The next stop was Pittsburgh. I promise not to make a single joke in this post about anything being “the pits.”

Pittsburgh has terrible traffic/roads, a great feel, beautiful countryside, and a handful of these cool yellow bridges:

We drove around downtown a little bit looking at stuff.

We saw a huge amout of people hanging around, using public transport, smoking, etc. Pretty cool that a non-huge city would have such a high proportion of foot traffic.

By this point I was becoming accustomed to the hilliness of the terrain, narrowness of the roads, and speed of the traffic on this side of the US. To get to our host I had to experience a considerable bit of all of the above.

Speaking of our host, his name is Andy Lehmann and he’s pretty awesome. He put us up on short notice and let us commandeer his basement for a night. Thanks Andy!

Next morning bright and early (8:15!!!) I was off to record with another old college bud of mine, a multitalented bloke who goes by the name of David Santistevan (because that is really his name). He is working as a music director at a church, so we headed over there to record.

David plays all kinds of instruments with aplomb. I had him lay down some piano for me, then we set up for recording his guitar rig

and recorded Dave’s awesome textural electric guitar playing on several tracks. Dave was pretty easy — I just kind of set him loose and he did his thing and it was good.

Awesome!

NEXT: Something else awesome!