Promo for Folk Music Conference

Fallin' Apart

As I was walking out the door yesterday to my gig, I had a tune come into my head, and had to grab whatever random sheet of paper was laying around. I didn't have time to finish it until this afternoon, but managed to get it recorded...
Fallin Apart

Astronaut

I just woke up from a dream, and found the computer left on...

I'm an astronaut who has just returned from space. I'm in a tiny, sealed up, claustrophobic pod. I can't even turn around. As I try not to freak out, I hear people running around outside, attaching equipment that will open this coffin. I feel like I'm suffocating. Then I hear the man in charge say that he doesn't have the proper authorization paperwork and can't open the unit...

I'm sure at least part of the dream came from something Dennis told me on the way back from our gig. His mother (in her 90s) was sent to the hospital because she wasn't feeling well. So, after sitting in the 'emergency' waiting room for 3 hours, she felt well enough to go home, but the ambulance ride wouldn't be covered by her insurance (and it's a $700 ride). But, there's a medical shuttle bus that's relatively cheap. So, the ambulance company won't send the shuttle without the hospital authorizing it and the hospital refuses to call them...who says we have the best medical system money can buy?

Saturday at Artichoke -John's Tune

I captured a recording of John Sabestinas on banjo and myself on the tenor uke at Artichoke yesterday. It's a tune of his called 'Stealin' Apples off the Tree.' He wasn't warmed up so he didn't want to sing the words.

Stealin' Apples

MP3 Player

I have yet to get a good player that opens in a new window, but I found this imbedded player that's at the top of the screen for the time being. Just click on the song you want to listen to. I realize it's not very aesthetically pleasing but oh well. I have at least a few tunes that are recorded alright...

2 Years and Running Pt. 8 -Memphis Blues

I used to struggle with finishing songs. I suppose I finished about 2 out of every 10 songs I started to write, but the last few years the problem has been keeping a hold of the songs I do write. I've probably forgotten as many tunes over the past 5 years as I remember. This journal is helping to some degree.

'Memphis Blues' is one that almost fell by the wayside -I found it in my journal and worked it up a bit after my show yesterday. My apologies to anyone who thinks the performance quality of the recording isn't up to snuff, but this weblog is more for me to keep track of my life than anything else.

Last year when I was on tour with Dark Skies, I got off the tour in Memphis with a cracked rib and some business issues back home. I wrote a bit about it back in April of '06 in a post called Tour End...

I sat in that waiting room for 8 or so hours, there was a horrible, apocalyptic storm going on outside and emergency news reports cut into the sitcoms on the TV bolted to the wall. At least 12 people got washed away by that storm, but judging from some of the people sitting around me waiting for hours in an 'emergency room' I couldn't help but find a slight comfort in the fact that someday everyone's suffering comes to an end...

I got some X-rays and went back to see the doctor in a room that was so disgusting I was afraid to touch anything (and the doctor wasn't touching anything either -including me thankfully). So after that I ended up waiting another 12 hours at the Memphis airport waiting for my flight out.

So, sleep deprived and in pain, I wrote this tune while sitting up on the second floor waiting for security to come and tell me not to play my harmonica. It's surprising how easy it is to write a blues tune when I'm in that state of mind.

Memphis

Albina Green

I hosted an open mic at a very cool cafe/restaurant tonight. Played a few tunes and met some nice people. I'll be back there again. If you're in north Portland (No-Po as it's often called) check it out. Live music most nights of the week, and I found out that Matt Meighan, a friend from Artichoke Music plays every Thursday night...(http://www.mattmeighan.com/).

I've got several Recycleman gigs this week. Pete, the shows creator, wants to make an addition to the water-show script to encourage eating less meat. HOw can we save water by eating less meat? It takes 2500 gallons of water to make 1 pound of beef, and only takes 250 gallons to make 1 pound of grain...

I've also been getting a lot of response about the deaths of the boys. Maybe an investigative journalist will want to jump on the case.

Were my three relatives murdered 16 years ago?

Back when I was in high-school my three nephews died in a fire. The question of murder came up, but was never answered.

I am signed up to a list-serve of Portland independent producers, as a way to sort of keep my finger on the pulse of a pretty vibrant filmmaking community. I just sent this off to the group, to see if I can generate interest in trying to find out what happened. Yesterday I emailed a Court TV address as well.

Many in my home town (Kingman Arizona) believe that my three nephews were murdered about 16 years ago. They were little kids and were staying with their estranged and abusive father, and were burned alive while trapped by a mattress blocking their bedroom door.

My stepfather (a building official) was involved in the investigation, and was in contact with the fire department which treated the fire as an arson. He believes there was adequate evidence for a conviction. For example: traces of a flammable substance were found on the remains of the walls, shortly before the fire, a neighbor witnessed the children's father back-up his truck away from the house, and he made no attempt to rescue them once he had escaped the blaze.

The city prosecutor at the time didn't prosecute, and the rumor was that it was due to political pressure from my uncle who seemed to be in denial that someone would be capable of something like murdering their own children.

I had hoped that at some point something would come of the investigation, but as of yet nothing has. It's been so long that I barely remember the boys or their father, but I have had this nagging feeling all these years that something needs to be done.

I don't have the resources to investigate for myself, but someone has to tell those boys' story, and maybe help justice to be served.

Who can help me get in touch with a producer who wants to tell this story?

2 Years and Running Pt. 7 -Dennis

Okay, so I realized that the photos don't show up from the IMDB site, but I found the photos that Dennis gave me a while back. Dennis with Patrick Stewart. Well the link that I put on the previous post has more pictures, including one of him as 'Deputy Ben' from the new film 'Cthulhu.'

2 Years and Running Pt. 7

Dennis (AKA Bruce Reduce), my partner in crime when I perform as Recycleman, has quite an illustrious history in entertainment. He lived in LA for a lot of his life and has a lot of stories (and I've seen many of the pictures that prove it). He's in his late 60s now, and here's a few of the things he's done:

His brother Doug (another cool guy) and he tried out for the Monkees when the band was being put together. And there was this unknown dude plucking his banjo while also waiting to try out named Richard Pryor!

As a journalism student he got to interview and hang out with Cheech and Chong (and maybe you can guess what else) when they were first making their mark. He's got an audio tape of that one.

He worked as a casting director for quite a while, and a transportation coordinator.

He spent 10 years working on Star Trek -The Next Generation, doing a few bit parts and a lot of stand in work -anytime you see the back of Captain Jean-Luc Picard's head that's Dennis. He gave me a promo photo of himself dressed as an alien on the show, but I can't seem to find it right now...

I was just checking out his Internet Movie Data Base page (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0870509/) to get some photos to post and discovered that he was in one of my favorite childhood movies Under the Rainbow (1981) with Chevy Chase as the Job Clerk. I'm going to have to watch it again to see if I recognize him...

I also didn't realize that he played some bit parts in some other movies that I loved as a kid:
Dreamscape (1984) (stand-in) (uncredited)
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984) (stand-in) (uncredited)

And he is in a film that's making the film festival circuit right now with Tori Spelling :
Cthulhu (2007) .... Deputy Ben

Dennis is THE MAN!

Synchronicity...

Interesting coincidences keep happening with our trip to Central America. Last night we went to see Joe Mac's band 'Dark Skies' (See March and April '06) at Audiocinema, down in the warehouse district. Great show by the way.

Anyway, it had been several months since we've gotten together, so we did some catching up. It turns out that Joe's going to be in Costa Rica at the same time we're going to be there! We're going to meet up and spend a week or two traveling together. It's pretty strange... everything that happens seems to just reinforce the fact that this is exactly what we should be doing.

2 Years and Running -Pt. 6 Cinco Meses (5 months)

Less than 5 months to go before our big trip to Central America. It's been close to 6 months since we decided to go, and it's going by fast.

Why did we decide to go to Central America? A whole slew of reasons. It's relatively close, relatively cheap, and relatively safe. We want to learn Spanish, and what better way to do it? Willie is at the age right now where he needs to see more of the world than this little 2 mile square area of the city and whatever attractions there are on the freeway between Oregon and Arizona. We know that there are other, healthier ways of living (for ourselves and the planet) than we know right now, and we want to learn more about them. It turns out that there are many farms and eco-villages in Central America, that will let us stay with them for free in exchange for working on various projects.

Some people think we should be afraid of spending several months in Central America, that it's somehow risky. What a joke...I almost get hit on my bike by some dumb$%#@ on a daily basis, and I've talked to more people than I can count on my fingers and toes who've been down there, and not one of them has told me a horror story. The worst that people can come up with -'you have to be as careful in the cities as you would be in any major U.S. city.' The State Department says we should avoid college campuses...that's where the politically active people are...wouldn't want to go anywhere near that!

We'll be learning and helping out in green-building in Panama and Costa Rica, farming and teaching children in Nicaragua, checking out weaving communities in Guatemala (one of which makes guitar straps for Artichoke Music), visiting coffee plantations and artisan communities in El Salvador. We'll also be meeting Samantha's mother in Beliz and checking out Mayan ruins and getting involved with a former college geography instructor's non-profit. That's only a partial list. And I am making a project of audio recording musicians all along our journey. We're already wondering if the 3 months we had planned on will be enough time. Especially because most places want us to stay at least 2 weeks. And we're reserving the option of staying as long as we want. You never know, our skill set may be of much more value down there than where we are now -many places are specifically looking for musicians, artist and people who can build websites. And brewers!

The picture at the top is of a place we'll be staying in Costa Rica -'Verdenergia' (www.verdenergia.org). It turns out that some of the people who live there have a connection with Portland and are visiting right now! We're having dinner with them tonight, and are going to stay with them for probably close to a month, helping in the garden, building, brewing, teaching, learning...we might help them build their website as well.

A Little Jazz Theory?

I definitely don't consider myself a jazz player, but I do consider myself a serious musician (even if some might disagree), and I love jazz. I am confident that I know jazz theory pretty well even if I don't have the chops of a seasoned jazz player. After all, my goal was to be a songwriter, not a jazz guitarist.

I am volunteering as a mentor for a non-profit which puts less experienced players into bands in an 8 week session leading up to a performance. My group is doing jazz, and I felt as if they needed a bit of background on basic jazz theory. So -a disclaimer:

WARNING THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS THEORETICAL CONCEPTS WHICH MAY BE OF ABSOLUTELY NO INTEREST TO NON-MUSICALLY MINDED PEOPLE.

1st. A jazz song is just a song, any song can be a jazz song.
2nd. The thrust of the evolution of jazz has been primarily in two directions -chord extensions and chord substitutions.

In a practical sense there are only really 3 types of chords -major, minor, and dominant seventh. Now, these chords do begin to overlap and this is where chord substitutions come into play. For example: a C-major chord is spelled C-E-G, an A-minor chord is spelled A-C-E. Two of those notes are the same, no? So it is possible that an A-minor chord could potentially work in place of C-major. We extend chords just by adding thirds on top of the three note chord -the 'triad.' So C-major becomes C-major 7th when we spell it C-E-G-B. It become C-major 9th when we spell it C-E-G-B-D. We could continue this (11th &13th chords), or we could sharpen or flatten the 'natural' notes that would be in that chord -each time creating a different 'color' for the basic C-major chord. Experienced jazz players just have a lot more colors in their Crayola box than the rest of us..

But, no matter how much one extends or substitutes chords, the melody requires the basic tonalities to be present in order for it to sound like the song. The most common jazz arrangements go beyond the melody and underlying harmonic structure by adding in the arranger's chosen substitution/extended chords, which does a disservice to people who are interested in learning the basic song and playing it their own way.

2 Years and Running Pt. 5 -Country Mudd

Here are a couple more tunes from my latest country phase. It was sort of a mini classic-country phase in the larger country phase. I was hearing Hank Williams and Patsy Cline with these two.
Sorry
Wither

2 Years and Running pt. 5 -Country Mudd

Starting in late '06 I went through a country phase, writing close to an album's worth of country tunes in a few months. I think it was probably instigated by the fact that I was going to a lot song sessions with people from Nashville, but I was raised on country so it's in me anyway. 'Rollin' Away' was the first one of that phase and 'One Good Woman' was also written during that period.

If you're one who's spent a lot of time checking out tunes on mikemudd.net, you'll probably have heard 'Black Eye and a Broken Heart.' To me, it's the quintessential country-rock song, but I was told by a 'Nashville publisher' that I should do a complete re-write because these days the protagonist is never the drinker.

I'm not sure she knew what she was talking about because last month I did a country music focus group (always looking for a way to make an extra buck in my free time), and I heard numerous popular and up and coming songs where the singer talks about drinking in the 1st person. It was one of the running themes, and as everyone knows a mainstay of country. Hell, when I was in Texas last year the first song that came on the radio when we turned it on was 'Crack the Jack and Crank the Hank'...

I'm also not one to do more than minor editing to a song anyway. It's not that I think that my words are so profound, but that I'd rather spend the time writing a new song. That's the main reason why I don't go to too many songwriting workshops anymore. I'm more interested in what people like about a song than I am about what I should do to improve the current song.
Black Eye and a Broken Heart

Coffee Music

I have a couple of hours to kill after an early morning rehearsal, so I’m outside of a busy downtown neighborhood café sipping a mocha and lightly plucking the strings of my little tenor acoustic guitar. The streetcar rolls by. The couple at the table next to me laughs and jokes. An infant cries from one of the open apartment windows down the block. The heeled shoes of a businessman click on the pavement as he hurries up the block. The café door opens to the hiss of the espresso machine and a mellow Thelonius Monk. The deliciously dark and enticing aroma of today’s new blend from the mountains of Central America wafts out and I breathe deeply to draw it all in. Sure enough my semi-random plucking has transformed into a new and unexpected harmony, and the next thing I know that rich fountain of sensory stimulation has inspired a song. I take another sip of my mocha. What a way to kill a couple of hours…

Music exists in a space. It doesn't come out of a vacuum. The world around me is my inspiration. I create music by merely adding to the environment –mixing my own sounds with the music of the myriad other things happening all around me. Each new environment that I experience has it’s own ‘soundscape’ -its own unique rhythm and ambience, and inspires in its own unique way. That was my concept in creating my CD -M-.

Samantha and I met a couple a few weeks back when I was playing some tunes outside our local coffee house Cooper's. We were chatting about music (he plays and writes as well) and I gave him a promo of my CD. I was mentioning the concept behind the production. He had the idea, 'Well what if you applied this concept to the coffee house experience?' (something along those lines anyway). I thought it was a great idea so I wrote this up the other day and sent it to him.

Mike Mudd -The Logo

Here's my new logo - I never had much of one before. It turned out well, if I do say so myself. It gets the point across anyway.

Waste of Time

Well along the lines of the last depressing (and extremely long) post here's a new original uke tune that I wrote a couple of weeks ago. I was looking through a notebook and thought 'oh yea, I forgot about that one.' Samantha said it reminds her of Tom Waits -I guess there are worse comparisons.
Waste of Time

2 Years and Running - Pt. 4

I wrote this late one night a couple of months ago. Obviously at times 'It ain't easy livin' in the city...' Growing up with a lot of undeveloped land to stretch out on, it's easy to feel cooped up living in a small apartment with clomping footsteps above us all the time. Since we moved out of our beautiful house with the psycho (see post from Sept. 1st '05) two summers ago, we've been quite cooped up.

Sometimes you just feel like you have to change your life or you'll go crazy like those people you see on the street, or the lady who screams at you because you accidentally touched her. That's where this piece came from. It's a kind of pseudo-journal entry.

I suppose Samantha and I had both been thinking along the same lines, because the next day the idea came up to go to Central America.

Back when I was riding the bus a lot, I started to notice more and more people talking to themselves, more and more people who seemed completely cut off from the thousands of people around them. More and more dysfunctional. I believe that our society is becoming increasingly dysfunctional, and I could see it potentially happening to us.

-I can’t remember how long it’s been since we’ve been out here on our own, it seems like forever. In another life we lived in the city, we rode the bus or the light rail, or rode our bikes and competed with traffic. I remember we complained about the smell of the car exhaust and how insensitive and downright hostile drivers often were. We never escaped the sound of traffic, even in the dead of night. Semi trucks rolling by, the freeway in the distance like a river only without the soothing qualities.

It seems like someone else’s life, like a movie that we watched that stuck with me, the characters seeming like real people, but not us. People trying to figure out who they are and what they want to get out of life, what the meaning is. People running around in circles, both literally and figuratively. Working hard to try and save money to get a larger place with more room to do more of what they think might help to bring more meaning to their lives. All the while losing more of what it is that makes them who they are.


It’s the kind of movie that we would refer to as a ‘frustration film’ because as an observer you can see what the people in the movie can’t see: that they are making all the wrong decisions and slowly spiraling down the drain. The people in the movie slowly go insane as their connection with the world around them deteriorates. The dreams they had of getting away from it all are slowly forgotten. They lose any sense that they have some control over their environment, the old broken record cliché with no one to give the needle a bump to get things moving again.

They lose any sense of passion they once had. They forget what the feeling of love is, the feeling of sexual pleasure, any feeling at all other than a quiet desperation. They forget how to have relationships with people, everyone in their lives becomes too busy to have the time for others. No one has the energy to do much of anything for fun. They try to lose themselves in television like other, ‘normal’ people. To push that drive for meaning down somewhere where they don’t have to think about it anymore, but it just keeps coming out in bizarre ways. They develop new nervous habits and old ones become more extreme.
He used to find himself playing with a single, long strand of hair wrapped around his two fingers, spinning it in a figure of eight pattern. Never quite knowing where the hair came from, it just having almost magically appeared. Now in addition, he has one wrapped around his tongue and spins that one around inside his mouth as well.
She slowly, methodically picks at a scab on the back of her arm as she watches the people around her. Eventually she peels it off again and begins working on another. She feels around back there for the little imperfections on her skin –the zits or eczema bumps or whatever they are and she tears them off. It takes several months for them to heal because she never leaves them alone.

Everyday they notice more and more people acting erratically, but it only registers in a distant sort of way, the world somehow seems less and less real. In another world it might have some affect on them; to see so many of the people around them talking and laughing and screaming to themselves or jerking their heads or their hands around like they have Turret’s syndrome, but they don’t seem to notice.

The media which is so prominent in their lives with stories of death and destruction, suicide bombings, civilian casualties of endless wars, school and workplace shootings, doesn’t seem to register at all. Those daily stories of tragedy, the lifeblood of the ‘news industry,’ and impossible to avoid hearing, once made their hearts feel like they were breaking over and over again every single day. Now they have become nothing but a sort of background static, there is no affect anymore. When he passes the little old homeless lady he doesn’t think about how she reminds him of his grandma anymore. She puts on the necklace with the little bear track pendant every morning without ever thinking of her tall, handsome grandfather who gave her the necklace.

Alcohol, and prescription drugs provide a sort of permanent dizziness, at times seeming to bring comfort, but really just sort of removing the context. Providing a not quite blissful confusion. The attempt at an artificially induced ignorance only resulting in furthering the distance between their conscious mind and that elusive sense of meaning that they once knew is what is needed to make their lives worth living. Rather than the search for that meaning, the search becomes to find a better distraction from consciousness itself. To find a way to go to work and come home and eat and sleep and do the housework without ever really thinking about anything bigger.

I don’t even remember coming out here, how we got here. I can’t even remember what to call this place other than ‘home.’ It’s as if this is nowhere at all and that’s just the way we like it. A mud hut, a dirt floor, a thatch roof, no glass in the windows.

Bones Groove

Three performances last week and three again this week. I'm volunteering as a mentor for the non-profit 'Make Music Portland' which puts groups of hobby musicians together to experience playing in a group setting. Working, running around, rehearsing, an occasional jam session. Not much time to relax. Is that anything new?

Here's an old tune that goes back at least 10 years -but I changed it up over the last couple of weeks. I learned it on the uke and added some Cab Calloway inspired lyrics. Here are the two versions of the tune:
Bones Groove -old
Bones Groove -new

2 Years and Running Pt. 3 -Artichoke

I realized last year that I needed to try harder to get connected in the music community.
Knowing that what I do is probably the closest match to Portland's historic music center -Artichoke Music, I began offering to volunteer for shows and auctions.
Artichoke Music

It turns out that Kate and Steve (the owners for most of the 30 years the place has been open) were selling, and the new owners Richard and Jim are a couple of the coolest people on the planet. Now everything but the retail shop is operating as a non-profit.

So I've been spending a lot of my time (and money) over there. Which has been a great way to get to know a lot of great people. It's become one of my favorite places to play. Last night I sat in on one of Richard's and helped run the soundboard, and I'm playing a half hour set this coming Friday.

You never quite know what's going to happen when you're there.
A couple of weeks back we had a Japanese television crew come in who are working on a 'travel America' series. So we grabbed some ukes and sang 'Come to Oregon, come to Oregon.' They said they'd get us copies of the edited footage whenever it's broadcast.
Then on Saturday this trashed guy calling himself 'The Chief' came in saying he was close personal friends of Merle Haggard, George Straight, and Willie Nelson...