I Don't Have to Dream -New Song

I've written a lot of tunes over the years with Samantha in mind, but this is only the second time I've written one as a gift. This one is for our 18th wedding anniversary, which means we've been together for 20 years! Holy crap 20 years?! Wow! Time flies...

The song is called I Don't Have to Dream. That's right "It may be hard to believe, but you're right here in front of me. Nah, it ain't so hard to see, that I've got everything I ne-ee-ee-eed. I don't have to dream..." You know I love you baby!

The ukulele is pretty obvious, but the rhythm is with a hairbrush and a stick on a wooden washboard. I like alternative percussion.

New Projects

Well, we've been back for a while and have been hard at work on two new projects. During our trip to Central America we fell in love with the Costa Rican community of Lanas and Verdenergia. It is our goal to get back there and do what we can to help the local community as well as promote some great opportunities for musicians, artists, activists, and like minded people.
To do this we've implemented two programs. First of all we are actively seeking donations of musical instruments, laptop computers, school supplies, and money to create educational programs for the local communities in and around Lanas. The people there are living in poverty and do not have access to most of the things we take for granted here. Many children don't even have the means to get an education past the 5th grade. We want to do what we can to enrich these children's lives by offering classes and equipment to teach workshops in music, science, computer, art, and more.
You can find out more about this and what you can do to help at http://www.muddandbones.com/outreach.html

Our second project is a songwriters retreat program. We will be offering a two week retreat in February and March of '09. We will be having guest musicians, workshops, classes, performances, and more. These retreats will be a great opportunity for musicians who want to get away for a bit and focus on songwriting, while learning and interacting with a great group of people. In addition to paid retreats we are giving away at least one, and hopefully two, scholarships to musicians who don't have the resources and money to make it down on their own. These will include free airfare, room & board, and access to all retreat activities.
You can learn about and register for our retreats at http://www.verdenergia.org/retreat.html

You can apply for the retreat scholarship at sonicbids
or contact us for more information.

Dos dias

Only two days to go! Our apartment is almost empty, we dropped off an entire truckload of stuff off at Goodwill yesterday, and a bunch of stuff in storage today (Thank you Elizabeth, you rock!). We've still got a lot of tedious work to cram into the next two days, but I think we'll make it... Stay tuned to find out...
We've got a few places in Panama lined up, we can't wait! We're starting out by spending a couple of nights in Panama city (Hotel Marparaiso), then we're moving on to El Valle. It's a small town in the crater of an extinct volcano. It looks like we'll be visiting the family of one of our Portland friends there. And we found a really fun looking hostel near Boquete and David called "The Lost and Found". Then we'll be moving on to Costa Rica to visit our friends at Verdenergia.
We'll be trying to get a couple more posts up before we go. We'll see...

Goin' South

We're packing our bags and heading South. We'll be on our way to Central America in three weeks! We'll be traveling by bus across Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Belize (Give or take a couple of countries). There are a several awesome places we'll be visiting along the way. We'll be blogging the trip as we go. We should be compiling some great video and pictures as well as some interesting stories.

We've been planning our adventure for a while but now the clock is ticking down. We're in the process of selling most of our stuff and consolidating down to our backpacks. Our departure date is February 24th.