Mario’s Stuff

Uncle G’s Visit

Graham, Me & Skye at Lake Mead National Recreation Area, NV (5/15/09)

Uncle G (Graham Bonnet) came to visit us last week, we had a great time driving out to a few local places of interest and we also worked on some new songs for the Savage Paradise project.

“DAY-O!” Graham being Graham… ;-) Testing out the echo at Red Stone, Lake Mead (05/17/09)

Amongst other places, we visited the Lake Mead National Recreation Area (see above pics) and went to Echo Bay for lunch. Shawna had her little camera with her and took a bunch of great photos :-) On Monday the 18th I drove along the Nevada and California state line and into the Mojave Desert along the Joshua Tree Highway and showed Graham the little town of Nipton and then Cottonwood Cove on Lake Mohave (yes, it’s spelled with an ‘h’!) The temperature at Cottonwood Cove was 118 F with a warm wind.

Thirsty Skye drinking watermelon juice. Echo Bay, Lake Mead, (05/17/09)

Graham went back to L.A. yesterday, and that same evening my friend and bassist Paul ‘Pablo’ Stanney arrived in Vegas for a visit from the UK.

Shadows & Light

As well as the Savage Paradise album, I’m also hard at work on my new solo guitar instrumental album Shadows & Light and will be announcing soon the track titles and running order. I’m very pleased with the way it’s sounding so far, and it will further benefit from Pablo’s (Paul Stanney) bass lines and Kev’s (Kev Taylor) drums. There will be three special bonus tracks on the CD of vocal versions of three of the songs. Each song will have a different singer, the singers are Graham Bonnet (Rainbow/MSG/Alcatrazz), Lee Small (Shy/Phenomena/Lee Small Band) and John Pratt (Firefly). I’ll keep you posted on the album’s progress.

Bug Update

There’s actually nothing to report!! Hopefully it will stay this way… (touch wood)… we’ve already had our share of scorpions and spiders…

There are a few harmless lizards that live around our house, I managed to photograph one on the patio wall a few days ago with my cell phone (below).  They’re about 6 inches long and very fast…!

A desert lizard on our patio wall.

The weather’s getting warmer now, it was 109 F yesterday, and pretty soon the cicadas will be making their loud weird noise outside. We usually get praying mantis’ on the patio during the Summer months, but they’re harmless and good at keeping other insects at bay.

With a bit of luck, there won’t be another bug update for a while…