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Wrote this song a few days ago. Been playing cello again a lot, and wanted to create something using this arpeggiating technique across the strings (string players… what is the technical term for this? Can’t remember!)

Lyrically it carries the same theme as the rest of “The Faraway”. Journeys, changes, destinations.

Funny how I thought that the lyrics for this were just absolutely impossible. I banged my head against my lyric book for a couple days, recorded several scratch tracks of improvised lyrics and then walked away. When I came back it wasn’t garbage anymore, at least not when stitched together.

The real reason I made this was because I wanted to test out my GoPro Jaws Flex Clamp. It’s so simple, yet super brilliant for capturing live music. It worked! Now I just need to get like five more and clamp them everywhere.

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Just got back last weekend from camping with my three brothers, three of my favorite people, at the mountain of gold. Where this video was made last year exactly around this time:

And so The Faraway was so half-assedly “released” to the world. Really it was my birthday and I was going to be gone and I had self-imposed deadlines and thus, hence, I released an album. Without thinking! Without mastering! Without caring.

But that’s fine… right?

Camping now with my girls, my dog Cinco and the ever-amazing Katy Unger. Between last weekend with my brothers and now this, it doesn’t really get better. What a crazy blessed life!

#blessed

Yeah. Well. Anyways. I thought I might do the same this year with The Faraway part 2. But I’m going to hold off until my return from the ocean and woods and just being faraway. It’s ok. I can do that, I’m indie.

I don’t want to rush it. And, truth be told I’m going to fold in the impatience of that album “release” last year with this one, and it will all be well and good in the universe. You’ll see.

So stay tuned. Hopefully I’m far enough from cell phone coverage to not be bothered with any thoughts of anything at all but guitars and walks and campfires and maybe a beer or two.

Or don’t stay tuned. Stay out of tune. Stay golden. Stay, though, please.

I promise I’ll give you music if you do.

More music.

I hope you are feeling good and able to get some good things out of your day. And that it all adds up to beautiful. Thanks for being here. I’ll see you there.

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E’ry so often I put ye old iTunes on shuffle and here something perfectly podcast worthy. Here’s an older live on-air performance from KDVS live in studio A. So much reverb! I believe I requested that. I can never have too much reverb.

Got that image from here, you can get a print of it even.

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Owls & Vultures - Live, Rare
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I’m a big fan of interludes and in between moments. I’m a fan of the album vs. the single, and I think these snippets create a glue to hold the other songs together. It’s a fine line and you can kill the momentum of an album pretty easily… But I can’t help myself.

It’s also a way for me to include snippets of musical ideas that maybe don’t ever make it into a song, and the why bother there is that for me albums are more about a certain period of time being captured, rather than a bunch of songs. And those little snippets tend to coincide pretty well with the feeling of the rest of the music.

ANYWAYS.

This one is called “Forge” and it’s a throwback to my ukelele addiction I suffered through last year. I listen to a lot of EDM and somehow someday I want to marry the pulse of that music’s kick drum to an acoustic instrument. For fun and amusement. For justice and glory. And stuff.

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Interludes & In Betweens: Forge
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Working on a thing, you have this moment before it’s finished where it’s time to take stock. Same with building a bookshelf as it is making an album as it is planning an event, there’s a moment where you can begin to visualize how it all will turn out, and whether some serious reconsidering needs to be done. Is it a ton of things? Just a few details? Was something fundamentally wrong with the inception? That’s the time, and unfortunately you only get to that point after you put in that much work.

This is definitely where I’m at with my latest group of recordings/album. It’s all laid out and I’m got my hands on my hips just kind of nodding my head up and down trying to decipher it, like a crime tv detective looking at the pins on a map.

And it’s either discouraging or re-invigorating.

And I guess my point of bothering to write this moment down is that I realized just now that whether it is discouraging OR re-invigorating is YOUR choice at that point. It’s a choice.

Your bookshelf is a mess all wrong angles the screws are poking through, the shelves aren’t level. That could be it… forget it, other f it, get mad, burn the scrap wood and move on. OR recognize that fixing the fundamental flaws is not only necessary but maybe… (I’m definitely inserting my own optimism here) just maybe this is the most important part. Not the work you’ve already done. But the evaluation of it.

That’s what I’m going to tell myself at this point. And ideally make the most of this moment. Or just burn it as scrap wood. No. I don’t think I’ll do that.

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I’m not entirely sure from whence, but this track has been getting a ton of plays on soundcloud lately. Is it possible people think it’s a cover of an Arcade Fire song? No way! I prefer to believe they are into the quoting of Saint-Saens in a rock song turned classical turned rock quartet.

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Thought I’d gather all the pieces I composed for Shar, Nisha and Brad’s film “You Follow”. It’s my first official soundtrack! I’ll be unrolling them in rapid succession here on the site, via the podcast. Hope you enjoy…

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"You Follow" Soundtrack - 'To Be Is To Do'
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It’s been a while between actual posts. This blog. It’s so old. So young. For a while there I thought Facebook would be the way to go to have it all in one place. Before that myspace. But like MySpace Facebook has been eaten up by profiteers and there’s no real connection between me and the folks who like the music I’m lucky enough to make.

Tonight in Los Angeles under a few clouds and hazy moon I’m thinking about what’s next. Last year I “released” The Faraway in great haste, on my birthday, April 14. I knew it wasn’t done but I needed to push forward and also I knew it wasn’t done and kinda didn’t care. I was in the midst of a couple year’s long crisis of confidence. I needed to just say “hey I did this.”

Almost a year later I am coming out of that cozy but lame place of self doubt and have a bunch of new material, or more importantly, the inspiration to act on it. I’ve decided to rework The Faraway and re-release it (one of the perks of being indie, I can do whatever I dang feel like) and also to add a new chapter to it with another album.

It’s good, I wasn’t done, and now I can finish it.

I’m aiming for another birthday release date. I think it’ll be scruffy and delirious as an album, like how it is lately.

So gotta get to it then.

It’s good to share with you again, dear reader. I think I can get behind this ol’ website once again.

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Here’s the second part of the album I made for making things to. Make whatever you want! Again what we want is ambience and a lack of drama, without aspiring to New Age.

I had a friend who had a ranch out in the hidden part of Mendocino County, and one of our past-times during an amazing Summer visit there became “rock-hopping”, where you hop down a mostly dried up creek bed, ideally reaching a state where you don’t think between leaps. For some reason this song reminded me of that.

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Music For Painting To, Part 2 - Rock Hopping
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Seeing a film with my music in it for the first time #hellarad #egotrip

Last night joined Shar and Nisha and the whole workings of You Follow to watch the first public screening of their documentary.

The story, of an adopted woman looking for her birth mother in India, is moving, and making a few pieces for it was a really amazing experience. Especially seeing it, and hearing it, all together last night.

One of my favorite moments was running into one of the women interviewed for the film… I created some music to go with her very emotional story about finding her mom, and so I had spent hours watching her face and cue-ing musical moments to her words… It was surreal to see her in person.

Great times, great group of people, makes me realize how much I love the endless energy of Los Angeles.

And makes me realize how very much I want to continue to make music for moving pictures…

Here’s some of the music writ for it…

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I had the honor of working on the soundtrack for “You Follow”, a story about a woman who goes to find out about her past in India. The main character does a lot of searching and I composed this piece to be her (Nisha) theme. It was a fun and interesting project and I’m excited to go see the opening screening tonight(!)…

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Film Music: Nisha's Theme
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A while ago I made my girlfriend Katy an album. She has a certain playlist she’s created for painting and has talked about the perfect music for that kinda thing… meditative and non-disruptive, but interesting enough maybe to be listenable over and over. So obviously I created a  polka/deep-house mashup. And that didn’t fit the bill. So I tried this.

Just a live cello performance using some looping, and a very brutish beat to pull it all along.

It’s long, and it’s a pretty good quality mp3 if you are into that sort of thing.

This is the first of three parts to that album.

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Music For Painting To, Part 1 - Unfold
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A while ago I made my girlfriend Katy an album. She has a certain playlist she’s created for painting and has talked about the perfect music for that kinda thing… meditative and non-disruptive, but interesting enough maybe to be listenable over and over. So obviously I created this flugelhorn polka. And that didn’t fit the bill. So I tried this.

Just a live cello performance using some looping, and a very brutish beat to pull it all along.

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Music For Painting To, Part 1, Unfold
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