Monday, September 23, 2013

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!

Thursday, September 19, 2013

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!

Monday, September 9, 2013

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!

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

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!