The Today Show

It was early, it was wet.


There was water dripping down from the top of the tent onto my keyboards, so I laid a towel on some of the keys and marked them off limits.



Somebody made me a sign!  Please do this during the tour.  I need to know where ma' fans at.

"Today I'm OK" on The Real World

My happy bouncy sing-a-long, "Today I'm OK" is featured on the July 15 episode (tomorrow night) of MTV's The Real World. Should be on at 10pm, but check your local listings.

So You Think You Can Dance

I'm so excited to announce that my song, Wave Goodbye, will be featured on the June 3rd episode (tomorrow night!) of So You Think You Can Dance on FOX. It's Vegas callbacks night. Maybe somebody will get sent home to my tune. Or maybe they'll just dance gorgeously to it. Who knows? Set those Tivos!

Tonight Show w Billy Ray

Only two weeks after doing the Tonight Show with Miley, we were back with Billy Ray. Felt like we never left.


This time we were indoors, which was much warmer.


The night's guests:

I had a nice conversation with Kristin after the show. What a sweet gal.

Jaco IS Neil Young

This was the last Tonight Show with Jay Leno we'll ever do, as Jay is done in June. But maybe someday we'll be on the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien... I can only hope!

Good Morning America

We were taping at the Hard Rock in Times Square. I think this was the first time we've ever played in a restaurant. Also, the first time I've ever been in a Hard Rock at 7am. Hopefully the last.

Soundcheck went very smoothly; no major disasters.

And suddenly the place filled up with Billy Ray and Miley fans.






What time again?

What in the world was Diane Sawyer saying at the beginning? "A huge hit off the tack?"



And Schmid Island got more camera time than ever.





Then we busted out a new track.

Miley on Leno

We had the privilege of playing the last-ever outdoor concert on Leno. To celebrate, there was a backstage ice cream bar. It's all about the little things.

We came:


We soundchecked:


We conquered:


And then we waited:

Then we played "The Climb"



Followed by an internet-only performance of "Full Circle"

Bad Girls Club...again!

My song, "Little Noah," will be featured on next week's episode of The Bad Girls' Club. No idea how they're gonna tie that song in. If you're as curious as I am, tune in Tuesday, January 13th, at 7 or 10pm (depending on where you live - check local listings) on the Oxygen network.

AMC John Wayne marathon

Cable network AMC just used my song "Lullabye (Christmas is Here)" in the promo for their annual John Wayne Christmas movie marathon. The song is available on iTunes, as part of the Snow Day EP.

The Week-Long Hug

All this week, I've been up in Washington state (Tumwater, to be exact), visiting my sweet little Noah. He is truly a miracle, and we've been having a great time playing, eating, sleeping and playing some more. It's quite a wondrous thing to watch him experience the world. I'll post some pics and more details when I get back home.

During the custody proceedings, I'm only allowed 2-3 hours with Noah per day, so there is a lot of waiting. Which is boring. At the moment, I've actually stooped to watching MythBusters in my hotel room. This is because I've run out of fun things to do in Tumwater, of which there are about three: go to a park, go to a movie and...okay, two. I could also go for a drive at 10 miles per hour and then pull out slowly in front of oncoming traffic, which seems to be supercool around here.

Just counting the seconds till I get to see that perfect boy again.

The Teen Choice Awards

The ceremony was held at the Gibson Amphitheater at Universal Studios, and it was a veritable cornicopia of celebrities, Dippin' Dots, and fancy swag.

Mostly, we:

• Rehearsed
• Waited around for hours
• Got bored
• Ran to the theater and saw Step Brothers (no masterpiece, but a great way to waste some time)
• Hung out in the green room (I literally rubbed elbows with Scarlett Johansson)
• Got bored
  
• Hopped on stage
• Played the song
• Left the building

In that time though, I saw Posh & Becks, Katharine McPhee, that long-haired dude from Lost, the Jonases (nice to see them again), LL Cool J (Nadia desperately wanted a picture with him), a bunch of teenage celebrities I've never heard of, Fergie and those Davids from Idol.

Another day at the office. Yawn.

Don't Forget To Set Your Tivos!

Don't forget to set your Tivos this morning for Good Morning America on ABC, where we'll be playing 3 songs. A fourth will be on their website.

The Highway Girl

SMtv and The Samantha Murphy Show have now become The Highway Girl. Many wonderful changes in store for our show!


For the next few weeks, Samantha and I will be shooting segments left and right for our new season, goofing off in front of and behind the camera. We have some very exciting, very big artists coming on board.

Many more details to come. New website on its way. Until then, you can read The Highway Girl blog.

And you can still see our seven awesome episodes from South By Southwest (which includes my "it's so hard to tour with Hannah Montana" rant, my "cannonball problem," and my general willingness to alienate myself in front of my music heroes) at smtvmusic.com. You have to sign up to watch, but it's free and it's just so we have an idea of who's watching.

Celebrities, Slime and Spiked Butt Belts

The day of the Kids' Choice Awards, we arrived to the UCLA campus and were quickly herded into a tent/makeshift green room. Other than a litte table with meats and cheeses, the room was barren. This is where we'd be spending the next several hours.

But first, rehearsal. They were running the entire show that morning, from beginning to end. When they reached our point in the show, a runner guided us to the stage, and we did our thing. The kid extras seemed a little more excited today.

Then back to the tent, with about five hours till showtime. We were told we were allowed to leave, but only by foot, as the traffic getting back would be terrible. So I hoofed it around Westwood a bit. I hadn't really been in the area for a year or two, so I saw that my favorite CD store had closed and that several frozen yogurt places had opened (how much froyo do college students need?). And when I got bored (within twenty minutes), I headed back to the hometent. Things were much more exciting there:


When the show finally started around 5pm, the band decided to check out the white room. This room was created up in the stands behind the stage, with white furniture, white carpet, and sheer white sheets softly barricading all the celebrities in with their perfectly manicured hors d'oeuvres. We stuck out like a hand full of sore thumbs amongst Will Smith, Nelly, and a bunch of other slick rappers I didn't know of. Jaco and Jamie immediately grabbed a couple of the Neutrogena gift bags, full of manly moisturizing creams. They were far too excited about those. We enjoyed about a half hour of the show until Stacy, pro that he is, decided we should be in the tent at least 30 minutes before it was necessary. So we went back to our homevoid. Sat around for awhile. Made some calls.

Then the blur. Around 6pm, we were walked quickly through the back door and down a narrow hallway to the stage. We hit the stage, Miley barely made it into place in time for the song, and was a little out of breath. Everybody did their thing. We played like our hands were deadly precision instruments, the dancers flipped and flew like there were helium bombs in their shoes, and Miley's star presence inspired the kid extras to legitimately freak out.

And the set did look really good on TV.

Orange and Green and Yellow and Pink and...

The Nickelodeon Kid's Choice Awards show was a hurricane of celebrities, bright colors and slime.

We arrived bright and early the morning before, only to sit for nearly three hours while the dancers rehearsed. And of course they rehearsed! There were new dancers and a smaller stage to contend with. But there was definitely a kink in the planning.

Fortunately we were able to keep ourselves busy with the mountains of paperwork that accompany events like this. Generally, I spend more time filling out paperwork than I do on stage.

We were all stunned at how cheap and high school production the set looked. How many neon colors can you cram onto one stage?

The sets for all these TV shows look pretty dumpy in person. But once they light 'em all purty, and film them with high definition cameras, they look like a million bucks. Wonder of wonders.

Once we finally got on stage and played through the song twice with Miley, they brought up some kid extras to sit on the risers in front of us. Fun, right? Except the kids weren't having fun. Here's the Miley Cyrus singing and dancing inches away from them. Nothing.

So Valdez the production manager and another woman (who had a chip on her shoulder or a brick up her nose or something) came over to try and get a little more energy from the kids. Valdez sweetly said, "this is Miley Cyrus! Let's get excited! Scream! Smile!"

Ol' Bricky Nose tried a different tactic. She said, and I quote, "You people are terrible. Just awful." I'd also like to add that she was wearing a bright orange shirt that said "Psychiatric Hotline" and had an 800 number on it. She continued, "The execs said that you were THE kids to use for this. Well, they were wrong. Just atrocious."

I considered jumping in, but was in the midst of a rare moment of restraint.

Big esteem builder for the kids, though. This only led to even more shellshocked silence from them. Way to shut 'em down, Psychiatric Hotline!

Eventually, our choreographer Theresa came over, screaming and flailing like she was on fire. "Miley Cyrus! Yaaaaay! Everybody wave your hands in the air the whole time! Yaaaaay!"

Of course that worked.

[Day Two - the actual ceremony - coming tomorrow.]

The Big Payoff

I have lots of great pics and videos of the Houston rodeo, which will be up on the blog next week.

This week, I'm at South By Southwest in Austin. After months of hard work, the Samantha Murphy Show (which I'm directing and co-hosting) is finally premiering! It features great singer/songwriters and bands, as well as interviews with heavy hitters in music and technology. A new show will be up every night at smtvmusic.com. You can see two episodes as of this writing, and the third will be up in the morning.

We are spending every second shooting, editing and uploading. We're tired, we're sore and we're sunburnt, but if you enjoy the show, it's all worth it.

Here's the trailer:

Octopi

Putting this show together is a bit like being an octupus. There are tons of different segments: interviews, live performances, host interludes, behind-the-scenes pieces -- and we're working on them all simultaneously. So we'll shoot a segment, and then edit one that we shot a week ago, and then put the finishing touches on another, and then capture footage for yet another.

I'm someone who thinks very linearly. I like to take a project from start to finish, and focus solely on that one project. So this drives me crazy. I have to constantly re-focus my energy on a new subject, and just when I'm "in the zone," it's time to move on to another segment. Unfortunately, this is the only way to ensure that we'll have everything finished by the time SXSW rolls around.

Today, I edited footage of the incredible Elvis Perkins, finished the Inara George piece, mixed theme music, and captured footage of our host segments.

Oh also, I got my chest xray. I should get my results tomorrow.

Re-assimilating

It's been really hard to settle back into a routine since I've been home. I was all excited to be in one place, waking up in the same bed, that I just sort of assumed I'd be able to get back on a schedule. But I've been working a lot, and not sleeping much.

I did feel a little better today, because Samantha forced me to drink a nasty warm maple syrup tea with lots of spicy cayenne pepper and lemon. Disgusting, but just as she said, it picked me right up and took away my congestion. Good thing, too, cause we had a lot to get done today.

We spent the day shooting some host segments for the TV show. We'll be going live with our very first episode at South By Southwest next month, so we've got a limited time to create and edit the pre-taped segments.

I have a nice yard in the back of my house that doubles as a park, an alley, a zen garden, an orchard and a patio. It will be heavily featured.

Tonight, I spent several hours editing interview footage we shot last August of Inara George (The Bird and the Bee) and Mike Andrews (Donnie Darko), at the Bessie Smith tribute. Good stuff, and you'll see it soon.

But right now, I'm exhausted. I need to rest up for my bright and early appointment with the doctor.

Non sequiters

More video on the way. I've been having lots of fun going through the pics and videos I took on the tour, and it's nice to know that you guys are enjoying them too.

In completely unrelated news, I was stunned to hear that a big-screen version of the cancelled TV show, "Arrested Development," is currently in the works. I could cry. Story here.

Tonight, I went to the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater here in Hollywood with Ben and Samantha. The hilarious Jeff Garlin (Curb Your Enthusiasm) does stand-up there every Sunday for $1! It doesn't get any better than that. Jeff and friends Nicole Parker and Mark Marin workshopped new material and we laughed our little lungs out.

It's so good to be home. I feel so calm and rested and on my way to finally shaking this weird flu/cold/bronchitis thing.

Lest I forget their creepy omnipresence in my neighborhood, a coyote slunk down the sidewalk as I got home tonight. It glared at me. Like a warning. Oh yeah, I forgot. They own this place.

Dick Clark's Rockin' Eve

Breaking news. We'll be playing Dick Clark's New Years' Eve special. So pay a little more attention at your ball-dropping-party-of-choice, as we'll be rockin' your TV screen. And scream "Happy Birthday" to said TV screen, cause I was born on the last day of the year!