Callouses

After not playing my guitar much during December and into January, it's taken me a while to get my callouses back.

For those not in the know, building up callouses on your finger tips hurts. Those strings dig into the skin. And maintaining guitar callouses takes effort.

You have to play often to keep them intact. You can't put on too much lotion or soak them in hot water. It's not uncommon to see me sitting in a hotsprings pool with my left hand in the air or putting lotion only on the backs and palms of my hands only.

Even if you get good callouses they can peel and flake. You have to reach the right balance of moisture and pressure and blah, blah, blah ... it's yet another thing to manage, like little pets living on my hands.

But it feels good to have them back, to be playing music earnestly again. It can be such a release.

And Riveter has got such big stuff coming up. We've got our big local show on the 8th, then our trip to SXSW to play the Invasion of the GoGirls showcase (This show alone is huge for us! Huge, I say).

Then in April we're playing the Fruita Fat Tire Festival (make sure you click the link, they mention us right on the front page) for the third year in a row. We love playing that festival!

And I want to mention (in hopes that he reads this) that our girl band would not be where we are today without the help of Scott. Not only has he been sitting in as our drummer for a while now, but he's recorded and mixed all our songs and coached and supported us from day one. And he's got his own little band project, too.

So a big Thank You to Scott for all he does. Scott, you rock!