If it seems like months since I wrote anything here on Modern Guitars ... it's because it has been! So much goes on around me that I just lose track of where I am, what I'm doing and who I'm doing it with ..... until the good people who run this site kindly send me an email, just sending out an exploritory nudge to see if I am still awake!!

Of course, like all good musicians, I wake up very suddenly, profess to being awake .... "of COURSE I'm awake!! Just resting my eyes, thats all ......" and get on with the business of writing an article. And here I am. So how can I put the last few months in a proverbial nutshell? Well, its been very satisfying. Lets take Camp Freddy first. For those of you who dont know, I am one of the founding members of a band called Camp Freddy - based in Los Angeles, the band is made up of myself, Dave Navarro, Matt Sorum, Scott Weiland, Chris Chaney and Donovan Leitch. We play covers - not too much obscure stuff .... more yer actual classic stuff, like Whole Lotta Love, Pretty Vacant or Cat Scratch Fever ... and we invite our friends to join us onstage and jam with us. Over the last five years, its turned into a very fun thing to do, both for us as the band, and for the guest artists that we get down to play with us. No stress, all fun, very loud ..... what we all started to play music for at the beginning!!

So Camp Freddy has gone from strength to strength and this year, we have released some songs on a movie soundtrack. The movie is called Employee Of The Month (VERY funny movie, starring Dane Cook, Dax Sheppard and Jessica Simpson) - we recorded a version of Cheap Trick's Surrender and a version of Marc Bolan's 20th Century Boy for the soundtrack album, which is available now. Surrender is the single from the movie, so we did a bunch of cool stuff to promote that, including the NBC TV show, The Tonight Show With Jay Leno last week. We also went up to San Francisco the day after the Leno thing and did a fantastic show at one of my favorite venues in the USA - The Warfield Theater. Lars Ulrich and Robert Trujillo from Metallica came down and joined us, along with Chester Bennington (from Linkin Park), Duff and Slash (from Velvet Revolver), Mark McGrath, Steve Jones (yep - an actual Sex Pistol!!) and others and we rocked the place for about an hour and a half. Camp Freddy is still working on their album (self financed and self produced, with the help of Mike Clink ..... it's taken two years already, and will be finished when it's finished. We can take our time because .... we can!!) but we go off to play another show in a couple of days. It's a fun band to be a part of, and I am proud that every one who joins us to jam feels the same way.

Then we move on to Circus Diablo. That is the name of my new band, that runs hand in hand with all my other projects. This consists of me (actually being the frontman this time), Billy Duffy (from The Cult) on lead guitar, Ricky Warwick (from The Almighty) on rhythm guitar, Brett Scallions (from Fuel) on bass guitar, and Jeremy Colson (from the Steve Vai band) on drums. We wrote and recorded our album at the start of the year, put the line up together, and just finished playing our first set of shows. SO MUCH FUN!!!

Playing the frontman is a whole different ballgame – one of not being able to hide behind technical problems …. One of having something to say ….. I love it!! The shows were great fun, and we now move into the whole process of getting the record released early next year. Things are looking good and we should be able to announce a release date and some shows for early 2007 very soon.

Gibson have got another white Custom Les Paul in the shop being built for me – I am VERY excited to get hold of that, as my last white Custom bit the dust in New York a while back. I mean, its been repaired, but its kinda like driving a car that’s had a wreck ….. it just doesn’t seem to feel right. Doesn’t respond quite like it should. Maybe its just my imagination. Either way, another Paul is a good thing!! I hope to be down at the NAMM show again next January, so if you are around, please come and say hi!!

And the whole internet thing keeps me VERY busy (although you wouldn’t know it with my complete absence from this site!) and I have been keeping things ticking over nicely at WWW.BILLYMORRISON.NET, WWW.CIRCUSDIABLO.COM, and of course, WWW.CAMPFREDDY.NET. Some MySpace stuff with Circus Diablo, my own video channel on YouTube …… I keep myself busy kids!!!!

I’m gonna do some experimenting with Tom and Rick (they of this very site!) with audio interviews very soon. I love that Modern Guitars try and keep things fresh and innovative and I will get involved any way I can. For now, I am just pleased with myself that I actually got around to writing another journal here!! I will endeavour to be a little more regular with my writings. There is SO much that has gone down recently that would have made great entries here ….. but my mind is a little shot from the years of abuse!!! So it kinda disperses into the ether if I don’t do it immediately. Oh well – I have no idea if anyone reads this stuff anyway!! All I know is that it’s a good release for me when I do it. So thanks for indulging me, and I’ll be back …. I promise!!!

Billy