a'tris

Yesterday got off to a rough start for me. I woke up with an upset stomach and couldn’t keep any food down. I’d intended to record a few station Ids and return some messages bright and early but immediately resigned myself to go back to bed in the hopes that I could sleep things off. Unfortunately, while I was successful in that regard, I dozed a little too long and, thus, found myself rushing out to a dentist appointment with an empty stomach only to have a hole bored into one of my teeth. Thankfully though, I was out just in time to do dinner with Decker; which brings me to the point of this post.

If you read my previous entry about my first book review, you’ll know how much I enjoyed Shawn Decker’s book, My Pet Virus [Official, Borders, Barnes & Noble]. So I was really stoked to have the opportunity to meet with him last night to talk about what he’s doing. I was a little bummed that my jaw felt like ass and my lip was all swollen up, but it was really cool to sit down with Shawn, his wife, Gwenn, and his cousin, (my best friend and favorite photographer) Bonnie Moses. Over the course of the evening we talked a lot about how he and Gwenn got into the lecture circuit where I was first introduced to them, and what it’s like for them to live on the road. Shawn gave me some insight into the publishing world and I learned that Gwenn manages a kick-ass band called Bella Morte [Official, Facebook, Myspace] and is also really tight with Lauren Hoffman [Official, Myspace] whose song, “Interplanetary Traveler” has been stuck in my head for days. How cool is that? It also turns out that Shawn and Gwen recently got the latest Super Mario Bros. game for Wii so we might have to reconnect for some goomba-stomping action soon. It’s nice to know that super awesome artists and educators, like Shawn and Gwenn have a little Nintendo fanboy in them too

Here‘s a picture that Bonnie took of Shawn and me last night. Please don’t mind my swollen face. Shawn posted this on his Decker’s Daily Coffee Flickr page with this super kind caption:

“Tonight’s Coffee Sponsor: Mason Taylor of the band, a’tris, who totally rock. And I’m not saying that because Mason hooked me up with a tall cool one, either. The band has a sound so refreshing that it makes my iced mocha jealous. Check out the a’tris song, “Automatic Doors”, and watch them do their thing: vimeo.com/3438892. Support indie artists who support iced mocha fiends with HIV, and buy the song, “Automatic Doors” on iTunes so bands like this don’t go away. Hell, buy their whole album, entitled Lensing.”

Shawn also had some super kind thing to say about what the guys and I are doing in his blog post, Decker’s Daily Band of the Month: a’tris. In it he writes that we are the “first ever Decker’s Daily Band of the Month” so we’re pretty stoked about that. It’s not every day that one of my favorite writers blogs about a’tris! Feel free to check out what he had to say on his official blog or on Poz Magazine’s website. Yesterday turned out to be a pretty awesome day after all.

Hope this finds you feeling healthy!

-Mason