asparagus when it comes out of the pan, so make sure it's big enough to hold the asparagus and still be folded shut or closed. Keep it nearby.

Trim the asparagus to whatever length you would like. I usually keep everything but the bottom three inches, but some asparagus can get "woody" even further than that, so use your best judgment. Wash and drain the asparagus.

After washing and draining the asparagus, place in a pan on medium-high heat. Drizzle olive oil on the asparagus and shake them around to very lightly coat them. Too much oil will cause smoke problems, so keep it light. Toss them about occasionally, rotating the asparagus. When the color shifts from a light green to a deeper forest green, take a stalk of asparagus out. Allow it to cool for a second and then shake it, held firmly between your fore-finger and thumb. If the asparagus is stiff and does not wiggle, it still must be cooked. When the asparagus wiggles a bit limply, it's time to put it in the aluminum steam packet we made earlier.

Place the asparagus in the pre-made aluminum foil packet and add the soy sauce and black ground pepper. Now is the time to add any other seasoning you'd like. I stay away from salt, as the soy sauce has it covered. Now just fold the packet up so it's in a bundle so no steam can escape and let it rest on a plate. (It may get a little leaky.) In four or five minutes, open the packet to reveal deliciously sauteed asparagus. And with so little effort as to make you look like a crazy dynamo-chef. While Club Nouveau [ link ] might not be on your mandatory cooking mix, you can dig it when I say "We be cooking!"

Asparagus. I've said it so many times, it's lost all meaning. Asparagus.

With that funky respect to Bill Withers,
-Nate Bellon(bass)

An Empty Pockets Holiday ( or Holiday Music Doesn't Have to Suck )

The snow is on it's way and the holiday season is in full swing. That, of course, means it's time for Christmas music playing on home radios, blasting from car stereos and being piped into every major shopping center in the nation. Josh and the Empty Pockets are proud to say we can be heard during this holiday season through fine listening devices everywhere with our tasty single "Baby It's Cold Outside/Baby Please Come Home." We're spinning on Sirius XM's "Radio Holly" as well as on Y94FM (Syracuse, NY), The Mix 98.7FM (Jackson, MS), Star 92.9FM (Burlington, VT) and The New Mix 97.7FM (Bakersfield, CA). We think that's awesome!

What if you can't listen to any of these fine radio or satellite stations and would like to have Josh and the Empty Pockets throw you some holiday ear-love? Why, you can contact your local station and request they play "Baby It's Cold Outside/Baby Please Come Home!" Below is a (very) brief list of stations, along with their request line telephone numbers, Facebook and Twitter. Let them know you want Josh and the Empty Pockets to make your holidays ROCK!

Denver, CO - 101.1FM KOSI - (303) 631-2101 - [ Facebook ]

Chicago, IL - 93.9FM WLIT - (312) 591-9548 - [ Facebook ] [ Twitter ]

Fort Wayne, IN - 95.1FM WAJI - (260) 467-9500 - [ Facebook ] [ Twitter ]

Jackson, MS - 98.7FM WJKK - (601) 956-0102 - [ Facebook ]

Buffalo, NY - 96.1FM WJYE - (716) 644-9696 - [ Facebook ] [ Twitter ]

Long Island, NY - 94.3FM WMJC - (631) 955-0943 - [ Facebook ] [ Twitter ]

New York, NY - 106.7FM WLTW - (800) 222-1067 - [ Facebook ]

Syracuse, NY - 94.5FM WYYY - (315) 421-9494 - [ Facebook ]

Cleveland, OH - 102.1FM WDOK - (216) 578-1021 - [ Facebook ] [ Twitter ]

Cincinnati, OH - 93.3FM WAKW - (513) 542-9393 - [ Facebook ] [ Twitter ]

Don't forget to come on out to The Snuggery [ Facebook ] in Chicago on Wednesday, December 8 for a rockin' Josh and the Empty Pockets acoustic show starting at 9 pm. That's at 6733 N. Olmsted Ave, in the Edison Park neighborhood.

Zip it up and zip it out,
-Nate Bellon(bass)

Throw Down Your Review (or The Banjo's from Africa?)

I really dig non-western music, from gamelan to J-pop, Irish folk-music to Siberian women's choirs. I get a large sampling of music from my local library and find the rest online and I often subject my friends to it, bobbing my head and emitting cries of joy at a particularly difficult or odd part. I've more than once been caught jamming at a red-light to traditional Tuvan throat singing.

Of course, I listen to a lot of western music as well and pay special attention to the groups that use non-western influences in their music. A favored western band that utilizes a lot of non-western musical forms and musicians is Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, so when I saw "Bela Fleck: Throw Down You Heart" show up on my Netflix queue, I knew I had to watch it. Besides, it had received the Audience Award at both South-By-Southwest and the Vancouver Film Festival, so it couldn't be a disinteresting trip into ethno-musicology set to a snore-track. So I set it up, popped some popcorn and immersed myself into the music of Africa.

This film is awesome. We join Béla Fleck on his journey to Africa to explore the little known African roots of the banjo and record an album with some seriously ripping African musicians. He travels to four African countries: Uganda, Tanzania, The Gambia, and Mali. Along the way, he works with a wide array of musicians – from local villagers who play a twelve-foot xylophone, to a family that makes and plays the akonting (thought by many to be the original banjo), to international superstars such as the Malian diva Oumou Sangare.

The music on this documentary can be stirring and joyous or somber and liltingly sad, but it's always incredibly heartfelt. Aside from learning the history of the banjo and being introduced to unfamiliar-yet-familiar instruments, like the akonting and the xhalam (an African variation on the lute), there are also plenty of familiar instruments played in unfamiliar ways, like the blisteringly fast guitar playing of Oumou Sangare from Mali. One of my favorite moments of the whole movie happens in the village of Nakisengi in Uganda, where the village musicians assemble themselves around a giant twelve-foot long xylophone that's played with a mixture of hands and wooden stick-mallets. Twenty or so musicians, six of them playing the xylophone, create a beautifully thick and rich music that Bela weaves his banjo intricately and respectfully through.

Assembling the giant xylophone

Part of what makes this documentary so moving is that Bela is not on a mission to show the citizens of Africa his (astounding) banjo chops, but to learn techniques, scales and musical motives from the musicians there and integrate them into his own playing. He's constantly seen with a pencil and staff paper, diligently transcribing anything that hits his ear. For Bela Fleck or world music fans, this film is highly recommended, and there is also a CD available from iTunes and Amazon that contains recordings done in Africa featuring the musicians and musics from the movie. It will quickly be finding it's way into my collection and perhaps yours as well.

Word to the Brett,

-Nate Bellon(bass)

Throw Down Your Heart on Amazon [ link ]

Throw Down Your Heart on IMDB [ link ]

Official Site [ link ]

Awesomeness is Back in Style (or Gaffer's Guff a Gaffe)

Awesomeness. For awhile, it seemed that awesomeness was on the run, that it was all tapped out. A thick malaise lay across the land, rivers of lameness threatened to tear the land asunder. Just as everything looked it's same-old-day-grey, the sky cracked open, and a thick beacon of awesome shot through, spilling it's glittering gift upon the earth. Boredom dissolved, disinterest faded into non-existence and "ennui" changed to "Oh Yeah!"

What is it that has summoned such vivid awesomeness? The newest Josh and the Empty Pockets Music Video, shooting this week! And the thing that makes it even more awesome than the simple word can convey? You could be in said music video.

All you have to do is head to this website [ link ] and check out the information provided. You could be involved in the experience of a lifetime, something that's sure to create great memories and stories you'll share for years to come. Plus, who could resist so much concentrated awesomeness? Nobody, that's who.

"A tale of the power and passion exhibited, infused and expressed through the exquisite notes of music. "

-Nate Bellon(bass)

Rocking Out with the Orphans (Or Centralia, Sweet Heart O' Mine)

A drive through scenic Centralia, Illinois, nestled deep within southern Illinois, one thought comes consistently to mind: Wow, these people are all about orphans. Signs are posted at nearly every intersection in some neighborhoods, lauding the accomplishments of the orphans, heaping on the praise and adulation. It's enough to be confusing to a poor city boy until one learns that the mascot of the Centralia High School is the Orphans. How did they come by such a unusual moniker? Well, the story I was told was that long ago, the Centralia High School found themselves involved in a basketball play-off. The program lacked funding (but not spirit), and so the basketball team members showed up in whatever they usually played in, a mish-mash of shorts and shirts that one could barely recognize as a "branded team". Gazing upon the players of this rag-tag bunch of loveable misfits, legend has it the announcer uttered "These kids look like a bunch of orphans!" In true Mid-western fashion, that barbed insult was adopted as the delightful mascot for Centralia High School and the rest, as they say, is history.

The Empty Pockets were pleased as punch when the Centralia Orphans asked us to come rock out at the Tailgate party for their Homecoming Football game against the Wesclin Warriors. So we hopped in the van and headed down south, around five hours, to party the night away with the fine people of Centralia. And an awesome night it was! Not only was there a party, complete with delicious food, fun games and some sweet prizes, but the Centralia High School Rock 101 program made a rockin'-good appearance as well, putting the seal on Rocktober and pushin' it down, old-school. They even gave us some totally sweet Centralia Orphans football jerseys! (Photos to come, look for 'em!)

After rocking out for the fine Tailgaters and diving into some delicious food, we got to watch the Centralia Orphans pound the living daylights out of the Wesclin Warriors, 62 -21. How often do you get to say the phrase "We watched some Orphans beat the snot out of a bunch of Warriors?" At least once, my fine friend. At least once.

More? You want more?

We had a great time partying with the Orphans and fine folks of Centralia and we hope to be invited back next year. Special musical props go to CHS music director Kevin Devany for his awesome half-time show featuring the music of our much-loved hero, Micheal Jackson. We had a great time, Centralia, and thanks to Hannah for searching us out!

Peace, love and pancakes,

-Nate Bellon(bass)

An Empty Pockets Book Report (or The Blogg on the Dogg)

In my ramblings through the library, I often come across something that jumps off the shelves and into my hands, screaming to be checked out. Such a situation occurred when I came upon my latest hard-cover conquest, Tha Doggfather: The Times, Trials and Hardcore Truths of Snoop Dogg. I clutched it close as I checked out, filled with anticipation of the Hardcore Truths I would learn about Cordozar Calvin Broadus, the man and the legend.

These truths were pretty hardcore.

Snoop talks about his time in the Rollin' 20 Crips, his frequent interactions with the judicial system, and his famed 1993 murder trial, in which he was charged in connection with the murder of a man shot by Snoop's bodyguard. He also talks about his love for Long Beach and his mother, and his rapid rise from a music-loving young man to one of the most influential G-funk rappers ever. Snoop proves to be a effective street-philosopher, offering not only the facts of a situation as seen by Snoop, but also a the overall negatives and positives of the situation wrapped into a lesson. The book is written in the conversational tone of Snoop Dogg and can prove to be an awkward read at some points where the vernacular becomes unclear, but it proves to be a satisfyingly good stylistic decision throughout.

Having recently pulled "Doggystyle" out of the musical mothballs, Snoop's Doggy Dog's premier 1993 album bloomed with salient connections in the history provided by the book, especially tracks like "Murder Was The Case They Gave Me" and "Lodi Dodi". It will surely find itself back into my regular rotation for some G-funk enjoyment with the Doggfather.

If you're a fan of Snoop, this is a must read. It was published in 1999, so it is a bit dated, but it proves to be a fun read with the Snoop Dogg style we've all come to love. Co-author David Seay colors the book with a subtle brush that allows the flavor to be 100% Dogg.

"No one knows more of the truth about the life, and no one tells it more like it is, than Tha Doggfather, Snoop Dogg."

-Nate Bellon(bass)

Snoop Dog on Wikipedia: [link]

Doggystyle on Wikipedia: [link]

The Book!: [link]