my lazy arm hairs will

Stand At Attention

with a point beneath

each!!!!!!!!!

The students who struggle the most are never in the moment of the music. They stumble over notes, awkwardly pecking and pulling at them. They don’t understand the big picture and they’re not flowing within the stream. I mistakenly try to explain things. “This is how you do this, don’t do that, wrong finger, blurg blah snork.” I can go on for a while, past the point at which the student can absorb the knowledge I’m so generously bestowing.

What does make a musician (or music listener) better? A musician gets better through the experience of music. For me, a big moment was the first time I played a chord one note at a time, and heard the tones of the arpeggio form and stack on each other creating a happy sheet of G-major. That was enough to hook me. Then I learned a song. Then I wrote a song. Then I was in a band, playing in church. Each transformational musical experience led me onward to another and so on up to now.

This student band that I’m starting will provide its members with crucial first-hand experience that will improve them musically, socially, and intellectually. They will work together, they will learn new songs, they will write songs, they will jam, they will try to out-do each other, and they will be encouraged to GO FOR IT. I don’t necessarily mean in the professional sense, but in the sense that if they’re going to do it, they should really bloody do it right and not be satisfied with mediocrity or anything inauthentic.

Everyone in the band will be taking turns on various instruments. Each student will end up trying some rhythm guitar, lead, bass, drums, keys, and vocals. No one will be allowed to be shy, everyone will be required to leave their comfort zones regularly. The band members will also have to think about such concerns as the band’s name, the band’s repertoire, style, and image.

My role will be very much like that of a coach. I’ll put them through their paces, make them work, ask them to play the song again, and demand that they play from their hearts.

My goal is to have the band ready to play a show in May or June of 2012. I will have them playing at least a 30-45 minute set, hopefully which will be half covers or less.

Deric Garza worked hard on this! Enjoy, share, and plan on joining us on January 26th.

Three weeks from this Thursday, I’m playing my first full-band show in about 7 months. I really truly could not be more excited about returning to one of the best rooms around, my beloved Sam’s Burger Joint. To commemorate my return to rock, my friends and I are preparing some very special surprise items for those who come to the Big Show! Also, we’ll be playing a bunch of new-and-exciting material for all you nice folks.

So here’s the all-important show info that you need:

Sam’s Burger Joint, January 26th at 9 PM, doors open at 8. Cover is $7.

The above quote comes from the forward to the newest album by folk-pop duo The Milk Carton Kids. That album is called Prologue, and it is acoustic harmony MAGIC for my brain. Joe Henry, for those not in the know, is a journeyman singer-songwriter and well respected producer. He was speaking of the way The Milk Carton Kids’ two singer/songwriters Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan have a way of blending together into one sweet cloud of music. For Henry, their voices and guitars swirl together into this mysterious third thing that makes it hard to separate the two musicians. I couldn’t agree more. As I sit in my office typing, my computer speakers are singing in near-perfect stereo and it is truly beautiful and hypnotizing.

My friend Deric brought this band to my attention this morning, and pointed me to their bandcamp page, as I do now. I played the first song, and immediately sent Deric a message. “This is the kind of music I wanted to make when I first started, like 10 years ago,” I wrote. It wasn’t until I pushed ‘enter’ that I realized what the The Milk Carton Kids really reminded me of: Gillian Welch’s and Dave Rawling’s Time (The Revelator) which of course came out ten years ago, in July of 2001. I was just a kid, about to start college, confused and insecure and completely unprepared for what was about to happen to me. Time (The Revelator) was a revelation to my ears, and a comfort to my soul. You’d be hard-pressed to find another album that is so spare and honest, yet so surreal and mysterious.

When I was a child, I was hypnotized by my parents’ old records. As an 11 year old homeschool kid, a song like Paul Simon’s Duncan was an entirely foreign land to my ears. Repeated listens led to more questions, which led to more records. When I was 13, putting on Stairway to Heaven was a harrowing experience, practially like a psychedelic trip for my young mind. As I grew up, my longing to understand the sounds that had transformed me so led me to study music in college. Music Theory made perfect sense to me. I began to listen to everything with an analytical perspective. I would follow the chord changes, the bass movement, and conceptualize the melody lines in my head until I knew what they were. It seems probable that as I was gaining music knowledge, I was also losing something as a listener.

Joe Henry’s words really resonate with my experiences. I got into music because listening to it completely mystified me. Whatever I put into my brain was like an alternate reality that I could explore, full of awe and wonderment. For a while, that awe and wonderment faded to a degree. It became a math problem, it became a job, a burden. Yes I still loved it but I wasn’t listening with the open ears of a child, I was filtering and assuming, inhibiting my own enjoyment. I don’t want to be that way anymore. I don’t want to listen from the stance of a person who thinks he’s got it all figured out, but from someone who’s still wrapped up in the mystery of the music. So thanks Deric, thanks Milk Carton Kids, thanks Joe Henry, for reminding me of that. Happy New Year everyone.

I love that we live in a world where I can discover a great new band like this, with a great sound and a compelling story. I mean, this band is as small as a band can be, almost. I didn’t hear about them from the radio or a magazine of course, but through the internet. It’s not that Hymn for Her have a great web presence, either. You know how many people follow them on Twitter? 156! Fewer than me, even. They’re doing better on Facebook, where they have some 2,000+ fans. Still, this is not a famous act, these are not people with an advertising budget. These are people who “merely” have something awesome and different going on with their music. Thanks to the internet, that’s actually enough. All they had to do was something cool, and I’ve heard of them. That makes me happy.

Be sure to check out their excellent Led Zep cover! Click on it now!

Fact number one, let’s start there: Creed has sold more records in the US than Jimi Hendrix. What true rock ‘n’ roll fan could read that without getting pissed? You’re telling me that a copycat psuedo-spiritual grunge-metal-pop act from the late 90s has sold more than Hendrix, who was once described as the “Michael Jordan of guitar” on the movie Camp Nowhere? Well yeah, I guess it’s true, but what does it mean? Has Creed had as big an influence as Jimi? Who’s inspired more kids to pick up the guitar, Jimi Hendrix or Mark Tremonti of Creed? When people speak of Jimi, do they speak with reverence or scorn? How about Scott Stapp and those fellas in Creed, do they have a lot of cred these days?

See, in the world we live in, most people still see SALES as being the primary point of an album. Selling copies. Do you think Beethoven is remembered and studied and listened to because he sold so many copies of “Fur Elise?” Selling copies tells us only one thing: how many were sold during a period of time. It doesn’t factor in influence (how the recording affects future recordings, future musicians, etc), repeatability (how many times the recording will be consumed) or insight (how well a recording reflects on the culture that produced it), or timelessness (how well a recording holds up after the culture that created it has changed).

Here’s another fact: The cast of “Glee” has had more songs chart than The Beatles. Again, true enough, but what’s that mean, if anything? The Beatles stopped making records together 40 years ago, and yet they are still the most important influence for many if not most young musicians. The cast of “Glee” does not have that kind of power, never will. So do I care that Glee has had more chart hits? I care not at all.

What this article forgets to tell you is that the mainstream music world is DYING. Sure, there’s still a few things that sell to a few people, but the real consumers of music have moved on already. Lady Gaga may be the “biggest” artist right now, but her sphere of influence is so much smaller than say, Madonna’s was twenty years ago, or Britney Spears’ ten years ago. You don’t even need me to tell you that probably. The so-called superstars of today have shorter and shorter careers with diminishing returns and poor concert sales because most of us already know better than to give a shit about them. You and I don’t need corporations to hire “independent promoters” to go to the radio stations to get some crappy dance number played once every hour in order to discover a new artist or song or album. We have the internet, which bring everything to our ears without a middle person.

When The Beatles were on Ed Sullivan, everyone watched. Nowadays, “everyone” doesn’t watch anything. They don’t have to! They don’t want to! In the 1960s, there weren’t many ways to speak to people, only a few channels available. “Everyone” didn’t have a choice, and the music industry, which advertised its products on the radio and television, in order to sell copies of recordings, flourished. It had to, didn’t it? People who liked music turned on the radio, which was where you could listen free, and then people who wanted to be able to experience the joy of a particular song over and over would go the store and pick up a phonograh of it. That was a fine time for music, wouldn’t you agree? Sure, but hey, it’s not the sixties anymore. That was a wonderful time for pop music, and not having been born during that time, I can only imagine what it must have been like to put on a copy of Sgt. Pepper’s when it first was released. However, the age that’s dawning is far greater. The music industry was a filter, but now the only filter you need is your own mind.

Please, don’t look at sales charts ever again, or if you do at least realize the base hollowness of what you read on the chart. They won’t tell you what you should be listening to. It doesn’t matter who “number one” is anymore. You’re on the internet as we speak, why would it matter what’s being spun on those old-timey radio stations these days? Find something awesome, and make that your number one hit for the day. Then tomorrow, find something else. Don’t worry about Creed. They’re already getting paid back for their mediocrity. Don’t worry about Hendrix either, he’ll go on inspiring and enlightening his listeners for many years to come. In the Hendrix v. Creed match, the winner is clear, and I’ll sleep easier knowing that.

Today’s case study: Dave. Dave writes songs and has been doing so for over 30 years, on the same guitar. He has written at least a hundred songs or more, in many different genres. He has love songs, swing tunes, country ballads, church songs, children’s songs, even a kind of punk song. He has never played a gig in his life. I don’t think he’s ever stepped up to a microphone on a stage, period. He records songs at home on a digital multitrack, but that’s about it. He rarely plays his songs for anyone, though there may be hundreds of songs. He reports that he has always struggled with stage fright, fear of judgement, etc. He routinely puts himself down, especially for his clunky guitar playing and ocassionally monotonous baritone singing.

Now, Dave is actually quite a good songwriter. It’s remarkable what he’s done, considering his lack of method and his negativity towards himself. His passion and sense of calling has continually compelled him to keep writing, regardless of how little “progress” he has made over the years. He truly loves his songs, and talks about them ceaselessly. He believes them in a way that stands in stark contrast of his view of himself as artist.

Our lessons can be trying, as it’s a struggle for me to get him to play a song all the way through. He’ll spend so much time introducing the song, explaining what instrumentation he’s imagining, speculating what famous singer should do it, and why he’s not going to do a very good job anyway, that I have to remember to be very patient and keep encouraging him to just play the song. It’s not an exaggeration that he will spend more time introducing songs than playing them. When he does finally give a performance, Dave has some trouble finding all the correct chords and melodies,  gets stuck easily, and will often only make it partially through the song.
This routine is frustrating, because I’m a pretty good teacher and used to getting results. Week after week, we have the same basic discussion, and I admit that I have been beginning to lose heart a little bit. The worst thing is knowing that the songs themselves are good, but it’s like the songwriter has been contsipated with them and can only expel them with great pain. Sorry for the metaphor, but it’s apt.

Well, a couple of weeks ago, we were in our lesson, and my frustration bubbled to the surface. I gave him one of my famous “you actually have to practice” speeches, but I knew even mid-rant that mere speechifying wasn’t going to change anything for Dave. So I wrapped it up. Instead of continuing in the same somewhat negative vein the whole lesson, I called Dave’s attention to a set of dots that I had written on a sheet of guitar neck paper. “This is the A minor pentatonic scale, it’s one of the most important building blocks of lead guitar.” Dave tried it out. He played through the scale easily, more easily than expected. A couple times. I began to perk up as he played it ascending to the highest note and then descending down to the low A note without missing a beat. “You can use this scale to improvise a solo or other lead guitar parts.” Seeing that Dave was not sucking, I began playing a 12 bar blues underneath him. He quickly locked into my rhythm pattern, playing up and down the scale as if he’d done it before. As I went through the changes, Dave really started digging in to the scale, playing some notes harder than others and applying vibrato. He even attempted a little string bending. I actually began to think that perhaps he had learned this scale long ago and had just forgotten until the moment. Not only were the notes played correctly, but he played with a dollop of genuine blues attitude. After a couple times through the 12 bars, we ended (together!), after which we high fived.

Dave was blown away with what he’d just accomplished. “I’ve NEVER done that before, but it was like I knew where you were going! I shoulda learned that 30 years ago.”
It was so cool, hearing that, feeling his passion as he tapped into the blues for the first time. We both felt like we’d broken through a wall, and for Dave, that was a 35 year wall. The thing is, that wall could have been circumvented, climbed, or blasted. It could have happened 30 years ago, but it didn’t. In this case, I my role was to guide Dave around his wall without directly addressing it. I took him to a place where he didn’t have as many negative assumptions, where his neuroses hadn’t built such a powerful prison for him. As our lesson ended, I could see the wheels turning in his head, his thoughts began to shift. He used to think that he couldn’t ever play a lead, and he was right up until that moment when he bit off a piece of the blues and began to chew.

The best lesson I can give any musician? Just Play. It sometimes takes a lot of work to get there, but if you ever get to the point where if just for a moment, you really nail it, really plug into the source, really PLAY, you’ll be hooked forever. Hell, it’s not just about music, it’s about life, which is best lived in the moment. Dave got somewhere that day, and in the lessons since then, he’s playing more freely, getting through songs, singing better, and enjoying himself a lot more. Last week he played me the verse to a new song, could be his best yet.

It used to be that if you were an artist or in a band, you would start touring as soon as it was even remotely possible. You’d try to get your band a record deal. You’d slog from town to town in a van, you’d sleep in the van maybe, you’d play to a lot of empty rooms and have to rock right on through the pain. You’d hopefully have a self-released CD, so you’d be able to sell something at least, but the reality is you’d only sell a few most nights, sometimes none. You’d hope that people would come see you. You’d pray that someone, anyone, would walk in and pay the cover. You’d be poor and exhausted and you wouldn’t have as much to show for your time and work as you’d hoped. You’d tell yourself that if you just keeping going, you could get there. I participated in that kind of music career strategy for a few years, and I can’t say that I would want to be in a band that way right now.

But this is a new era, one in which you can stream an infinite library of films on your TV at home if you want to, and it’s pretty easy. You can do that with music now too, thanks to Spotify. More than ever, fans of music or film or anything at all really, can have instant or near-instant access to the things they’re fanatical about.

Well, I’m an artist of a new era, and I ask myself, why bother going out and booking gigs and expecting people to just come see me? It’s not a necessity any more, it’s not that profitable for most of the people that do it, and the life that goes along with it just seems to slowly suck away at the human soul.

From now on, I come to you. I will be an on-demand artist. You want me? You can have me! I like dealing with people on a one-on-one basis, so I’ll base my music career on that. If you’re a fan of me and what I do, I probably know you and like you as a person. I’d rather just come to straight to you than ask you to drive downtown to some bar you don’t particularly enjoy going to anyway. Because I know that there are a lot of potential fans out there, that of course would pay a nominal fee to enjoy me in an up close and personal way, but who are reluctant to commit to driving possibly a long way to a place that’s unfamiliar to and maybe pay for parking and a cover charge that might not reflect the quality of the show they went to so much trouble to see.

How about hosting a House Show instead? 10 people at your house could be a wonderful, unforgettably fun time, with good food and drink, and great conversation between artist and the attendees. I could actually make a little money, and I probably won’t have had to deal with any bullshit. 10 people at some tiny club where the PA system is blown, and the bar isn’t making any money either, and you had to come down to the bad side of town just to have to listen to some drunks talking over my songs, may not be your idea of a magical evening, nor is it mine.

Sure, I’d love to play at, say,  Sam’s Burger Joint again, and I think I will some day, but I’m not willing to beat down that door for a gig when I can’t really create a profit for the venue or for myself, or pay my band. I’d rather be YOUR artist, I’d rather work with my friends on fun projects and unique experiences. I’ve seen my future, and I think this is a better path for all of us, musicians and fans. We don’t have to do things the same old boring way, with just gigs and CDs, do we? We’re all creators, that’s the new truth. If we can be collaboraters, co-creators if you will, then I think we can accomplish good things.  You’ll get to experience me in a more vivid way than you would otherwise, and I get a chance to prove not only that I’m “good” but that my music can be useful and powerful. Besides that, we can do things together that might actually enhance the communty, things that make the world a better place. If my career gets bigger, great, that would be wonderful, but that’s no longer the goal. The goal is: getting ME to YOU. Since we both have the internet, we can stay connected, easily. Please, if you have an idea for a show, drop me a line, we’ll do it together. Deal?

One month from now, I will sally forth in the Northen direction on my first official solo acoustic tour. I’ll be performing (as of now) in Minneapolis/St. Paul Minnesota on Sunday September 11th, and Dallas, Texas on Tuesday, September 13th. I’m not going to tell you exactly where these shows will be just yet, because they’ll mostly be house concerts and I am hesitant to reveal anyone’s home address here.

So basically, I’m looking to hopefully create one or two more shows to make this mini-tour work a little bit better. Either on Saturday the 10th or Monday the 12th (or even both), I’d like to perform in a midwestern city, perhaps Des Moines or Kansas City. Does anybody out there want to host me? I need a place to play and stay, so if you’d like to host a house concert, or you know of a church that would be willing to host a concert, please e-mail me this week and we’ll try to get something set up. I’m also looking into coffeehouse/small clubs so if there’s a neighborhood music venue in your city that has an open slot, I’m all for that as well. Pretty much anything that might possibly generate an intimate listening audience, I’m willing to do.

Also, I’ve started a rockethub.com campaign to raise enough gas money so that the tour has a chance to make a profit! Please give, there’s rewards!