I am glad to be near the ocean and playing some really good shows with Josh Blake and Tony Black in down in the Folly Beach area for four days.Last night was at Awandaw Green.It was packed and welcoming.
I just spent the last week in NYC playing incredible gigs ,solo gigs, and spending so much time alone,which is great, I just love having an even balance of band gigs and solo gigs, although I think I love the band gigs more.
When I’m walking down the street I can hear the subway stop announcement through the grates in the sidewalk.
It’s a little wierd and reminds me of something from 1984 or something where there is a loudspeaker spitting a voice out over the streets with mains altering propaganda, but it’s just the sub way stopping at the burgen street station.
I am in Brooklyn Ny sitting in a friends apartment listening to it rain and wondering what I will do with myself this evening.Today is the Chinese New Year so I am going to venture over to China Town for sure.I’d be remiss not too.
I am blessed,lucky,loved I could keep going.
I have quite a few shows up here this week and I am ready to tackle the Big Apple, I am hungry !!!! I am going to write a lot while I am here because I have so much time to do so and this place really sparks my creative juices and opens me up.There are so many different sounds and sights and of course if you pay attention it’s everywhere you go,in the woods or city it doesn’t matter.Life and Love and the world will practically scream at you if you are listening to it and there is a big big difference between LISTENING and hearing.It’s easy to see.
I just started tracking out ideas for a new album when and wherever I can.I have been pretty prolific over the last year and years too you could say.I have been writing with another person and it’s been coming along great.it’s a really natural thing and very open.I let my guard down and opened myself up to the joyous possiblities of sharing music and allowing other people to make something new and put the ego away for the sake of creating and creativity.It’s a hard line to tow sometimes as a song writer.It’s not so much fear or selfishness at all but it’s just really personal.Creativity and Beauty are combustible.
Winter is a beautiful time for reflection and to back up and push if you need to so I am making full use of this time and what it’s offering me.I feel very energized lately and excited like I am looking forward to something big,I feel that way most of the time even if the something big isn’t quite what I wanted it to be,but I mean I feel more like a kid waiting for a birthday or X Mas. You know it’s gonna be good,really good,and that’s all you know to expect.
To all my family and friends I owe such a deep and boundless debt of gratitude to you all for helping me get where I am wherever that is.I am glad to be there. Wherever I am you are all always as close to me as my heart.
Let’s see what tonight and tomorrow bring.I know it’s gonna be fantastic !!!!! Happy Chinese New Year !!!!!!!
I am in Brooklyn Ny sitting in a friends apartment listening to it rain and wondering what I will do with myself this evening.Today is the Chinese New Year so I am going to venture over to China Town for sure.I’d be remiss not too.
I am blessed,lucky,loved I could keep going.
I have quite a few shows up here this week and I am ready to tackle the Big Apple, I am hungry !!!! I am going to write a lot while I am here because I have so much time to do so and this place really sparks my creative juices and opens me up.There are so many different sounds and sights and of course if you pay attention it’s everywhere you go,in the woods or city it doesn’t matter.Life and Love and the world will practically scream at you if you are listening to it and there is a big big difference between LISTENING and hearing.It’s easy to see.
I just started tracking out ideas for a new album when and wherever I can.I have been pretty prolific over the last year and years too you could say.I have been writing with another person and it’s been coming along great.it’s a really natural thing and very open.I let my guard down and opened myself up to the joyous possiblities of sharing music and allowing other people to make something new and put the ego away for the sake of creating and creativity.It’s a hard line to tow sometimes as a song writer.It’s not so much fear or selfishness at all but it’s just really personal.Creativity and Beauty are combustible.
Winter is a beautiful time for reflection and to back up and push if you need to so I am making full use of this time and what it’s offering me.I feel very energized lately and excited like I am looking forward to something big,I feel that way most of the time even if the something big isn’t quite what I wanted it to be,but I mean I feel more like a kid waiting for a birthday or X Mas. You know it’s gonna be good,really good,and that’s all you know to expect.
To all my family and friends I owe such a deep and boundless debt of gratitude to you all for helping me get where I am wherever that is.I am glad to be there. Wherever I am you are all always as close to me as my heart.
Let’s see what tonight and tomorrow bring.I know it’s gonna be fantastic !!!!! Happy Chinese New Year !!!!!!!
Every time I hear Johnny Winter I am sure he is certainly my favorite guitar player but then Jeff Beck or Merle attacks will pop up and I change my stance everytime.
I am just grateful there are so many great musicians in the world.
That’s a holiday in itself.
So here’s to Johnny, and Jeff and Merle and Earl King.
Happy Holidaze and peace on earth
This makes 6 days on the road and today finds me in Brooklyn and I have a show tonight.
I was in Becket Mass this past weekend hanging out with Johnny Irion and Sara Lee Guthrie.They are incredible folks with a beautiful family.We played and ate and sang and I can’t remember being treated any better.The people at The Dream Away Lodge and The Mission Bar in Pittsfield were so into the tunes and very appreciative.I am just getting started to get used t people actually listening to me and not having to fight to be heard.
I am tired and sleepy but still hard at work with the website emails and all that stuff,but happy to do it.
So my manager (that’s with a capital M) told me ,informed me,warned me , …… that I hadn’t written a blog post in quite some time.
“why would I ?”, I sheepishly asked,” who is interested in my boring life ?”
“Me !!!!! ” came the reply . And so here I go.
It’s always best to start where ever you are if you intend to start something.
Here is a quick look into what’s been going down………
…….. I am getting ready to play Downtown after 5,a big local festival type show.It’s really exciting. It’s nice to have these things to look forward to and have the life that I do.I work hard and people work really hard with me,doing things for me, but I feel extremely blessed and and very gratetful for the people and things in my life.I played Bonnaroo,I got a guitar stolen there but I felt like it was right and like I made a sacrafice for all the good things I had and have to come.
Today is my oldest brother’s birthday ,so Happy Birthday Mike.
I have had a very fun weekend.I actually got to go to a show.I went and saw Kellin Watson at her cd release party and I had a wonderful time.The sound was great and The Pisgah Brewery is a great venue.Kellin sounded beautiful and the band was a stellar group of Asheville’s finest.
I met some really good folks at Asheville’s first liquor (or likker ) distillery.Troy and Sons Distillery.We were sent with two bottles of batch 819.I have to say I love seeing someone enjoy and perfecting their craft and they have done it.We took the moonshine back home after Kellin’s release and passed bottle and guitar around,singing Hank Williams songs with Caleb Caudle and members of the band The Love Language.
My good friend and band pardner Josh Blake and his awesome lady, Marissa, got married and I played a song that Josh wrote for her,during their first dance.I have been asked to do a lot of awesome things in my life.That was pretty damn awesome.They are an inspiring family.
I am feeling very creative.I am writing more and more and just really becoming free in my mind and my life.Jessica (my manager with a capital M ) and I work extremely well together and we share things like music and art and people with each other.She brings a lot to my life not just business wise but all the way around.She brings a comfort, fullness and contentment that an artist needs to reach their full potential.
I am about to be going on another tour up north this summer and then to the coasts of NC and SC and then back to NOLA for some touring and recording.
I don’t get a lot of time to see my family and friends but I take them everywhere I go.
I am going to Nashville in a few days to put the last and final finishing touches on this album I’ve been working on for about a year now.It’s been a little bit here and a little bit there,wait a while and then do a little more here and a little more there.I think since I had to spread it out due to money and time issues I had so much more space to live with the songs .I didn’t get t tour with a lot of them because I wasn’t touring too much and amore than a few of these songs are really new.
Everything is about to change because nothing stays the same and it can only get better even and especially if it gets worse, right?
All I know and can do is keep playing music.
don’t waste time that you’ll never get back on a phony state of the union address.let me save you the trouble.the union (i thought we were a democracy..not even that a ,but a republic.look up the definitions of all three,union,democracy and republic and what they have represented )the union(didn’t they fight the confederates?)the union is in a state of chaos and it has been for 200 years.if not,we wouldn’t be where we are now.It’s been a faulty system since the day it started.
There is no one politician at fault.They are ALL at fault and SO ARE WE! We get the government we deserve.Barrack lies,Little Boy George Bush lies,little Billy Clinton lies.They are all liars in a profession of lies.I don’t need to keep going further back unless you need to be reminded of the two stolen elections in the last 11 years.
Fighting over party lines is a waste of more time you will never get back.greed is greed and hate is hate and the twain shall ever meet !!!!.There is no difference in republicans and democrats.Everyone is a little left and a little right depending on the issue.
We are we wasting billions of dollars killing folks who live in caves while the hungry here starve and the homeless here freeze and oil keeps being used up and the prices of it raised up.Alternative options are ignored by the mainstream because most folks are terrified of the least bit of change,even if it means a better life for people.Air is bad,food is bad,water is bad,people are strung out on pharmacuetical drugs while hemp is illegal and the holier than thou drug war rampages and spends billions more dollars that are better suited to feeding and treating folks for thier sickness and disease.Doctors pad their pockets and tell you what the drug companies want you to hear.Just take another purple pill.Side effects may include having to take another freakin purple pill !!!!
Free healthcare yeah that’s cool.But what about an economy that allows folks to eat AND go to the doctor.?How bout them apples? How bout forgetting about free healthcare and women and men who might marry other women or men and focusing on LIFE AND THE QUALITY OF LIFE !!!!!! There’s a concept for all you politically minded folks !!!!! Cause incase your text books left it out and you ain’t been paying attention ,politics and quality of life usually (not always) resembles oil and water.they do not readily mix.
Oh and religion? If your religious act like it.I don’t know of ANY religion that wants to control or conquer people.I know of people and systems who do.I know ,we all know of people who use these things to their evil advantage.
What could possibly be the reason we are still fighting a war with a third world country? The War on Terror? Ar you kidding me? Really ? Seriously ? As long as The Klu Klux Klan and any Nazi Arayan race bullshit orginization exists in this country in any shape and any number the “War on Terror” is a farce !!I Clean out your own closets,get rid of your own weapons of Mass Destruction!! EVILNESS AND GREED !!!!!! “Hate never conquers hate,only love conquers hate.”Sound familiar?What about”When someone strikes your left cheek offer him the right one as well.”War is a state of mind.Violence and death are the product thereof and we are ALL at war with ourselves our families and friends.
Even Islam ,yes Islam,which,much to the chagrin of the largest part of the western world is not a violent religion in it’s essence.Have you really PICKED UP a copy of the Koran and read it? With your OWN mind ? It teaches forgiveness and compassion,it teaches love and sacrafice.It is greedy and hate filled human beings,calling themselves “fundamentalists” who take these beautiful ideas ,the threads of all the worlds beliefs and philosophies,and truths and turn them into murder weapons for their own causes (see the crusades).If you’re a Christian do you wanna kill abortion doctors? Is that a cold hard fact about Christians,they all wanna shoot abortion doctors? If you are against religion ,fine that’s great too.Just can’t we do what we do and shut the fart up about what everybody else believes? If you ain’t killin yourself or anyone else what could be wrong ?
speaking on killing,killing in the name of God ? What about politics in the name of God? What about shopping in the name of God? Isn’t that the way most folks spend the brunt of their Sundays? That might say more about the sad,sad,sad ,sad ,sad state of being an American (whatever that means) than your religious beliefs. How bout touchdowns in the name of God ? How bout Winston Cup Challenges in the name of God? I ain’t calling right or wrong, just being observant.How bout God’s chosen Super Bowl ? Everybody worships something.Politics equal God to most pe(westerners)ople.Yes ,I meant to type it that way.
America and the IDEA of America is God to most people. Our “government”is God to most folks.Americans idolize American idols,sports and music and tv stars,teachers,preachers,books,you name it we’ll throw an idol at it.Idols are empty representations,and faulty representations I might add, of an image we can’t project and wish we could.We wanna be super but have been told too often by our own culture (politics,religion,western society) that we are ugly and bad seeds and are born from sin.
They are all false.That is all false. Be it words or sounds.Whether it’s an idea or a living breathing thing.We are all creators with each moment being pregnant with the next.What’s real and worth worshipping(whatever that means)? I am only asking …..
What is the point in arguing morality and arguing right and wrong?we ALREADY KNOW WHAT”S RIGHT !!!!! Is universal health care right or wrong ? I don’t know and I don’t care !!!! But compassion and equality and love and sharing ARE right !!!! These things alone will take care of healthcare !!! Is Gay marriage right or wrong ?WHO CARES !!!! Untill it becomes the right to kill people I am only concerned with the evil workings I create in my own life and ridding myself of those demons and I urge all the world to do the same. I already know that equality,love ,understanding and compassion are right and divisive issues will fade and disappear beneath them !!!!!! And it is so much easier that way !!!
Judge not lest ye be judged !!!!! Do unto Others as you would have them do unto you !!!!! Sound familiar ? But this is not how you get ahead in business and government and issues of power and money !
Remember what good ole Thomas Jefferson ( a bona fide slave owner) said.”Any one willing to give up freedom for security deserves neither.Who was it that said all men were created equally? With certain inalienable rights? Truths that are held to be self evident? What is evident about your true self in these “Truths” these “great” “men” spoke and speak of ?
Like George Carlin says,”The American dream…it’s a dream because you have to be asleep to believe in it !!!”
Trust your neighbors and yourselves.not a bunch of elitists that care nothing about you.
Remember that Martin Luther King JR was assassinated exactly a year to the day he spoke out against Vietnam and called the government we had at that time out, as a fraud and a lie and urged people to give up false ideas and work with one another. Look his April 4th 1967 speech on youtube.He did’t need a political seat to change the world.He put himself in harms way for the sake of all folks black or white or whatever.Sounds like Buddha and Jesus to me.More bald longhair civil rights activists.Strung Jesus up,Poisoned Buddha,shot Martin Luther King AND Malcolm X and John Lennon too (but that’s another post for another day) and the same will happen to any one who threatens the status quo.
There is the state of the union right there brothers and sisters. I am sorry if i have offended anyone but ,sometimes your up and sometimes your down.Somedays you’re the fly and somedays you’re the frog.
But hey ,what do I know? I am just a stupid musician from western North Carolina who is commonly mistaken for a homeless bum…So forget about silly ass speeches, and spend that time with people you love doing the things you love.Life is short.Keep your eyes open.
Besides, there’s always Netflix,and they don’t push commercials on you like the plague.!!!!! Peace out !!!!!
You find me on a beautiful Wednesday afternoon,in the early days of this fall listening to John Lee Hooker ,B.B. King , Buddy Guy …..I Smell Trouble is a great Buddy Guy track . I love me some Buddy Guy ……..lord I smell trouble ahead of me ……. you might smell it behind me too …..
what a summer man … i mean it’s been one hell of a ride all the way around. Been on the road ,managed to raise over $9000 in pre sales for the album, been on the go go go and i feel like a gypsy for sure .ain’t no rest for the weary .
The Kickstarter campaign was a success and only a success because of a lot of behind the scenes help from friends and family and people who believe in me and the things that I am doing. Thanks to all of you for sure. And if you don’t know about it you should visit www.kickstarter.com and give it the rundown. It’s a beautiful thing.
I got to get ready for the month of October , because I am on the road for sure ..
Muddy Waters just popped up on the ipod player ….. now that’s the end of the search for me ,when it comes to the blues.Ok there will never be any end to the search for the blues. I guess I love the blues more than any other kind of music.I love it all truly love it all , but the blues is where i always find myself.
I have a lot of good shows with my awesome friends in Louisville KY . I ‘ll be headed there to do some shows on the 7 th of October. I am gonna be doing a show to celebrate the life and birthday of Tim Krekel.
Tim was a great friend and mentor .He was a fabulous guitar player and songwriter .He was the original guitar player for Jimmy Buffet’s Coral Reefer Band and wrote more than a few number one songs himself.
The very next week I’ll be headed down to another legendary musical town , New Orleans !!!! Man oh man I am so excited about that for sure !!!!!!!! I’ll be doing my Thing at from the 14 th to the 18 th .
I get to rest a little the next week and stay close to home.I’ll go back to the old hometown of Statesville NC for the Statesville Balloon Ralley on October 23 rd , but then head out east to Greensboro ,Durham , and Chapel Thrill NC the last week of October , and then I’ll be hunkering down into the studio.
I ‘ve got a week of shows planned in NYC for the last few days of Nov. thru the first few days of Dec. and a lot more things in the works that you will be hearing about soon.
As always check out the website for all the delicious details.
I am starting pre production on the album in October and will enter the studio the first week of November to finish that sucker !!!!!!!! Finally !!!!!!!!
I’ll talk to you folks soon.
AWW
