The Naughty List

Monday Quotables

Quite simply stated by Evan upon seeing that his morning milk cup straw was one of the cheap flexy straws...
E: Dad.
Me: What's shakin?
E: This straw sucks.

"Coffee on Dragon Mountain"

  It is official friends and fiends, Rockstardaddy dizzle is back in sizzle. The boys are on break from their 'Rockin the Daycare' Tour and on hiatus with their old pappy before they leave to break into the big time...preschool! They say if you can make it there you can make it... you know the saying. They have taken on a new gear and my trusty sidekick T-Money jr. and I can hardly keep up. It's great while it lasts friends, I just hope I can last! Stay tuned later this season for the debut of Rockstardaddy Kitchen Episode 1. "Electric Organic Kitchen."

Monday Quotables

Me: Hey Evan are you hungry?
E: No.
Are you sure?
Yeah, I don't want to grow up.
Why not?
Because I don't want to have a beard. I'll grow up later.

Jimi Hendrix warm up "Red House Jam" by Tristan Luhrs

"Going to California" Led Zeppelin cover by Tristan Luhrs

The Fabulous Bacon Boys and Poppa Jim's Pumpkin Pie

  Breakfast...the most important meal of the day. That's why we eat it twice! It usually starts out with something they refuse to eat, followed by screams and cries from myself and them. After I plea with them to not throw away the money mommy and I work for, they go off and play while I finish their breakfast. A bit later we start over and I get jacked up on enough caff to whip up a true Rockstardaddy breakfast, and the boys eat like men!
  Later that evening RSDaddy kitchen reopens and the crew gets to work on a twenty lb. pumpkin courtesy of a visit to mema and poppa Jim's local pumpkin patch. Soon after we begin I realize how much work we are actually in for and start to pray internally that no meltdowns occur while i'm slipping in pumpkin guts. The pies turned out pretty tasty, a bit heavy handed, I don't think I drained enough water from the puree, but they were fresh. Now I have enough puree to make bread and muffins and...next year i'll use a pumpkin at least half the size!

Lou Reed Tribute

Rockstardaddy Daycare Chapter 1. "Just Keep Movin'."

  Parenting with a hangover...not recommended, sometimes not avoidable. Not to turn a book into a confessional booth, but I occasionally party like pre-kids Tristan. I stress 'occasionally' though because I no longer get to recover like pre-kids Tristan. I used to party so-cal til sun up man, and grab a beer and a surfboard for breakfast! Now I have a bottle in Tristan's mouth at sun up while Isaac sits on the couch watching cartoons with his milk and o's, and Evan sleeps in. I roll with a different dawn breaker crew now days, but they're all my guys!
  The occasion? Well the other night the band got the completed master back for "Summer Days" the single off of our upcoming album "Ride Rebel Ride". It sounds majestic, but no peeking, it's not ready to be unleashed. I was just so damn happy and proud of the guys, one beer led to another, and forty replays later with the headphones cranked while the family slept, and I was drunk! It's a great feeling, considering the fact that i'm practically a ghost in my own band these days. My time and hands are full of boys boys boys, yet the guys get into the studio and lay their tracks down and songs get made!
  But back to the task at hand which is to just keep moving, this headache is doing its thing while Evan and Isaac do their thing in the kitchen with playdoh. Their thing these days is to break the playdoh into a hundred little pieces and throw ninety of them on the floor, while using the other ten to make cookie sprinkles. Yes it's a headache all itself but I understand from an artists view point. After all when a sculptor finishes a great work, they are usually standing in a pile of scrap five times higher than the work itself. It's only about ten in the morning and Tristan has decided to forgo his early nap so that he can remind me why I can't party anymore. But as I lay next to him, squinting through the pain, while he discovers his feet, I recollect that some of my best songs were written on a hangover. It's a rather brutal process to create art for many artists, I won't be hacking off an ear anytime soon, but perhaps the reality that the self inflicted pain snaps one into is the motivator. Who knows, who cares but the next thing I knew I had a pen and paper and I had hardly picked a out a basic rhythm in my head when the words just started spilling on to the page. Being the father of three kids still in diapers is a challenge amongst challenges, so writing a song while in process obviously will have it's obstacles. And I can forget about grabbing the guitar, because E and I will go straight for it once I open the case..............................stay tuned for the continuing saga as "Rockstardaddy Daycare" the novel continues excerpt by excerpt! Don't forget to check us out at www.rockstardaddydaycare.com for all things that rock!

Live from Rockstardaddy Studio

  It is said that the most interesting man in the world can play Chopin on the drums. Not sure how he got his start but probably something like this.

Rockstar Daddydaycare Episode 4. How to be a Rockstar Daddy

My Best Eddie

Country Rockin' Rebels - Did You (Official Music Video)

The BaaBaa Boogie

  I remember around five or six years old, dads steel strings were still too brutal on the fingers so a tennis racket or raft paddle would do the trick. I just needed to rock so I would play that tennis racket like Jimi at Woodstock. These two are on different level!

The ABC Twins!

...It's not that i'm trying to whore out my kids, it's just that you gotta see this shit! It's friggin' hilarious!

"Crossroads" The Country Rockin' Rebels

Nuthin but MEAT!

  All too happy to admit pride in the way these two handle a guitar at two and a half! And to carry a tune with a punch line, endless hilarity!

The Country Rockin' Rebels (Fantastic Journey)

Itsy Bitsy Spider by Isaac "Elvis" Luhrs

Drifter's Escape

  After the boys are dropped off at their respective daycares and the morning mess is picked up, i'm left with a few hours of rare quiet before I have to go give Marie the van. The "geen tuck" can't fit  car seats so I have to switch vehicles before I head to work. It's a pain but hey it's a process right!
  The caffeine has arrived at its destination so there will be no napping. It's already about eighty degrees outside so i'll skip the driving range today and my landscaping project can wait for that matter too. I can't take the fingers off the keyboard yet though, so i'll let them play a minute and see if anything happens.
  I remember many days, not too long ago yet so damn long ago, I would sit with a guitar, pen and paper and play those six strings until the brain shouted, "Now write dude!" It had become something far more than routine or regular. It was an action beyond what masterful discipline achieves. It just was...it just happened. I almost felt like it wasn't my choice, the songs just had to be created. Good or bad, usable verse or random spittle, the words just made the pen move. It's crazy when I look at Dylan's lifetime body of work and think of what it was like to be that possessed. I have hundreds of pages filled and songs on backlog to record...he's in the tens of thousands range! I understand where he is coming from with lyrics like "I got a head full of ideas that are driving me insane."-Maggies Farm.
  I've been telling people for years that the day I became an artist was the day I stopped caring what people thought of my art. It's not an ego trip either, maybe a little ego is involved, but what I mean by that is, once it got to the point where I could sit and create for a couple of hours it just flowed right out. There wasn't much forethought and I would look at the end product like I had just woken up and there was three pages of drivel laying there! So, bear with me, anyone who had anything to say about my art (in essence) was saying it to the ghost who had taken over my body for a few moments and had it's way with the pen and page.

  Ultimately I do care what the world thinks of me and my art, and opinions at this stage of the game are really just exstensions of the creation itself. Now when I stumble upon these rare hours of freedom I feel blessed to have them, especially knowing that picking up the guitar will still just happen. And whatever the opinion maybe, the words will still come, the music will keep playing, and the dreamer will yield itself to the dream. Strung like a puppet, adrift in an ocean of inspiration, coming back occasionally to the surface to squeeze one's soul into an E string and a bic pen...and maybe a refill on the coffee! Time's up...what the hell just happened!

My Pysch Degree

  Marie and I were rehearsing our musical today while doing our, non-work day, daily routine. The latest piece consisted of us dancing around each other in the kitchen like two baboontas in a mad panic, trying to get through the morning and get out of the house without having to return to a pile of dirty dishes, bottles and pump parts. The lyrics for the piece sketched out to something like this

Me: All I do is make the food
        and wash the dishes
        over and over and over and over and over and over again.
Marie: All I do is make the milk
            and clean up messes and clean up messes and clean up messes and...got it? Good.
  It's wild, it feels like what insanity must feel like. It's like a field trip to insanityville, but i'm just visiting. It's interesting to the point of qualifying as a degree program in Psych, to watch toddlers develop and go through phases as they try to figure it all out. Right now they are going through OCD phase, so when I give one of them milk in a blue cup with a red lid and yellow straw, they cry out, "No I want my milk in a geen cup with a yayo straw and a boo lid!" And guess what, dammit I get my ass in gear and do it before the bigger meltdown comes. They are starting to get it, but wow! What a process!

 

The Couch Rules

Rockstardaddydaycare Season 3. Episode 1. "And Then There Were Three!"

"ABC Rock!"

   The band is working hard finishing songs for the new rebel album. Meanwhile the boys and I are working hard on the letters that create the words that create the songs that...well here's a video.

ABCDunnnkk!!!

 A good introduction to the sport of Baboo-ball begins with the fundamentals, or what we here at Rockstardaddydaycare refer to as the ABC's of the game.

  Happy B-Day Jonny Cash, You were a voice, I hope to keep the torch going! Drive on.

Return from Electric Childhood Land

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Alas I have rejoined the working folks of this good land, and for many reasons that i'm sure I don't need to explain to you fellow adults, it is a welcome return. But if you should by chance or whatever happenstance have a stroll through electric childhood land...embrace it!

ABC Isaac and the Kung Fu Kid

  The building blocks for a well rounded child will always stay rooted in the fundamentals. Among these are language and ninja stuff.

Angry Birds

  One minute they can't get enough of slides and swings and then nature takes over. Nature dictates that when a flock of birds catches a toddlers attention, they must be harassed. In my responsibility to a noble cause I dutifully filmed this to show you future parents of wild animals how to better anticipate potential moments like these. It's too late for us, but now you can help protect wildlife by pissing them off less!

Those moments when...

     Sorry if you thought this was gonna be some heartfelt gooshy 'kids are just so precious' moment. No video here either. The boys are having a blast at daycare in the 75 deg weather. I just had to blog about one of those moments in life when you know the fire is still there and you get a little rush of anxious excitement. Indeed I speak of that moment when you decide...It's time to change the guitar strings! Man nothing does it for me like stripping off those old discolored twangers! Last week the rebels and myself played the San Diego boatshow. It was raining hard but we were in this partial glass enclosed venue. It was awesome, everyone stayed dry but we rocked out with the rain pelting the windows like it's own rollin' band. And of course it wouldn't be a true reb show if at least one string snapped. I got to be the lucky one, on the last tune of course, POP! Thank you and goodnight! See ya at the St. Patty's day parade, which last year we played in a friggin' monsoon!  

Kids Are Such a Workout/Ball!

Enough said!

I Could Write a Book

   ...and I did actually. Way back in the University of Minnesota days I started a fiction about a couple of 70's rockers who became responsible professors at the U of M but decide to cut loose when school lets out in the summer of 99', the last summer of the century. I love it and occasionally glance at it but it has a major flaw and therefore spends its time collecting dust, waiting for me to get old and finally rewrite it. The problem is that I started it when I was a twenty year old punk-ass junior in college and finished when I was a twenty-five year old punk-ass party animal, wannabe rockstar in so-cal. Which is to say that in those five years my writers voice changed as I did and consequently the book with it.
    When it was finished I brought it and all two-hundred sixty two pages of it's literary glory to an agent who hosted workshops once a week. She basically tore it a new asshole and said that normally she gives an author thirty seconds worth of reading before she decides to move forward or onward but this was worth about ten seconds of her time. She cut to the quick and said the characters are about as developed as a tuesday papers cartoon. But then right in front of the rest of the group she picked me back up and gave me a pearl of her much possessed wisdom. The gist of it went like this.
   "At the risk of spoiling you before your time I have to tell you this. In all my years in this business i've learned that the true gift of writing occurs at birth or before. You got it or you don't. Judging by your ability to create dialogue and storylines, you've got it. But you can't crap out two hundred pages and expect the world to love you for it. You have to write and rewrite and repeat process. Just like it takes a thousand flowers to create an ounce of perfume this is what you must do."

   Needless to say I was a bit defeated and even looking at my novel for weeks following was exhausting. I didn't abandon it but stepped away until further notice and then life, guitars, girls, work, surfboards, etc. occured and the writers writings became simpler, as in songs. I began my most intense period of song writing to this day and the book still sits.
   Where am I going with this? Simple. Life is still occuring, evolving, unfolding like a book or this painting. It's wild, it's beautiful, hectic, sad, joyful, rewarding, unfair, perfect, perfectly fucked up, what have you. It's hard for me to even use the word "I" these days because...
 like a setting sun when
 everything starts to blur into one
and the day is replaced by night and stars
when people go home or go out to bars
we are left with a memory, of another day with a thousand names and hopefully wake up with another just the same. Good night!

The three food groups

    Beer, Bacon , and Butter. Vegetables didn't make it because they're actually a garnish. Ha ha! Seriuosly though, what better way to get your kids to eat banana, oatmeal, and eggs in one fell swoop! The mix is TJ's organic, and don't trip, I only put the choco chips in dad's half. I actually started filming when they were cooking (Toetatoes) in their kitchen but some chefs don't like to let the public in on their secrets. Bon Appetito!

Some Like it Hot

    The new modern image of a good parent these days definitely includes toting some recording/camera device around. Here we find our little actors on the island of Coronado ala Jack Lemon and Tony B, looking for a couple of Marilyn Monroe's. I don't mind whining a bit that after almost two years of lugging these bear cubs around, my arms need a break from even holding an i-phone. But then moments like these happen and ... well you know.

Baboo-ball!

    This little clip at first glance may appear as your average, "Watch my kids they're so cute" video, but if you look at it from the perspective of the guy holding the camera...drumroll and a couple of tears...It's a video of two growing kids who are now of age to start doing the stuff DAD likes! Yeayyhhh. Not old enough to drag my bag around the course, although i'm sure they would try, but it's all good. I do love some hoops and after spending enough time in the great indoors, I think we're ready to kick down the doors. I wonder if I can still dunk.

Rockstardaddydaycare is Steady Rollin'

Hey Just wanted to say thanks to family and all who have been checkin' out Rockstardaddydaycare and keepin' up with the ttwins and tunes. We finally hit 2000 views!

www.reverbnation.com/rockstardaddydaycare

ABC Rock

22 months and still rockin'.