New Challenges

As I lie like a eastern pasha on my silken cushions in my library, fez askew, with the opium smoke wafting above me like the ectoplasmic ghost of Coleridge, I'm musing on my taking on the Front Man/Lead Guitarist role in the Mobsters band. My trusty but insanely unusual Custom Deacon Limited leans against a pillow, its pearlescent pickguard gleaming in the light of the oil lamps. Have I bitten off a bit more than I can chew here? Not, I think, for my bandmates, they seem to like my singing and playing well enough, but for me? I'm pretty picky (usually) about the guitarists I work for...and now I work for myself...I think I've got more shedding to do.

I know that I'm hard on myself about trying for excellence in music, but I can't fool myself in knowing where the bar has been placed in the areas that I want to be good at, and they're pretty darn high. I was feeling OK about my playing, and then the other night I went out with some friends to see George Bedard and Bill Kirtchen play...man! What amazing and tasteful musicians they are. Beautiful melodies and harmonies just flow out of those guys so naturally, it's a fantastic thing to see. Makes me realise where the heights are, and wonder about how high up the mountain I can climb. Thing is, I love to learn, I just wish I had a few more lifetimes to work on it all. In those strange hazy conversations I sometimes have with friends the question comes up, what if you had unlimited time to live? I always keep thinking, damn, I'd really have time to become a musician then. I think I could master that chord melody stuff in a couple centuries if I applied myself! And after a bit more of that for guitar I could concentrate on learning composition and orchestration. Then, a few more centuries for anthropology, science, literature...then some time for mysticism, and a millennia or so in meditation...

Thing is, my time is a lot shorter than that, and a lot of it is taken up with fairly mundane stuff. So I have to get a lot more focused on what I want to do with the little time I have to do it in! Believe me, I'm working at it. Tomorrow it looks like we'll be snowed in, and I'm planning on spending as much time as I can playing some music. And to anyone who thinks this is like hard work or something, think again! Really, it's as much fun as you can have with your clothes on. Although I've played lots of fine music in the nude as well...but perhaps the less said about that the better...

Alternative Transportation

December here in Michigan has hit us all hard with its icy fist...temperatures in the low teens at night and not much warmer in the day. Snow and ice make walking difficult and dangerous, and driving is an unpleasantly exciting adventure sometimes. That is if your car will even start! The cold tends to make any minor problem with an automotive system much worse, and several times in the last week my poor Ford Escort just wouldn't respond to my attempts to engage. Fortunately I had a spare vehicle...in the barn here the former resident had left an old army tank from the 50's, purchased no doubt at one of those government auctions. It wasn't running of course, but with a little help from my friend and neighbor Bill we've fixed it up and it's pretty reliable! The thing goes like a champ through the snow, on the road or off it. Bad gas mileage, but fortunately prices are low right now...and although its top speed is only about 60 MPH, people tend to keep out of my way on the highway. Heck, even Hummers give way to a TANK!! They better too...the gun turret is still operational.

OK, well maybe that was a fantasy, but if anyone wants to know what I'd like for Xmas, now you do. And really, it HAS been mighty cold, I'm not kidding about that. All the cats are spending their time on the heating registers or close to them, and I'm not that far away either! Everybody take care out there, driving or walking...and may you have a hot and refreshing beverage waiting when you get to your destination.

Shot Out The Holiday Cannon

OK, OK, OK, I got the lights up here and at my folks house! And at my friend/client Tom's as well. Actually I got my folks lights up in October...they're a lot more work and more elaborate, I should just leave them up all year. Cyn and I will go and get a tree today from our good friend Duke, who drives his trees down from his farm up north and lives for a month in his Airstream trailer up on Washtenaw Avenue purveying them, making most of his cash for the year that way.

This holiday stuff is a little much sometimes, as I wind up having to shift things around with the cleaning biz (everybody's schedule changes at once), and lots of my friend's bands seem to have emergencies where I do sub gigs (I have two this weekend). Plus friends and family descending on us at unexpected times, social obligations popping up like mushrooms on a muggy day, Cyn's got the most crazy busy time of the year for her jewelry business, and there's a general frenzy in the stores. That said, I love this time of year...I love the lights on people's yards, the music, the sense of excitement that I feel everywhere, and maybe there's a little aura of spiritual energy that comes from having the central yearly celebration for at least three major religions happening at once. Plus, there's pie. It's cool.

Another cool thing going on is that I seem to be in another band! The Mobsters have made me an offer I couldn't refuse...looks like I'll be doing the Front Man/Lead Singer/Lead Guitarist duties for this Swing/Funk/Roots ensemble. Sounds like fun to me! They've assured me that I can have full control of the schedule, so I can keep doing my primary caregiver thing with my folks, and I'm hoping that works out well. They're a cool bunch, and I think I can help make it happen with them...I'll keep you posted!

Speaking of my caregiver functions, I'm back and forth this next two weeks (adding another layer into the holiday complexities) driving my Dad back and forth to the hospital for a battery of tests. His mental acuity seems to have taken a dive, and he's had some strange hallucinations. Talking to people who aren't in the room occasionally is kind of disturbing. He's also gotten confused later at night when he goes to bed...the other morning my Mom woke up and found the dishwasher sitting in the bedroom! Somehow he must of confused it with his walker. I asked him if he remembered doing it and he said "No, but I sort of remember thinking 'Man, this thing is hard to push around!'". So we've been off to the neurologists to see what there is to do, if anything, about that. So far the doc has ruled out Alzheimer's, thank God. He said it may be something as simple to address as a vitamin deficiency...so hence the tests. Hopefully he'll be right in that, and Dad won't have to lug that darn dishwasher around.

Anyhow, I'm looking forward to having everybody around this Xmastime...it was nice to see my bros on Thanksgiving, and everybody should be here for the December fiesta as well. I'm lucky that everybody can make it and be in reasonable health, we're a pretty close family, even though we're often pretty far away from each other(me on tour in Germany, Aaron out in Poland, Stu working in Chile, etc.). This should be a good time for all! And I hope, for you all as well.

Coyotes

After midnight, and I'm sitting up late listening to the coyotes howling in the field next door. I've been hating Michigan, and the cold, and all, but hearing them I realize what a strange and beautiful place I live in. It's an eerie, wonderful thing...ah, these creatures of the night...what music they make...

Birthdays

Just sitting with another cup of coffee, prying my eyes open after a festive evening last night celebrating my Birthday...my 56th! How the hell did that happen? I was 12 last week, 15 or 16 just a little while ago. You blink, turn around a couple of times and Wham! Suddenly there's all this grey hair and stuff. Weird.

Having a Birthday around Halloween (I was actually born an hour after, on All Saint's Day, but I usually celebrate on Halloween) makes for lots of opportunities for festivity, and we certainly took advantage of them last night! There was a musical extravaganza out at the Arbor Brewing Company, a local micro brew club, with our friends the Six Foot Poles (hey, they're from Hamtramick). Cyn and I donned our costumes...we went as the Corporate Clowns Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. She did some amazing and very disturbing makeup on us...as you can see. We had a gas at the party, the band was great and it was a lot of fun for all! Today, however, for some reason I feel a bit...subdued. Perhaps a side effect of the excellent ABC brews. But you know, it's worth it really.

It's certainly been a year to make me more reflective and maybe a little morbid, with all that's been going on. But if I look back on my life these last 56 years, I realize that I've been pretty fortunate, and I haven't done that badly. I've had the chance to play in wonderful bands, hang out with wonderful people, to do wild and crazy things that lots of other people just dream about. There are a lot of people who love me, I have a wonderful fiance, and a great family. I suppose I have some regrets...I've wasted a lot of time and braincells with drugs and alcohol, especially early on, and I wish often I'd been kinder sometimes to people. But overall, I think I've been pretty OK, and I've had lots of fantastic experiences. This next year I think I just want to try and improve on as many levels as I can...I want to get my recording studio and promotional service together, and try to help other struggling musicians. I want to start working on soundtracks, and to expand my compositional abilities. I want to play music a lot more and with more great musicians, and to grow there as well. And I really want to have more and more fun with Cyn, my family and friends! Life is good, gotta enjoy it as much as possible.

King Arthur and The Beatles

Still putting myself together with a cup of tea by the PC, after a strange dream where The Beatles were together in the times of King Arthur (Ringo looks really cool in chain mail, by the way). It was a fun dream, and it got me thinking about the strange connections that I see between the story of The Beatles and the Arthurian legends...there’s something that resonates powerfully about Arthur and the Round Table, one reason I keep re-reading Mallory and Mary Stewart (Steinbeck wrote a bitchin’ translation of Mallory, by the way), and I think it’s a good example of what Joseph Campbell wrote about too...Campbell was a fascinating anthropologist/folklorist/rennissance man who had an interesting essay about the "10 points of the Hero". The idea being that all great legends and hero tales change over the many retellings and embellishments in time, and have the main character going through many of the same things that all other heroes do, whether it be Osiris, or Luke Skywalker, or Frodo, or Jesus, or Tarzan, or Arthur. Maybe it says something about human nature or the collective unconcious, I don’t know. I can’t remember all 10 right now, but some of the ones I do are:

The hero is born to greatness, but is raised humbly, unknowing of their status.

Later, in their youth, their deeds show that they are special.

Often the hero leaves to go on a quest to find their birthright.

On the journey, they meet strange friends and wise men who help them.

Their quest often cumulates in their public display of their powers in miraculous ways.

Later in their lives, they are sometimes killed by evil, jealous and deceitful ones, but somehow they magically return and live on, in some special way, although they may not be physically present on earth.

...See the connection with the story of The Beatles there? The quest to Hamburg and beyond, the strange friends Epstein, Evans, Aspinall, the wise Martin. Their miraculous rise...John’s assasination, but his music and message ringing out unkillably through time. The stuff of legend. They were just four guys, but they also seem like Jungian archtypical heros too! Also, it’s the hero legend with the best soundtrack EVER. Just some of the things passing through my mind in the morning...maybe I need another cup of that tea.

Chord Melody Jazz Guitar

Late at night, when no one can hear, I'm practicing Jazz style Chord Melody guitar. For those who don't know, that's a style of solo playing that incorporates harmony notes simultaneously with the melody...hence the name, hah. I always thought it was a cool style and all, but listening to Joe Pass and Ted Greene when I was younger kind of made me give up...it was like looking up at a mountaintop and realizing you didn't have near enough climbing skills to get there. But now that I'm a decrepit old guy, and I have a little more technique and patience, I'm going back at it and giving it a try. I figure in 30 or 40 years I should have it down pretty well. It's not everything I want to do musically, but I do enjoy it a lot. At this point I'll usually work for a while on exercises or other people's arrangements, and when I get burnt out of bashing my head against the wall I'll go back to playing other stuff. It's fun, and I like working on new things. Maybe later in life (well, not that much later) I'll be that geezer in the fern bar playing "Shadow Of Your Smile" or something. There's worse fates!

Journal By The Window

Time screams by the world like the winds around a huge tornado, bits of life and experience flying by at amazing speed.Like Dorothy in The Wizard Of OZ I watch various friends and loved ones spin by my window, and then disappear into the swirling funnel of time. Where will they go? Where will I land?

Things happen too fast for me to track them or to try to understand. A loved relative and an old Best Friend from my past both vanished into the mystery of death this month, and two other Old Best Friends appeared out of the void to reconnect. Cyn's aging Mom visited and my Dad recovered from our alarming and difficult Family Reunion, which he unknowingly attended with a fractured spine. Several friends have plunged into depression, and I seem to have the same malady, albeit in a milder form. Cynthia blazes about, a distracting blur of energy, doing a million things at once, like Vishnu. Work, chores, attending to family and basic needs eat up all available time, leaving my studio dusty and my recent CD unpromoted. And speaking of the studio, my PC keeps self-destructing.

So slowing down enough to write a few pages in a journal is a rare and welcome thing. I look out into the blue Autumn sky and listen to the insects and birds...something like peace comes over me and an inner Self relaxes for a moment. Time changes everything, for good or ill, but a little time to myself can only help me. And in turbulent times like these, I need that.

Out Of The Dark

The other day I went out for a walk...it sounds pretty pedestrian (sorry), but it's actually the first time I've voluntarily gone outside for a few weeks. Sounds crazy, but I think I've had the depressive equivalent of walking pneumonia for a while...I'm getting to work, and getting things done, and putting out the various fires that my life's been starting, but I was doing only what I had to, and then I'd collapse on the couch with a beer and sort of shut down. It's not that there hasn't been enough stuff happening to make me sad (my aunt's death and the death of an old friend in the space of 10 days, among other things) or stressed, but my reactions have been pretty typical of the way my metabolism works when I'm having a serotonin imbalance. I've dealt with this enough to recognise the symptoms, but of course when you're INSIDE it, it can be hard to realize. Apparently it's starting to recede, thank God. I've been getting out and working on the lawn, going to the gym, doing fun stuff that I kind of forgot how to do temporarily. Depression is really irritating...it sneaks up on you and flattens you, and doesn't have any really good dramatic symptoms like having blood spurt from your eyeballs or something that would at least get you a little sympathy from your friends!! Ah well...I guess I'm just hoping that this upswing will continue, and to help that along I'm gonna get out of this office and go out into the beautiful fall day and take another walk. Sounds good right now.

Memories of Charley Tysklind

I just got the news of my good friend Charley’s passing. I hadn’t been in touch with him in the last few months, and I had no idea he’d been that sick. This is really devastating, and I don’t know what to feel or do.

I think I met Charley in the late 70’s or early 80’s (my memory for dates is awful, and if anybody knows better please correct me). My friend Doug Cameron and I were in a band with his then girlfriend and a drummer, and Doug said that he knew a sax player from Lake Orion area who was good. When he showed up for a rehearsal, he was dressed kind of biker-like, and with his rough whiskey and cigarettes voice and his look I though “Man, here’s one tough customer”. It didn’t take long to find out this was far from the truth. Charley had an inner sweetness of spirit that came through right away, and we wound up getting along immediately. We had similar and complementary senses of humor, were both passionate about music, and were out for as much fun and adventure as we could get out of life. He proved to be a great musician too…I remember being much impressed by his ability to play two saxophones at once, in harmony, something he nabbed from one of his idols Rassan Roland Kirk. It suddenly gave us a horn section, and looked really cool onstage too.

Over the next six years or so we wound up being good friends and off-and-on housemates in various places in Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor, and playing in various ensembles wherever we could. I remember living on Emmet St. in Ypsi with him and some other sordid characters, and our lives of hilarious desperation and amusement. We both had various tiny odd jobs and gigs to keep us afloat, and along with the free pizzas from a sympathetic Pizza Store girl down the street we managed to survive. There were quite a few rather ill-conceived and unsuccessful bands that we were both in…one trio that we had with a amphetamine-fueled pianist whose name escapes me wound up playing in the then very rough Cross Street Club every week for happy hour weekends. The bouncer had a ball-peen hammer that he kept on a leather cord around his wrist, to discourage any messin’ around. Charley said it was a place where they searched you for weapons at the door, and if you didn’t have any they gave you one! But we opened up for everybody in town, playing jazz tunes out of the Real Book. I think we were paid in beer and burgers and stale cigars…we were all smoking like chimneys.

At that time I was going to school at WCC, and I don’t know if Charley was registered there or not, but he was out there a good deal. The Jazz Ensemble I was in played weekly out at the Halfway Inn at East Quad in A2 and he sat in on those sessions a lot. His sax style back then was cleaner in tone than it became later, and his jazz chops were good, especially for the time. At some point we both moved from Emmet St. to Pearl St. in Ypsi, to a house we shared with Wayne Indyk, Brian Tomsic, Ray Torres and several other nefarious souls. There were many parties and good times to be had there, and we had them. We were in our 20’s and into chasing after girls, gigs, mind-altering substances and the meaning of life, usually all at the same time. Charley had a huge appetite for it all, and ebullience that made being around him a gas. He and Wayne and I started the Movie Fun Club, gathering friends and going out to the cheap matinees of cheesy Sci-Fi and Fantasy flicks, laughing and throwing popcorn around. Fantastic afternoons.

Somewhere around that time Charley hooked up with Steve Wethy and the Blue Front Persuaders, who were based in Ann Arbor and just starting to get their Retro-Swing thing together. The first gig I know of they did was out in front of Rick’s American Café during the Art Fair in A2, and Rick’s had just opened. To grab the substantial crowd outside, the owners offered the Blue Fronts a gig that night if they’d just tell the audience they were playing there, and that it was “Quarter Beer Night”. Of course they did, and the crowd swarmed down into the basement club, and the band played all night. Steve and Charley and I shared a table completely covered in full plastic beer glasses. We went through some quarters that night! The Blue Fronts caught on like wildfire in A2, fueled partly by the Blues and Jump resurgence brought on by the Blue Brothers and the like, but mostly by the fun-loving, manic personality of the band itself. On a good night they could kick some serious swingin’ ass! Again, Charley’s persona and stage presence was a key element in the band’s chemistry.

Not too long after that I was recruited to be the band’s bassist, and we started playing at a new level, both musically and professionally, than either of us had before. We had all our weekends booked, and many weekdays too (as well as sub gigs that turned up at places like Mr. Flood’s Party and others). We were doing dates throughout Michigan and Ohio, and I can think of no better band to start doing it with than that one, and no better friends to be sharing the experience with, especially Charley. Many very wild nights were had by all, and hilarious after-gig parties that I mostly remember. It’s true that we were all a pretty hard-drinking, loose-living band at that point, but given the times and our youth I think it was a pretty natural kind of thing really. Charley could always drink me under the table though, and he frequently did!

During this period we both had summer jobs being park rangers in Ypsi’s Jyro Park. It was a pretty place to be, a decent day job and had the perk of many pretty park rangerettes, who we pursued with varying degrees of success. Charley wound up hooking up with Deanna, a lovely and sweet girl who really cared deeply about him. They got closer and closer, and I was happy for them both. I remember very well the night we were playing at the Soup Kitchen in Detroit, when he told me they were going to announce their engagement later that week. He was playing beautifully that night, and sang “I’m Gonna Stay Right Here” with such feeling (and essentially directly to Deanna) that I got choked up on the stand. I was planning to drive home with them that night, but my bass wouldn’t fit in Deanna’s little car, so I rode in the van with Steve and Dennis. It was later in the morning that we found out about the horrific car crash that they were in, the result of a drunk driver in a car chase racing down the wrong way on the highway. Charley was busted up some, and Wayne (our soundman at the time) had serious internal injuries and lost his spleen, but Deanna was killed instantly. We were all devastated. I don’t think Charley ever really got over that. He was a mess for a long time…how could he not be? But even much later, you could see the change that tragedy did to him. I think the dark streak of self-destructive behavior deepened then, his drinking and related consumptions became a little more pronounced and more to cushion himself against the pain than just for fun. He recovered, kept playing, returned to the world and to mostly good humor, but it left its mark.

After I left the band, there was a while were I didn’t see Charley, but we wound up sharing space again in Ann Arbor on Michigan St., in a very large house with a crazy bomb shelter that the Blue Fronts used to record in. I think his darkest period was behind him by then, he had mellowed somewhat and was living with another girlfriend, but we still had the connection of our good friendship and shared humor. We still were able to party, and occasionally we’d stumble across the street to Arwulf’s, either to entertain him with some freeform sax duets (I should mention that I don’t really play sax at all) or just to jabber and listen to Arwulf’s amazing music collection, which we had plundered before in search of obscure Swing tunes in the earlier days of the Persuader’s career. I do remember a few instances of excess during that time…one night I was woken up by an amazing cacophony downstairs in the living room. I stumbled down there and found Charley, wearing stereo headphones, playing Wagner’s “Flight Of The Valkeries” at top volume and waving his arms wildly, conducting into the air! Only problem was he had neglected to actually plug the headphones in! I treasure moments like that though. After our house broke up, we drifted apart, and I would only see him briefly and infrequently over the years. Just last year he contacted me by email and we wrote back and forth for a bit, but one of us (probably me) dropped the ball and I hadn’t heard from him in a bit. I’d just been thinking of reconnecting again when Steve sent me this news.

There was so much I admired and liked about him…he was a master storyteller, specializing in the tall and preposterous tale that was usually based in fact; a gifted artist, who could whip out an off-the-cuff comic or portrait without thinking about it; a great musician and musicologist with a vast knowledge of Jazz and R&B; and a cat with a fantastic imagination, who could entertain himself and everyone around him with nothing but the contents of his beautifully twisted mind. And a really good friend with a huge soul and a warm and generous spirit. I’d always hoped we’d have a little more time to be together and talk, and I’ll always regret I didn’t work harder to make that happen. I feel like a large part of what made me myself has left the planet. Charley, if you’re still out there somewhere, good luck, man, we loved you. I hope you have a fantastic journey, and a sublime destination.

Radio Six

I've recently been put on the playlist on Radio Six in Scotland! It's a very cool station indeed, and I reccomend anybody who likes eclectic and interesting music to go check it out...if you're not in Scotland, it's available worldwide on the web at www.radiosix.com ...and I'm not just saying that to plug my CD (although it is quite a fablulous collection of tunes, and available for your listening enjoyment and gift-giving pleasure at www.beowulfkingsley.com ). As I've said before elsewhere, I am on their playlist in the Male Vocalist catagory, something I find both amusing and disturbing. But I'll take it, thanks very much! I was actually kind of blown away by the coverage Radio Six has besides its local broadcast and its web radio presence...here's the total list...

Our broadcasts are carried by a network of transmitters around the world, on shortwave, medium wave, VHF and Satellite, via the facilities of our affiliates WBCQ, Celtic Music Radio, World FM and Radio Tatras International. Our current schedule on 1,530kHz and 88.5MHz analogue and Sky Channel 0195 and Eurobird 1 28.5 east 12.523GHz, Horizontal (Symbol rate: 27.500 MSymb; FEC: 2/3, Original Network ID: 2, Transport stream ID: 2611, Service: 55012 PID: 2322) is as follows:- (All times GMT)
23:00 to 06:00 Daily Sky channel 0195 on digital satellite covering the United Kingdom and Ireland
23:00 to 06:00 Sunday to Friday 94.2 (30kW Stereo) Poprad and 94.8MHz (15kW Stereo)Kosice, Slovakia covering most of the country and with some spill into neighbouring countries.
23:00 to 06:00 Daily on Eurobird 1 satellite at 28 degrees east on 12.523GHz Horizontal 27500 2/3 covering Europe.
00:00 to 02:00 Saturday to Sunday 88.5MHz (500mW Stereo) from Tawa to Redwood and Tawa, New Zealand
06:00 to 07:00 Daily 88.5MHz (500mW Stereo) from Tawa to Redwood and Tawa, Wellington, New Zealand
06:00 to 08:00 Saturdays 88.5MHz (500mW Stereo) from Tawa to Redwood and Tawa, Wellington, New Zealand
06:00 to 08:00 Saturdays Sky channel 0195 on digital satellite covering the United Kingdom and Ireland
06:00 to 08:00 Saturdays Eurobird satellite at 28 degrees east on 12.523GHz Horizontal 27500 2/3 covering Europe.
12:00 to 13:00 Fridays 1530kHz for Glasgow and surrounding area
18:00 to 19:00 Mondays Sky channel 0195 on digital satellite covering the United Kingdom and Ireland
18:00 to 19:00 Mondays 94.2 (30kW Stereo) Poprad and 94.8MHz (15kW Stereo)Kosice, Slovakia covering most of the country and with some spill into neighbouring countries.
18:00 to 19:00 Mondays Eurobird satellite at 28 degrees east on 12.523GHz Horizontal 27500 2/3 covering Europe.
19:00 to 20:00 Thursdays and third Saturday of every month 1530kHz for Glasgow and surrounding area
22:00 to 23:00 Monday and Tuesday 94.2 (30kW Stereo) Poprad and 94.8MHz (15kW Stereo)Kosice, Slovakia covering most of the country and with some spill into neighbouring countries.
VHF Transmissions - 88.5MHz Stereo - Tawa, Wellington, New Zealand; 94.2MHz Stereo - Poprad, Slovakis and 94.8MHz Stereo - Kosice, Slovakia.
We have regular transmissions on World FM a LPFM station in Tawa, serving Tawa & Redwood, on the edge of the city of Wellington. You can hear us daily between 7 and 8pm NZ time, and also on Saturdays and Sundays between Noon and 2pm NZ time. Our programmes are broadcast in stereo. More details on the World FM website. Our programmes between 23:00GMT and 05:00GMT are carried via Radio Tatras International on their FM transmitter network in Slovakia, and can be heard in parts of adjacent countries. This service was suspended earlier this year because of regulatory problems in Slovakia, but these have now been resolved and the FM transmissions will resume on August 27th.
Shortwave transmissions - 5.110 and 9.330MHz
Occasionally, our programmes are carried on 5.110MHz and 9.330MHz from transmitters in Monticello, Maine, USA targeted at Europe and south America. These broadcasts are sporadic and not normally announced in advance.

A Difficult Week

I've had better weeks, I guess...

This one started with Cynthia's Mom and Brother stopping in to attend the Vietnam Veteran's annual Pig Roast. Now Ellen and Steve are delightful people and I was glad to have them about, but coupling being a house-host with an overbooked work week made things a bit hectic. The Pig Roast was a complete success, by the way...Steve volunteered to stay overnight at the VFW and help some of the other guys do the long BBQ thing. He really is an excellent guy. I managed to get my folks out to it as well, and my rather aging and infirm Dad was greeted by the crew there as a WW ll Vet should be, with honor. I think he was rather nonplussed by that. The entertainment of the event turned out to be an amazingly smarmy Elvis impersonator! Cheese city, man.

Tuesday I got the news from my Mom that my aunt Marg had passed away. We had known that her cancer had metastasized, but I'd been hoping there would be a little more time, if for nothing else than the chance for my Mom and her other sister Ethel to get to see her again. I guess she went very quickly and peacefully. When I think of what a wonderful woman she was and of all the kindnesses that she has done me in my life, I feel both grateful to have known her and sad and angry at losing her. I still don't take mortality and entropy well at all, and I don't know if I ever will. If there is justice in the Universe she should be going somewhere fantastic. As many times before, I wish I had faith of that, but one can't really just wish for faith. Maybe someday it will be given me, though.

The rest of this week has been divided between spending as much time with my folks as I can and rushing about doing lots of work with Di Medici Domestic, mostly crawling around under things and exorcising spiders. That and perhaps drinking a few too many beers at the end of the night. Now that I finally have a day off I feel like I can put things into a better perspective, relax and plot my next move...maybe even get some time in the studio! I still have to get with my parents, and I'm still trying to deal with losing my aunt, but perhaps doing some creative work will help. I'm hoping so! Plus a bit of Doing Absolutely Nothing is good therapy for anyone, and I intend to try that as well.

Family, Festivals & Hummingbird Wars

Just in from coffee on my front porch...here in the boonies we get a lot of wildlife, and one of the coolest things happening this week is the huge amount of hummingbirds we get coming to our nectary feeders! For those of you who might not know, hummingbirds migrate all by their little selves (they're too feisty to hang in flocks, but imagine if they did! Bzzz), and from here in Michigan they go pretty much non-stop to Lousianna, where they take a break to refuel on the local flowers. Then they fly again non-stop ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE GULF OF MEXICO. That's like 500 miles across open water! Crazy. So they've gotta feed up here, and they often double their weight, and wind up looking like little feathered tennis balls before they go. As you might imagine, our feeders are very popular, and the Hummingbird Nectary Wars Of 2008 are in full swing. These tiny guys are very territorial and really have some amazing dogfights over the feeders. We've added new feeders and are gonna get more, probably today. It's very cool to watch them as closely as we do, they're beautiful and fascinating.

Friday we had our first gig with The Infinitones, out at the Crossroads Festival in Ypsilanti. As is the fate of all new bands, we opened for two other bands, the White Ravens and Muruga's Free Funk band. And also as with all opening acts, we followed the standard etiquette: Headliner sets up first (and does the first sound check), then next act sets up in front of them, and so on. That way the equipment can be hauled off in layers and the time between acts is lessened. Thing was, Muruga's band had 9 people in it!! With lots of equipment for each player...and a separate drum platform for the tabla player...and then the White Ravens had their keyboards up...so we were pretty cramped up there! Very little foot room. I didn't really have enough space to turn around to cue Dan the drummer much, although I didn't really need to...he's always on top of that. We played pretty well all in all, and had fun too. The Ravens sounded great and Muruga and his band are all stellar players, so I think a splendid time was had by all, really. I used my Cort Matt Murphy Signature guitar, the Fender Deluxe Reissue and the Vox Tonelab LE, and I was pretty happy with the tones. That Tonelab solves a lot of problems for me since it's so easy to program, so small (on a stage like that, very handy!) and sounds so warm and good. I still love my old analog pedals, but for now this is working really well.

Bad news on my family health front. My aunt seems to have had a re-emergence of her lymphoma. Of course my Mom is very upset indeed, as am I. I've been trying help as much as I can with my Dad's condition (he has Parkingson's Disease and is pretty shaky sometimes), but it seems everybody in their age group is having some real challenges. My aunt didn't make it out to the family reunion this year, and I'm thinking of trying to talk my Mom into going out to Montana to visit her, while I wrangle my Pa. That should be hilarious. As I've said before, this growing old is not for sissies! I know this is probably affecting my mental health too, but at this point I don't have time for that so I'll just soldier on and put out what fires I can. Later if things get better I can schedule a nice mental breakdown, and a comfortable rest in a nice white room with the men in the nice white coats. Ahh...

At some point in this next week I'm resolved to march into my studio and start recording again. I told Steve from the Buzzrats that I'd be working on bass for his new album, and it's time to go and see what I can do. Looks like about 16 songs! Ah, that Steve, ever the prolific songwriter. Once I get started it'll be fun...maybe I'll sneak some Electric Sitar on a few tracks as well. Hehheheh...

Coyotes, Cranes & My Secret Identity

I find more and more that as I go on as a musician that almost everybody has to have a few hustles to survive, in this incredibly difficult time for the arts and entertainment world...a Secret Identity if you will. I've had many periods where I made my living just playing, but usually that's when you're on the road for 200+ dates a year, which kind of makes having a home life out of the question! So most of us have side gigs or day jobs. I remember playing a show with the keyboardist from Molly Hatchet, who was working a furniture delivery business between tours...and I understand that Colin Moulding was driving a lorry even during the glory days of XTC! So glamour be dammed, I have to pay some bills. Over the years I've done such jobs as House Painting, Psychedelic Drug Reviewer (really), Flower Delivery, Library Clerical, Nude Art Model, Record Store Guy and Prep Cook. I do teach and I do recording, engineering and production for people, but the studio is still just getting off the ground (except on Friday nights, when it is sometimes at an altitude of 40,000 feet). So Cynthia and I own a cleaning business, where we and our associates hop into people's McMansions and office buildings and chase the fearsome dust bunnies around. There are many worse fates!!

The other day we were headed off to one such gig, a summer lakefront cottage rental that we brush up every week. I like to take the back roads out there just because it's such a pretty drive, and we were in no particular hurry. I was turning onto a side road when something ran up from the bushes and stood watching me in the middle of the road. It was a huge coyote! I know that the ones you see out West are little guys, but these Michigan coyotes are really big, as big or bigger than a German Shepherd. I stopped the car and we watched each other for a while, and then he ran off into a field of soybeans on the other side of the road. Cyn and I could see his head appearing and disappearing as he jumped up and down through the beans (I guess he couldn't see where he was going) till he was gone. A nice nature moment!

We finished the cottage and started driving back to town toward our next cleaning gig, and were on a dirt road next to a wheatfield, where we had our next cool animal sighting. Four Sandhill Cranes were in the field, gleaning the leftover wheat and walking about in their weird prehistoric way. I see these guys (I don't know if they're always the same ones) occasionally out by our house, we're out in a major wetlands area (OK, I'll admit it, we live in a swamp). Again, we stopped and sat and watched them for quite a bit...I never really get tired of checking things like this out...

It occurs to me that my Secret Identity allows these kind of moments probably better than most jobs would...we're traveling in rural areas a lot, and we don't have a terribly fixed timetable most of the time, and we both really revel in this stuff. I certainly never had experiences like this when I worked at the record store! The animals there were of a quite different sort. I wouldn't trade the experiences I've had touring in Europe, Canada and the States for anything, and I'll be doing it again I know, but right now things are pretty good. My new CD's getting really good reviews, I'm having fun working on the next one in the studio, my new band is shaping up well and I'm playing out on sub gigs here and there when I want to. Plus, I work a day job with the coolest Redhead ever, and I get to see Coyotes and Cranes!

Yet another Magic Guitar

I would be totally remiss if I didn't mention another amazing guitar I have...this one is a restoration of a kind of historically notable model, the Ovation Deacon Limited. I got this one for $60 from a co-worker when I worked at a record store, but it was in pieces. I figured I could put it together and at least use it for photo ops, since it looked like an interesting instrument. But getting it playable took a long time, and several very competent luthiers worked on it to no avail. Finally my friend Mickey Richard got ahold of it and wrestled it into submission...by pretty much rebuilding the thing! When I got it there was a hole chiseled into it (to badly accommodate a bad tremolo bar) that you could see daylight through. He filled that with matching mahogany and put a veneer over that, which is so finely done that you have to look very closely indeed to see the difference in woods. Plus he re-fretted it, put in a new bridge, and new pickups, cut a new pickguard and refinished the thing with violin varnish. It looks (and plays) amazingly well...you can see what a nice job he did on it!















...and how does it sound, you may ask? It's a kickass little guitar! Tonally it sounds somewhere between a Gibson SG and a Fender Telecaster, very open and live. Its very thin mahogany neck is somewhat sensitive to changes in humidity so I don't take it out to outdoor gigs, but I'm gonna start taking it out to club dates now and then, since it's a lot of fun to play, sounds so good and also looks crazy cool!

The Magic Guitar

I have had the chance to play and own a bunch of good guitars and basses...for several decades I just had one acoustic guitar (a little Gibson) and a Fender Jazz Bass, and that was it. But in the last few years I've gotten the bug, and have created a little collection of nice instruments that I use in the studio and out at gigs. Some come and then go, and others are keepers, but I learn something from each one, even if what I learn is that I don't play that particular instrument.

I had that experience recently with a little jazz guitar I bought on ebay. It was a Jay Turser copy of a Gibson 175, and I was excited to get it. I've been getting into the primal stages of chord melody guitar (in another 20 years I might start getting good) and I thought this was the ticket. But for some reason, this just wasn't the guitar that was working for me. Didn't sound right, didn't feel right, although it was a very beautiful and well-made guitar. Dang, I thought, back to Ebay for you I guess.

But as luck would have it, my friend Danny Pratt had been looking around for a nice hollowbody, and when he called me up to play a gig I mentioned the Turser. He offered me a trade for a Tex-Mex Stratocaster, and since it had a whammy bar, and I needed a guitar with one for a studio track I was doing, I said OK. I had never thought I'd want a Strat, I'd always thought of them as kind of sterile in my hands, although I've seen people pull amazing music from them (Hendrix, Clapton and Michael Katon, amongst many others). But he played the Turser at the gig, and he sounded so good on it and seemed so happy, I figured it was cool, if I had to I'd just sell the Strat later.

But then I sat down with it, and time evaporated completely, and when I came to myself I was still playing and it was 3 hours later! Always the sign of a very special axe. Just forget whatever I said before about Strats, this one has made me re-examine my paradigm! It plays like a dream and just sounds beautiful, I'm playing it through an old Epiphone amp and I'm just amazed with the tone. I just used it on a new tune last night in the studio, thinking I was just goofing around, but somehow having that guitar in my hands created something magic. That's a keeper track! I found myself playing melodic phrases I hadn't known I could and might never even have thought of before, there's just something about it. A Magic Guitar!! Amazing.

Loop Composition

For those crafty individuals who have been following my adventures, you know that I've embraced the Acid Pro 6 program for working with loop-based musical compositions. I started using it because I never could seem to get my drummer friends to make it out to my rather isolated country home, or if they did make it we never seemed to have enough time to do too much. Drum machines seem dreadful to me, and I don't think enough like a good drummer to create a great part that way anyway...and actually I think there are very few people who can pull that off. But with drum loops, you have 2 to 16 bar sections of recordings of actual drummers, and you can mix and match them if you have a good set of collections (thanks, Beta Monkey and Drums On Demand!). It does take time, and (for me at least to get what I want) a LOT of tracks...on average probably 30 to 40 for a drum part, including cymbal hits and such. But I can usually get a part that will be very difficult to tell from a real drummer (at least if that's what I'm trying to do). Hey, it fools many of my professional drummer friends! Is it a replacement for a good percussionist, playing live with a smokin' rhythm section? Hell, no! But try to get those guys out to the farm at 3:30 in the morning...hmm, Cynthia might have something to say about that too...

Now, however, I've been delving into this medium more and more, putting horn parts on tracks for clients as well as percussion...and I've been experimenting with doing compositions that are nearly all loops. At first those experiments all sounded like very bad hip-hop, but as I've gotten more used to working with Acid I've found that I can get a really good-sounding (to me at least) pop song or classical bagatelle happening. Again, it takes a lot of time, lots of slicing and dicing of the material (it helps to have a huge library of loop CDs as well), time moving, reversing, transposing and mangling the stuff into a usable form. But it can be done, and I'm thinking that several of these will be out on my next album!

For a while I was kind of embarrassed about admitting to using this kind of technology...I really am more of a player than an engineer at heart...but I've decided that creativity can transcend those concerns. There are lots of amazing writers using loops, and the collage aspect of making something out of little bits of nothing is very appealing. Plus, I'm will wind up playing on anything I do...I can't help that. It's just part of the fun...and if it's not fun then I'm not doin' it. It's certainly not for the giant dollars! Hm, I must find some of those giant dollars sometime.

The new blog home

So I'm finding that I have to move my headquarters to new digs! While I'll include copies of this log on my other sites, I think that this spot right here will be central for now. We'll just see how it all works, and if I can tie my other sites to this tether! The layout should look nice anyhow.

I'm sitting here with an insistent cat on my lap (Isis the Abbyssinan, a serious love junkie), just minutes before I leave for a foray into the Big City and a quick visit with friends Death Kitten and the Six Foot Poles, who are playing a gig in Liberty Plaza. I'm hoping I'll have a little time after to get back into the studio and work for a while...between trying to maintain this old farmhouse and help out my aging parents, I'm not getting nearly enough time to work on the new CD! There are lots of strange ideas boiling around in my backbrain, and they're gonna blow if I can't get them out onto some virtual vinyl. Of course, they may blow anyway, but I still have to record them. The voices tell me to!

This is also the first day in a couple of weeks without the constant pain I've had in my back...not to whine too much, but after a while it does grate on you. Perhaps the chiropractor's tender ministrations have finally done their good work. I sure hope so! Between me hurting and having to deal with my Dad's problems with his fractured hip, I've been in an ongoing invalid mode...it just feel so good to take a breath without that "stabbed in the back" sensation. There, whine over!

Now I'm off to check with the guy up the road who has the Rhode Island Reds to see if there's any fresh eggs available (living in the country has its perks!), and thence off to Liberty Plaza. I'm gonna try to see my friends from Treatment Bound this evening, too, if the studio doesn't suck me into its evil hypnotic embrace...