Back to China...

I'm leaving tomorrow to return to China! I got really lax about updating this thing in the last couple months (for example, today is the first time I've updated it during my entire time home in Seattle), but I'm planning to keep updating it this year in China. At least if I have readers who are still interested in reading about my life in China.

I've told several people this, but sometimes I wonder if I even have any readers, when I post stuff and don't get any comments. I know my immediate family is reading, but beyond that I wonder if anyone is bothering to read this thing. It takes a lot of effort to keep this thing updated, so I tend to post a lot less (or post nothing at all!) if I'm unsure that anyone is actually going to read it. This summer several people have told me they've been keeping up on the blog, and I had no idea...so, please leave comments if you're reading this blog and want me to keep posting more. Even if it's just "nice post", or "that's a good picture", it tells me that I've got readers and encourages me to post stuff.

Ghosts and Spirits

I've been playing lead guitar in a band named Phileas Fogg for the last 6 years. We never really "went for it", so to speak, because we were in College for most of our time as a band. Back in 2005, we started recording an album, with the intent to "go for it" and actually promote ourselves once we finished the album. Unfortunately, the album took way longer than we planned. In the meantime, I moved to China, our bass player, Mark, moved to Los Angeles, and Phil, our singer/songwriter, got married and just recently moved to Indiana for grad school. As you can imagine, the band's not together anymore. But the recording did finally get finished, and Ghosts and Spirits is now online at CD Baby for your listening and purchasing pleasure.

I'm immensely proud of this recording--hundreds of hours of my time (not to mention hundreds of hours of other people's time) went into this thing, and I'm really happy with how it turned out. You're probably wondering how I managed to record an album while I was in China. As I said, the recording began in 2005, and I finished all of my parts before moving to China. I also wrote the music for one of the tracks on the album--"Thirst for Water, Inquiry for Truth", which is sort of our tribute to Radiohead's "Fitter Happier", if you're familiar with OK Computer.

In case you're wondering, the album has been released as "Phil Woodward" since he financed the recording and is now promoting it on his own, since he wrote songs and owns the rights to the music. But it was a Phileas Fogg recording throughout the entire project, and the decision was just made at the very end to release it under his name.

Please give the album a listen and let me know what you think!