How long has it been? Who knows. Who cares. Life has a way of overtaking things that you REALLY mean to do - " I MUST clean out that cupboard".... "I REALLY should pay that parking ticket" ...... "I SHOULD write another Modern Guitars journal!!"..... I love having the means to write this journal, but I just never seem to remember to do it!! Oh well, thats why I got into this business in the first place - the ability to not have to do anything regularly!!!

So here I am again, and of course, lots of goings on in Chez Morrison. The first thing that comes to mind is the new band, Circus Diablo. Billy Duffy (The Cult), Ricky Warwick (The Almighty) and myself got together late last year and wrote a bunch of songs. We liked what we came up with, so we spent the first few weeks of this year recording them with Matt Sorum (Velvet Revolver) in his studio. Matt played the drums on the record and I covered the bass guitar. We figured we would make the record together and then put the rhythm section together afterwards. And now we have been able to announce that former FUEL frontman, Mr Brett Scallions, will be playing bass in the band. We are still looking for the drummer, but its great to have Brett in the band. He has been a friend for a long time, and KILLS it on the bass. Not to mention the backing vocals in this band should be awesome - both him and Ricky were lead singers!! I have a tough job in front of me being the singer!! We are currently working on our plans for the end of the year. Album release - dates etc. CLICK HERE to visit the www.circusdiablo website.

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Camp Freddy played a couple of shows last month. An appearance on the Spike TV Autorox award show - we played Cheap Tricks' SURRENDER - and a show in New York for General Motors, which included three songs OUTSIDE, 50ft in the air, in Times Square, with crazy traffic and people far below us. Now THAT was a great time!! To see the Spike TV video, CLICK HERE. There is more Camp Freddy madness being planned for later in the year.

In truth, my head is already in Hawaii, where I will be taking a well deserved vacation, starting this coming Saturday. I plan to dive (scuba - now Advanced Open Water Certified!!) and do nothing much else. Once I return, it will be all systems go, with both Circus Diablo and Camp Freddy. So I intend to make the most of the 10 days out there.

One of the things I will be dealing with when I get back is my Bradshaw rig. A new band means new requirements, and as I am not the main guitar player in CD (in fact I will only be playing guitar on a few songs live) I want to change the rig. At the moment, it is multiple heads (both Marshall and Boogie) with a switching system thats controlling a bunch of rack mount fx as well as pedals. I plan to add some Boss pedals, remove some of the rack mount gear, and just run a JCM 2000. The switching system will then just control the two amp channels - one high gain, and one clean - with the clean channel having all the pedals doing the tonal work. That way I can have the Acoustic Simulator pedal (for the acoustic type sounds), a few different overdrive tones, tremelo etc, all switchable, but without the multiple heads and associated flight cases. As always, I am sure that it will take some tweaking to get it right, but isn't that why we guitarists do this shit? So we can legitimately tweak on our gear??!!! I shall report more on the new system when Bob has done it. I also now plan to add an Audio Technica wireless mic into my rig - as a front man, I now have to actually pay attention to what the mic sounds like, instead of just using whatever is put in front of me!!

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I just want to end with a quick thought. I am truly blessed to have the life that I lead. I don't really care about success in traditional terms. Success to me is being able to pay the bills and have meaningful relationships with those around me. To be able to do this without having to compromise who I am is a beautiful thing. If record sales and magazine covers become more important than this basic concept, then I believe I would be in trouble. I had a huge record deal with my UK band, Stimulator, back in the '90s, and although we had money, I was so consumed with the 'peripherals' that I lost touch with my human side. And subsequently, we got dropped, the record never came out, and I was left feeling really empty. I have learned from that experience that what REALLY matters is having a smile on my face, and maybe being able to put a smile on someone else's face throughout my day. It might be a bunch of flowers for my wife. It might be a 'have a nice day' to the guy in Starbucks. Or, sometimes, it might be a great song, or great performance, that I have been involved with that puts a smile on a music fan's face. Either way, THAT is what counts. I think I manage a level of success that satisfies me most days. For that, I am truly thankful.

Until next time...

Peace

Billy