This is an update on what I’m doing to try to get back to play for you. It’s also a comment on the music biz. A couple of old saws come to mind:

You meet the same people on the way up as on the way down.

…and…

People never really grow up.

(That second one is mine, by the way.)

Bass Player/Vocalist

I have to say that re-purposing myself to sing and play bass is turning out to be not only a challenge, but something of a drag. First there is the issue of playing the bass. Yeah, I can play, but not this much. Were basses always this heavy?

And secondly, there’s the problem of actually…er… singing and playing (rubs tummy and head at same time to demonstrate.) Frankly, I dunno how guys like Sting do it. I know that I took the Frank Zappa approach; ie. I consciously arranged the tunes to make it as easy as possible for me to play guitar and sing. And much of the time that meant not […]

I’ve started work on an opera called ‘Detroit’. Really.

No really.

A Fearful Background

I have been wanting to do a large scale piece since I was in college. But frankly, I never had the material to work with. I remember reading how Brahms struggled so hard to publish his first pieces. He felt so unworthy and ‘unprepared’. And if Brahms felt unworthy? I mean we’re talking Brahms. Have you ever seen a picture of Brahms? Well, I just happened to have one in me back pocket…

I mean seriously. Unprepared? This is a guy who looks like he prepared just to take a dump every morning.

The thing is, the more that I’ve learned about writing music, the more I understand how he felt. Because the more you write, the more you realise how easy it is to cheat.

Look at most Hollywood film scores. Even the best ones tend to be weak these days. Why? Everyone learns in their first composition class how to take one or two melodies […]

I’m now offering guitar and bass lessons to the few, the proud. As I’ve begun playing out locally again, I’ve become aware of gaps in music instruction with most of the people I work with— regardless of experience. I’m setting aside a few hours a week to work with players who want to bone up on their theory and basic musicianship. And by ‘basic’ I don’t mean ‘beginner’. Basic musicianship is a lot like ‘bodybuilding’—even advanced players often need the occasional refresher when it comes to skills like transposition, ear training, chord substitutions and so on. A lesson or two with the right teacher can shake out the cobwebs and re-invigorate everything from improvisation to learning new tunes to writing to…

I woke up dis moanin’… W-o-o-o-h and I felt so low I had to play dat bass

Tom Waits had a great song called ‘Step Right Up’ about marketing pitches. There’s a line in there

Change your shorts. Change your life. Change yourself into a nine year old Hindu boy.

That’s how I kinda feel after 2.75 years fighting the tide. Like the great Irish warrior Cuchualain. Or maybe it’s more like one of those Labrador Retrievers that try to retrieve a brick thrown into the ocean.

But I am now officially a bass player, first and guitar player third. The reason is simple: after meeting with three hand surgeons and five physical therapists it’s clear that my thumb will never return to proper form. It works for about five minutes at a time, but after that? The stamina ends. And that makes playing full shows, either for myself or anyone else, pretty much impossible.

But after much experimentation, I’ve found that the skills one needs to play electric and upright bass are still intact. […]

Toora, loora, loora muthafuckahs.

Which kinda sums up my upbringing, if I think about it. Irish kid moves to ‘70’s Ghetto.

In Ireland, Patrick’s Day was traditionally more of a religious deal than a major blow out‘certainly there are no green rivers of beer and all that nonsense in my memory bank. I don’t really go on about Irish Culture all that much but St. Patrick was a heck of a guy and it’s worth noting who he was and what’s really all about.

Patrick was not Irish and he did nothing about the snakes because, as far as I know, Ireland never had snakes.

But Naomh Pádraigh was known for tolerance. He outlawed slavery in Ireland a thousand years before anywhere else in Europe. He also demanded equal rights for women and in fact many women were leaders of the Church in Ireland until the 10th century. These are achievements that should be better known. My guess is that the reason they are not has a […]