Music

3 Drinks Later #Cruise #Music #NaPoWriMo #YouTube #Shorts

April 5, 2023

I know, I know, it’s NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month), but so far, I’ve only written 2 poems. I’m so having a blast pairing my songs and musician friend songs with video on YouTube.

Here’s my latest: the one I’m calling the “3 Drinks Later Cruise.” Actually, I wrote the first version during my first FAWM (February Album Writing Month) in 2018 and revised it during last year’s 50/90.

So… here it is. If you enjoy, please like and subscribe to my YouTube channel. And I always appreciate your likes here. Thank you so much – you’re the best!

And then there are the #Shorts – check these 2 out – “No Men in Las Vegas” (clip from the full length audio reading of my novella Raining Men) and “Cruising the Colorado River in Laughlin” with musician @WolfKier on YouTube and his “Down By the Ferry Dock” song.

Chasing With Words

November 22, 2022

As a big fan of Julia Cameron’s “Artist Way” series, I’ve been looking through her books to see what I might have missed. And one book I just noticed is Your Right to Write. In it she tells the story of a boy in the 6th grade and how she’d written numerous short stories, hoping to get his attention. She says she “chased him with pencil and paper.” And in doing so discovered the thrill of chasing with words.

I had to give that some thought. Although I also did a lot of writing in school, music was my first love. And I realized that my 6th grade love life was more about listening to my Elvis records in my garage (door open) with my “boyfriend” rather than any chasing with pencil and paper. Or chasing with words. Okay, so maybe I wrote my first love letter to him, so there were some words involved. 🙂

Since books about art are usually written by writers, the focus is on writing and the life of a writer. And while that is super encouraging to artists of any kind, I’d like to find something written from the point of view of music. It may exist out there – I just haven’t found it. I’d write it if I thought I had something new to offer, but maybe I’m already doing it right here. Sharing other people’s words with my musical experience thrown into the mix. Mix – yeah, that’s my kind of word. lol!

So maybe writing is writing and songwriting is another form of it.

“Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out.” — Dolly Parton

#AmReading Plus “Does Natural Talent Matter in #Music?”

May 26, 2022

First off, let me say I’m now on book 6 (The Woman in the Bedroom) of the Alexandra Mallory Psychological Suspense Series by Cathryn Grant. I have mixed feelings about the series. For one thing, the heroine is a serial killer, which is a bit of a turnoff for me. But I am drawn to her because I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for 23 years and it really takes me back there. As fun as it was in my younger days, I’m so glad to be gone now.

Cathryn really nails much of the Silicon Valley/Bay Area culture, although misses it in subtler ways, maybe because she didn’t live it in the early days like I did. And I’m pretty sure most people there are not serial killers – lol! But now that the character has left the Bay Area, my fascination with the series may have ended… or not. This series is addicting.

Now I’m pursuing music madly in preparation for 50/90, practicing the keys. My first instrument was an electronic keyboard that I got for my 7th birthday. So I guess I’ve been an electronic musician since then. I tried the violin, guitar, and piano but my favorite was the electric keyboard. Decades passed but my love for electronic musicianship has returned, stronger than ever. And with the tools available now, it’s simply incredible.

But with that comes a lot of things to learn, to try and master. It can feel overwhelming as we wonder if we’ll ever get any of it right. I think we often hold back, fearing that we’re not good enough. But it is so important to get your music out there. That’s how you grow. And so I thought I’d post this encouraging video from Studio Live asking the question, “Does Natural Talent Matter in Music?”

When I Met My Father

May 2, 2022

When I met my father, I had to reorder everything I thought I knew about myself. About him. About her.

I sat in the back seat of his car, directly behind him as I listened to the timbre of his voice, not the rich baritone I’d become accustomed to growing up with the man I thought was my father, which was just one thing I could barely wrap my head around.

I stared at the back of his curly white hair, noticed the blond, freckled forearms, so unlike the brown skinned other dad, who I could never look like. Or be like.

As the weekend progressed, I saw more and more of myself, not just physically, but in our interests, the jam on our chin at breakfast, and the way we respond to the world, the impulsiveness, the quick but short-lived temper. But mostly the music. The music blasting from his headphones as he sat alone in his recliner, totally immersed in the sounds flooding his ears. Mostly jazz and RnB with an occasional pop song by Bobby Darin.

This week we inch forward to the overwhelming praise and worship of mothers, whose job is very hard, no doubt about that, but, still, things are not always as they should be. Far from it. So, I’ll pay tribute to the romantic, larger than life man who was and is my father who never stopped loving my mother. Who said, “I’ll always have San Francisco.” I believe she still loved him at the end, too, if it is possible for her to love at all.

So here I sit at 5 am, missing my dad, and thinking about these 2 favorite Bobby Darin songs.

Beyond the Sea Live version with a drummer solo

DJs on the Rocks (#DJs #Rock #Music)

April 28, 2022

Had to share the music I discovered on MixCloud. As a music lover of all genres, I have to say rock will always hold a special place in my heart. It may be just the theme I need for this upcoming road trip.

Check out this mix:

Fernando Cabral Sacadura from DJs on the Rocks, Portugal:

2021 Accomplishments, 2022 Goals

December 29, 2021

I couldn’t let this year pass by without acknowledging what I’ve accomplished artistically in 2021.

The top 3 accomplishments of 2021 are:

  1. FAWM (February Album Writing Month) in February – write 14 songs during the month of February. I believe this is the first year I met that goal
  2. 50/90 (write 50 songs in 90 days – I wrote 60) – meeting that goal was also a first for me – my top 12 (plus a bonus track) were uploaded as an album on Bandcamp.
  3. NSAI (Nashville Songwriters Association International) – I managed to use all 12 of my membership feedback credits, which is another first for me

The top 3 goals for 2022:

Upgrading my Reverbnation account to Pro for 2022. As for the rest, I haven’t really locked this down yet. Under consideration:

  1. FAWM
  2. 50/90
  3. NSAI
  4. Ableton Push
  5. Fiction

As vague as usual when it comes to writing vs music. Some things I will just have to let unfold.

Wishing you all the best in 2022!

“Don’t Judge the Past by the Present” and Other Advice for Writers

October 14, 2021

“Don’t judge the past by the present.” – The wisest thing my mother ever said.

Today there’s a lot of judging about the past in the media. As I mentioned in my previous post Writing for Today’s Reader, there is also a lot of rewriting of history in today’s movies, TV shows, and plays.

The thing is, if you haven’t lived it, you might not know the true meaning of it. So often I see this on “The Voice.” The younger singers, even if they’re not that young, weren’t around when the song was first around and so they don’t get the nuances or know how to fully emote. Their technical skills are incredible. But the song falls flat because they don’t know how to convey the emotional meaning of the song.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately. And one of the books is Dawn Eden’s The Thrill of the Chaste. We’re both Catholic converts and I’ve enjoyed two of her other books (My Peace I Give You and Remembering God’s Mercy). In “Chaste,” she mentions the song “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” by the Shirelles. She says this:

“She’s not looking for affirmation so much as absolution. All her man has to do is say he loves her–then a night of sin is transformed into a thing of beauty.”

“If the Shirelles tune were to be written today, the singer would likely have to lower the bar down to “Will You Respect Me Tomorrow?”–if even that.

Dawn is a talented writer but how did she miss the meaning? Perhaps because she wasn’t around when the song was first around. All she knew were the facts of who wrote it, who recorded it, when it was released, etc. But having lived through that time, even though I was just a kid, I knew–we all knew--that the real meaning behind the question of “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?” was really “Will You Respect Me Tomorrow?”

I don’t know how old “John from Nashville” on Songfacts is, but he got it right when he said, “This song is a clever way of saying ‘Will you respect me in the morning if I go home with you tonight?’ ”

My advice to writers? Talk to people who actually lived it, if at all possible. Instead of quoting tweets, for example, dig deeper to find the real meaning and the work will stand out.