Getting Close!

Hi Everybody!

What a great day in the studio yesterday! Nat and I were joined by Trevor Garrod and Reed Mathis from Tea Leaf Green and Dave Brogan from ALO. We laid down the music for Cougar and the title track, City by the Bay.

I love playing with all those guys and the whole process went smoothly. Turns out I only live 2 blocks away from Trevor and Reed so we were able to have a good rehearsal the night before going into the studio.

Olympic Motivation

Happy Monday! I like to say that because it makes me sad to hear the radio announcer say, “All righty, folks, it’s Wednesday at noon….we’re halfway there!!”

Every moment is such an opportunity to breathe deep and cherish life. We can’t look at our lives as a mere continuation of grade school; waiting for recess, lunch, and the weekend to experience any sense of joy at all is a waste of the life force permeating in our veins, begging to be used.

Exploring, Exploring

Happy Friday!

I’ve had an eventful few days in San Francisco and the North Bay. On Wednesday I visited my band mates as they played with their friend Jesse in a cool formation. Jesse plays tabla and saxaphone. They were performing at a cool, funky cafe called the Bazaar Cafe on California. I took a pic from the audience.

mystic backstage

fiddlin’ for the folks

mystic theatre

rapt crowd

tabla trio

Golden Gate Park

Hi there! I had a great day today that combined my favorite things: violin practice, exercise, reading, and watching sports! I’m a big Olympics fan and get inspired from watching athletes try to peak under pressure. Seeing humans deal with victory and loss in a pressure cooker environment is educational indeed.

I’m trying to put together a couple of concerts around the Bay Area based on my new CD that involve musicians who are part of the recording. I hope to have an announcement soon.

Getting There! (Roughly!)

Hi friends!

I’ve decided to give you an idea of what a couple of tunes are sounding like.
Please keep in mind these are FAR from being done and in both cases have missing instruments and vocals.

The first clip is from a tune called “Missoula to Miami”and you’re hearing James Nash on guitar and Joe Kyle Jr. on bass, both from The Waybacks. Erik Yates plays banjo and I play the mandolin. There is a missing fiddle part, which will add alot I hope!

The second clip is from a tune called “Rocketship,”

Whew!!!

Hello Everybody!

It’s been a productive week and I feel great about the direction things are going so far.
We’ve got 7 songs in the works after 6 days in the studio. There have been 11 musicians involved up to this point.

Waaaayyyyybaacckkk!

Bluegrass day in the studio! So much fun to pick with Erik, James, and Joe Kyle Jr. today! We started off with “Late Bloomer” and, just like I knew, the swing was in the air! I can’t wait for y’all to hear the great picking that went down today. Some truly mind boggling music making that carried over to my tune, “Missoula to Miami.”

Studio Day 3

Hi, Everyone!

Emotional day in the studio yesterday as I sang all 4 songs that we’ve recorded so far. No pics unfortunately because it was just Armando and I and we were both busy!

I’m pretty happy with how the vocals turned out, and today I turn to my mandolin and fiddle.

Day Two in the Studio

Another day in the studio yesterday, with 2 more songs taking shape!

We worked for a solid 10 hours today and were able to record much of “Rennaisance Woman” and “Song about Rio.” Two very different tunes played by the same musicians. There were two carry over players from the day before; Chris Haugen and Mike Sugar.

First Day of Recording!

Hi! What a great first day in the studio yesterday!

Armando and Betty, our engineers, set up the studio like the pros they are and after a couple run-throughs of the tunes we started rolling. The rehearsals we had before the studio day helped alot and we were able to record both “Apple of my Eye” and “Rocketship” and be done by about 6 pm.