Pimping HJ
I want to brag about a local band, not because they are good great musicians, but because they write honest songs. The outfit is called Houston Jones, and their music is as they bill it “high-octane...
View ArticleRevision Ruminations
I hate A&R buyers, mainly because they are right. Buyers shop for songs to sell recording artists. These folks are (typically) industry veterans with the psychological scars to prove it. They are...
View ArticleRight Ways?
Sometimes a song goes in very different directions once you have time and a few extra instruments to experiment with. Just the Right Way This song has been through two significant shifts, and this one...
View ArticlePunched Purgatory
Nothing like a broken leg to afford some extra studio time. I was thumbing through my recording roster to see what I might work on next and decided to punch-up Purgatory of Your Love, not out of...
View ArticleHorse Play
Drilling down through my list of songs to record or fix, I encountered Stolen Horses, the only outright Western I’ve ever written. Two years have lapsed between the original recording and this fix,...
View ArticleLetting Go
Having written songs and performed solo for way too long, it is odd being in a band. (We’ll call it a band. More like four guys who wanted to jam and needed a good reason to drink week nights)....
View ArticleChoice Change
I could get used to this real quick. There is a holy place in the unholy town of Berkeley, California. Smelted in the 1960′s along with several thousand other coffee shops (the American variety, not...
View ArticleHall of Lame
People watchful for signs of the Apocalypse saw one this morning as news broke that both ABBA and The Stooges will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. To steal yet another line from Mojo...
View ArticleJack is Back
Working with other musicians can be a downright joy. Lately I have had Steve Laciak (who I have nicknamed “One Take Laciak”) doing lead guitar on some demos. Steve is of that caste of musicians that...
View ArticleDavy’s Day
Davy Jones, one of the Monkeys passed on yesterday (for you kids, the Monkeys were a pop group with a camp TV show in the 1960s). Though their television show was loaded with simpleminded Hollywood...
View ArticleHackney Horrors
“That was cliché,” said my wife. Thankfully she wasn’t talking about me. Attending a recurring songwriters’ tribunal, we listened to many tunesmiths – from those who had written their first ditty...
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