Two Years and Running Pt. 2 -Homebrew!

Alright forget what I said before about filling in gaping holes...it's just not going to happen. I think it's always going to be playing catchup, but I'll try to at least give a few of the missing highlights:

Samantha and I have been making beer at home. We've made ginger beer at home numerous times. Not the soda-pop kind but the unexpectedly powerful 7-8% alcohol kind. She's more a beer drinker than me (maybe two pints on a Friday night as opposed to my 1/2 - one) and so I got her a homebrew kit for her birthday.

We've made more than a dozen batches of beer beer now. We've got a nut-brown ale bubbling away in the cupboard right now. It's at least as much fun making and bottling it as it is drinking it. You can't help but feel like your brewing up some magical potion -boiling up herbs, and grains, and extracts in a steaming black cauldron. We thought about making some kind of brewing robes, so we could feel even more like witches. And the way it smells when it cooks is like nothing else, it's like a weird sort of caramel.

Then we get to share our creations with people. We made a couple of batches when Kris was here, and he said the nut-brown was his favorite beer ever. I'm reserving judgment but man it's yummy. How about 'Mudd and Bones Brewery'? I like the sound of that...

In Over My Head -Two Years and Running pt. 1

I just realized that I've been keeping this journal for 2 years last August. And looking back, I can see a lot of gaping holes, so I'm going to spend some time trying to fill in some of them. Sort of a 2 year retrospective or something like that.

I'm also going to have to try to catch up on the present as well, for example the family and I are going to tour Central-America for several months in the spring! But I don't have any time to write right now.

One Good Woman

I've been telling my mom that I would post a recording of this tune for months now, but haven't managed to do it until now. I had been so busy writing and doing other things that it fell by the wayside. I believe I wrote 4 tunes that week. Then I kind of forgot how it went and had to relearn it. So here it is Mom...
One Good Woman

Some of my tunes are autobiographical and others appear that way but aren't. This is a tune that is. It's pretty self-explanatory.

Grateful

In high school I went to a lot of Grateful Dead shows. That was an interesting era.

Backstage

It's pretty rare for local crew to get backstage passes these days. The newest one of these goes back a few years. Wristbands and extra large T-shirts are the typical 'swag' these days. It's always extra large and I wear medium...

My friend Pete was the guy who got me into the line of work. He got me on my first crew in Phoenix. I believe my first rock show was a band with the members of Menudo minus Ricky Martin. I worked one of his shows during the 'Vida Loca' tour. it was definitely the most impressive show I've worked from a production standpoint -conveyor belts and dancers attached to harnesses dancing horizontally up and down the giant 'jumbotron' video screen.

My last rock show was the Rolling Stones last year. It will be my last -it just about killed me. It's pretty exciting to be backstage though, I worked shows of my childhood idols. Hell, Hulk Hogan accidentally dumped my dinner on the floor! I watched drunk and belligerent middle-aged women get the boot from a Rod Stewart show. I heard 20,000 10-14 year old girls scream so loudly that I couldn't hear the music coming from the wall of speaker cabinets at a Spice Girls show. Good times...

but it's hard work and my body isn't what it was when I was 12 (when I started working construction). I just can't do that kind of work anymore.

Haircut

I realized that I never posted a video Samantha and I made for 'Leeches On My Mind.' So I started going through our highly unorganized backed-up data. I have yet to find the leeches video but I did find some other stuff... A few years back, Samantha and I were taking a lot of video classes. And this was a video assignment to only use 'in-camera' edits. I decided it was time for a haircut...

Haircut

After having hair down to my waist for a decade I went through a period of not knowing how I wanted my hair, so I'd shave it, let it grow, get sick of it, shave it, etc.

Found Photos

We found some pictures in a folder on the computer that we didn't know we still had. They're from one day when we were wandering around downtown.













The ones of me seem to reflect how I feel some of the time -sort of stretched out all over the place like a bizarre conglomeration of emotion, experiences, hopes and fears; with no real cohesion. The comforting thought is that I know many people who feel the same way -probably half of the planet.

'My Baby Gave Me a Kiss' Artichoke -Friday Night

Well, I guess this is going to be a good month in terms of journaling what I'm up to. I write an average of 1-2 new tunes a week and I think I've only managed to get 3 recorded in some way in the past several months. And I promised my mom I'd get back to a song that I mentioned to her a couple months ago, but haven't yet. Oh well -too many songs not enough time. And not enough tendons...ouch. Did I mention that the pain in my arms is keeping me off the computer ?

I guess I also hadn't done more than mention that I've taken up the ukulele (that's oo-koo-le-le to Hawaiians). A lot of the old pop tunes I used to play about 10 years ago translate pretty easily, so it's been a lot of fun getting back into that style of music.

I managed to write this song and finish it and play it tonight. It was definitely a crowd pleaser at Artichoke. I love playing for them, it's such a great crowd. I only wish that I had installed the pickup in my Uke better, well maybe I can pretend it's the sound of an old record player...
My Baby Gave Me a Kiss

Kris and I had a lot of fun playing this Robert Johnson tune when he was in town (that's him on vocals).
They're Red Hot

New Tunes

I haven't slowed down with writing new material, but the spontaneous process of song-writing doesn't necessarily translate into this format, so a small percentage actually makes it onto this page.

The first tune was from last week; I call it Whole New World. It's kind of a sing along about hope. I may not always show it, but hope is something I have a lot of.
'Whole New World'


The second tune I'm calling What it Means. Picture a cowboy on the range back in the old west. Back when they'd ride the trail for months on end. They had a lot of time to think out there. Well this cowboy is all alone on the trail and the worst part of it is that he's in love.
'What It Means'

'Ukulalien'

I took up uke in june and it's been very addictive. So many tunes easily translate to the instrument. Plus it goes anywhere. The only problem is that I've given myself tendonitis playing so much, so I've had to cut back.

End of Summer

Looking back it has been a great summer. We finally managed to get Kris up here for a good chunk of time -about six weeks. We had a lot of fun hanging out and played several gigs, including getting out of town for a few of them. I'm sure if we had a full time combo, it would sound great.

We managed to get several tunes recorded, most of which sound pretty good. Samantha did a few gesture drawings of our performances (these are done looking only at the subject not at the page! They're often used to capture motion and mood) .


I liked what Kris was doing for backup on this tune.

'Soon'

We got a couple of decent recordings of other originals as well.

'Since I Lost My Mind'
'Free Man'
'Never Get Away'