Decided I don't use my myspace enough and that I should, so here's whats been going on. Right now I'm sitting in the store - stealing my internet from Flying Pie - jotting things down. Just took my meds for the day and woke up late (this is called normal for me-All apologies due and redeemable in the end term although everyone will find their own judgement day for themselves without any spiritual being other than themselves to help ((in my belief)). Honesty is a catch-22 so check out if I get too "Real" - figuratively of course....

We're about to have to change things here in the store again for our own survival. The economy is the economy and I just lost a student to a new Gibson SG - so whats new? (Parents couldn't afford both - he chose the guitar) but I saw two Les Paul's this month already (Thanks Simms....You're clearing house sale of expensive guitars in a troubled economy flooded the market... as long as the guitarists are happy...)

Renwick - my dear lovely cousin heads up to Ashville next week and sill definately be missed. She's been my best friend through the worst of times and the best of times. Here's hoping she becomes rich and famous and longs for nothing.

Friday was the Flying Pie anniversary and a great reunion with old and new friends, good music and festivities. Spent money outside my budget to keep up. Love that Jacked up mac, just can't afford it.... Splurges.

Saturday I locked myself into the recording room and laid down tracks to 2thaC all night long till dawn and then started cleaning up So Deeply. We won't be making the sut for Oktoberfest, but the Cd release will be ASAP - we can't afford to hold on to that art anymore.

Over the summer two ex-girlfriends gave birth to two beautiful children (not mine I might add for clarification) so - cheers and daggers in my heart right, but my heart lies along a different path and I have friends that take bullets for me everyday in the cause of my freedom. Thanks and muhahaha....

Dad saved the store again with another loan. Its amazing to me how much money passes through the store - is currently on the wall in inventory and yet still we don't have all the accessories we need. Sometimes I hate money (or the lack thereof). So I'm working on intellectual property to try and use some of it to make money....

Sunday missed lunch with my folks at the Zoo - been sleepin too much lately or too late. Going back to the Shack soon. I have stuff to fix and people to see and things to play.

Hoping the Halloween fundraiser gets underway for the Ritz, that someone waves a magic wand and turns Newberry into Ashville or bring Los Angeles a little closer to me. Amen brothers and sisters.
MAZES - Coming Soon....

Nearing completion of the Mazes and Monsters CD for the planned March release. Just a few more tracks to lay down and it will be off to the presses. Hoping, just in time for the Irish Fling here in Newberry. Many of the songs have serious spiritual significance across the board - Songs from the Blithe, Aestatis, Passage, and Fountainhead days with new, funkier spins as well as some more recent tunes that haven't been released.

This album is the story of my life thus far as a microcosm - with the ending being a new beginning...a very delicate time.  Many of these songs were written or are performed with specific friends, lovers, enlightenments and experiences in mind.

Some tune notes:

Ocean's Child - Written with Aelacia Duke in Aestatis, there is an idealic view of love this song presents, an ideal that typically doesn't last forever.

Don't Cry - Written during the Aestatis period... it is a plea for the inevitable to not happen.

2thaC - From the Aestatis and Passage, this song calls into reflection the dicotomy of the natural world versus technology and the longing to be free and devoid of civilization.

Constellation - Written for Aelacia, this song came in a Saturday morning brainstorm around a drop double D tuning with a Capo on the fifth fret over the top four strings (I thought it looked cool) This  love ballad asks the eternal question about love in perception - how do you know that what you feel is what I feel...

Unity - From the Blithe days, Unity is a dreaming song - chasing your dreams, planning on how it will be someday, and yet it runs around in circles. It reminds me of the freedom one experiences in a new relationship, when all else seems less radiant because of the brightness of the light of the heart.

Annabelle Lee - This classic Poe poem relates a tragic story that anyone who has lost love can relate to. The kingdom by the sea could be analgous to the deep subconcious domain we hold inside ourselves and consider home, yet even within our darkest corners the winds and angels of change are in pursuit.

Racecar - Lyrics by Buffy Summer, this tune was written in the Fountainhead project. How timid we all are to love once we've been hurt, but we all need others in our lives. A person needs new experiences.... otherwise something sleeps deep within us and seldom awakens.

Drivin and Cryin - Lyrics and music from the Fountainhead era, Drivin and Cryin was written on the last retreat to the mountains. Its theme of time - future versus past - and how we must deal with experiences and feelings we can't plan for is a reminder to be aware of the ever present opportunities we all have everyday to change our perspective and our lives.

Monkeys - Written on the first Fountainhead retreat, Monkeys is about running the rat race, the day to day feelings of being dragged around by circumstances of work, relationships, education, and the demands others place upon us.

Come into Me - Written during the Blithe days for Ashley Crout, Come into Me is a longing song that presents the perspective of jealousy. The need to possess the one person is depressive because it considers any extra-cirricular relationship, which might be needed in the other person's life journey, to be a betrayl of trust.

Greed Disease - Written after viewing Michael Moore's Farenheight 911, this "political" song more tries to address the current war from a perspective of your average American - hurt and abused by a money system they didn't create or necessarily support. Common sense - greed is the root of all evil.

Stuart - Written while possessed with the spirit of one of my most intelligent and talented guitar students... Stuart Leslie. I was driving back from my lesson with Robert Newton in Columbia and a line came into my head, "We are one, us and we - whats good for you isn't good for me." When I arrived at the store, Bridgett Wease told me Stuart was gone - he had passed away. That night I stayed up late and couldn't stop writting this song (Stuart was with me). I only wish for the time that escaped us....

Tango de Bird Roja - Written for tango dancer and Argentian writer Clara Mengolini, who was the best of friends in one of the best of times.

Follow the Leaves - Written in Cafe Espresso in Columbia, this song flowed out of me effortlessly about the same time my high school drama teacher Steve McCutcheon passed away. I burned the original lyrics over his tombstone in Rosemont Cemetery, and although I didn't have a chance to play it for him, to me its always Steve's song. Your deeds have been done, your time it has come, to follow the leaves as they fall.

A' Helen on a Saturday Morning - Obviously written on a Saturday morning for my first valentine, Helen Pope. I originally scored it for piano and string quartet, but absolutely love this revamped technofied version.

Plans within plans. I see fifteen tracks of music that doesn't really sound like anything but Munson Music.

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For me - in beginning a music student, my first goal and my first lesson is to try and teach a love of the subject matter. If someone loves playing, then everything else seems to fall into place. In every education treatise from Plato and Aristotle to the present the arts have always been included. Music, Art and Drama are art forms which express the unexpressible - and when people do not have an outlet for their emotions in this world, bad things happen - good citizens turn self-destructive and create negative energy in their lives, the lives of their families and friends.
So - where are we and how did we get here? From a musical point of view - I participated in every concievable musical activity I could get my hands on growing up - my mother especially fed a love of music - from the first time I ran around the dinning room table singing jingle bells at the top of my lungs I was hooked! From church chorus to school chorus - recorders to drums - summer camp guitar experiences - friends of the family - my uncle jammin - high school band, yet through all of these experiences the main goal was always some performance for some event, not - an understanding of the art form to create your own art. This is sad and unfortunate, but also something deep in tradition and I hold no grudges because my teachers tried to teach me what they could. The tragedy would be if I, the artist and composer I am chose not to pass on the writing craft to my students.
What is sad however, is a loss of the arts in the schools - budget cuts, time considerations, scheduling - you can invent as many excuses you want to destroy something you don't deem necessary - and it seems, due to the emphasis on testing for funding this is happening all around us. It is sad when your music education classes have to spend time on how you will justify your position in the public schools, because they know it is the first thing administration will try to take away. Not to downplay, but when was the last time there was a hint of discussion about eliminating sports? I got a letter from Newberry College last week asking me to help them buy T-shirts for their team. I don't ever remember the band asking the basketball team for money when I was in college or high school or ever. Its ridiculous.
When I was in high school here I had a grand opportunity to have band, art and drama as activities, but these really had more to do with the teachers in the disciplines who cared than something the school administration was encouraging. Steve McCutcheon was my drama teacher, who got no extra pay to stay after school until midnight making stage props for our productions. He was the english teacher. Lorraine Paris was my band teacher, who taught us more self-discipline than any ROTC instructor can imagine (wanna fight? bring it on) and we called band camp Paris Island for a reason! I had friends who took art classes and loved them, but I - the artist I was was attracted to music first and due to scheduling couldn't place in one of the classes. The wierd part is - I pay my bills teaching skills I never learned in high school - but it was there I found the encouragement to continue on my path. That there was something I had to offer.
Consider the history of public education here in the United States for a moment....
1)We were an agricultural state that needed child labor in the summer, so we still have our children out of school in the summer, even though retention of material would be greatly increased if we had more of a europen model (6 weeks on - 1 offish)
2) Our culture is largely amused by sports - football, basketball, baseball that we place great effort and resources in - and many would argue and rightfully so that more money is made on high school football than any other activity. The flip side is - an extrememly small percentage of those who are in this activity will make their livings upon it - and even if they do become professional it will wear a serious toll upon their bodies. So when it comes to music activities in publice schools, the eyes and ears immediately go to the musical presentations at such events - marching band, pep band - which have no correlation to students understanding the subject material - rather they have been trained to perform, not create.
3) If you have a system that rewards test scores (No child left behind) it rewards schools who have money already (the ones who make the highest scores get the best teachers and the best resources - its no wonder they continue to do well) So poorer areas coninue to have bad scores - its a no brainer that the system is slanted and teachers in a poor district will find a way to get their kids to a better one (new house here=better education for my kid=commuting teacher to another district)
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My point here really is that the education system is messed up, and that there is a seperation from the people who run it to the kids who are trying to live in it that defeats them all. How many kids do drugs after school between 3 and 5pm? How many teenage pregnacies occur before mom and dad get home from work? If the school system is supposed to help kids - then it should help them! Why can't some teachers come in later in the day? Kids don't have to milk the cows in the afternoon the same way they used to (OK - some of them do....We do have an Egg and Dairy Festival here in Newberry - home of the Eggoid Watertower) but our school system should adapt! AB scheduling simply doesn't work because you have kids that can't take everything they want to. Scheduling music classes first as a rule would allow all those kids to get into one class together (which on the high school level really is important and administrators don't seem to get it - scheduling can destroy a music program before one class has been taught and this is no fault of the teacher - its a fault of the administration.
So...
So it goes....
I see my alma mater - no drama program, a band a tenth the size it was when I was in it, an art program? Who knows. When I student taught at Gilbert they had a drama program, an art program, a band program, a chorus program, and an orchestra program and their school was smaller than Newberry. I think of the history in this community when we had a band for every mill here - the Newberry College band under Chief Pruitt bringing in the hottest stars of jazz nationally right here. We had one of the first women band directors in the state, who started teaching here in 1947 and didn't really stop till she passed away. That is dedication to bring precious art forms to the people of this community. And then I see a few people, who don't have a clue about the history - no clue about where kids are - they see test numbers and budgets, and they create a vision of the world where some of these kids will live and die in a job at Walmart always hoping they could have done something more - something they loved once upon a time, but the opportunity wasn't there, or the right teacher wasn't there, or the funding wasn't there - and then we'll wonder why these people go crazy and kill people and steal or do drugs or get into a situation with children where they don't have a choice but to keep running the rat race to pay the bills. Whose fault is it if not the one's who kept the doors closed - who knew about the problems, but didn't change theing s to make them more accessible - those who kept these kids ignorant of a subject matter that might have changed their life forever. I was lucky - and I want to empower those kids - those people - who want to learn how to express themselves in a positive way. That was my rant and rave on the Ruins of the American Education System here. I see good people who get into it - and after years of trying to better the kids - they get fed up. And... I have a simple solution if they want to really help kids.
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There should be a computer that any high school kid (or anyobody for that matter) could walk up to, pass a test, and walk out with a high school diploma.
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It doesn't make sense its seasonal. Ceremonies can still happen when you want, but... That way all your smart kids could get the hell out and you could help the kids who need your help. I know for me - my second year of high school I'd have been there everyday passing off units to get it. I hated it - the monotony of it all - getting a concept in five minutes and sleeping for fifty minutes and passing the class with a B. What a waste of time most of it was. Many would argue social skills - but they don't teach you social skills in school, they teach you passive do what I say now skills that haven't applied since the industrial revolution. Noone has a job like that, and if they do they'll soon be replaced by a machine that can do the same thing for less and with less backtalk. If only education was about educating, and if only the people educating weren't quite so stupid about what is good for the kids. I remember Ms. Paris used to be at the school until six or seven every night. Band kids could hang out and practice or talk or discuss or do homework in the band room. Now its all about illusion I guess. Make it the parents problem or something. Its the kids that really need your help that will tell you they don't. The kids that have issues that will keep them hidden. The kids that act up that need you to discipline them. The kids are telling you what they need - you just have to listen. In the mean time, as they cancel and destroy the programs I think are important we'll just try and incorporate them into my school/business model. Now we're offering Drama, Art, and Music - maybe next year it will be Chemistry, Creative Writing, and Physics seeing as how they aren't on any test for funding. Lord forbid all those administrators with six figure salaries adjust their income to give something to the kids that they need....

What Goes Around Comes Around....

MORNING
"Morning has broken, like the first morning...blackbird has spoken, like the first bird."
My first public school music experience was singing along with Cat Stevens... on vinyl. And later that year we learned how to play christmas carols on recorder.
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My freshman year of college - when the snow was deep, class was a mile away, when playing guitar in the warm dorm room seemed more important than making class, when the guilt of not doing well made me just want to kill myself - there was still my guitar, still the music and the first album I picked out - Tea for the Tillerman. The guitar and Cat saved my life - hands down, I would not be here now if it weren't for them... and now I pay the bills with my guitar talent, my music, my art... A talent and a skill I never had a high school class in... A performance degree on an instrument I had only been playing three years when I became a guitar major at USC with no formal lessons to speak of beforehand. I have Chris Berg to thank for taking me into the program... It blows my mind how lucky I was - to have found a career path unencouraged at times by the deepest of friends... the closest of family. Lucky I found the right people at the right time, but sometimes... that just seems to happen - if... if you're paying attention.

Wierd how life unfolds sometimes. Perhaps its the simple coincidences that are going to naturally happen, perhaps its Karma, perhaps its completely nothing at all. Rummaging through my stuff yesterday and I run across some old photos of old friends now married, encouraging letters from high school teachers now deceased, christmas ornaments from my senior christmas band party in high school, my diploma from USC. With each a different memory unfolds, a different emotion, a different time, a different me. Sometimes it becomes trash, which is I might mention is an important thing to do when something becomes meaningless or harbors that bad energy inside yourself. The energy is there - although it is sometimes easier to pile them away than to actually deal with them - on the wall or in the trash, where to put my strange little stash.... But, what was uncanny to me were the ideas that sprung into being as I slipped my fingers through these forgotten cards, objects, strange devices unused, wood stacked in the corner. How stupid I am, and stupid I was? To be me. What a cause. So as I look through a band letter from my junior trip to Mardi Gras with the Blue Brigade I find among my things a little fortune cookie slip - saved from the ashes of abuse by some caring years of luck. And on it - "You will stumble into your life's happiness." How true for me. From almost checking out from depression to being able to help kids on a daily basis to perform an art form - to express themselves, but my how I have stumbled. The timing just seemed exactly right. As did a reminder of all the hard work I put into a high school play from Steve McCutheon- my good friend and drama teacher in high school, as were scores of birthday cards of praise from Love, Mom and Dad and as were a letter of encouragement from Lorraine Paris my band director. Scores of memories - old and new - scents of perfume - memories of faces - dealing with the past can help us find the strength to face the future - but it was in those moments, there was so much energy. Perspective is never absolute. Experiences - I'd never trade for the world.

Kind of wierd - this world we live in. Invisible laws we feel compelled to break - and must - to grow.  At least thats the way it seems to me. I was looking for some supreme answer to the path of my life and BLAM there was a path I thought could be me - but it wasn't and the only person who could see it wasn't me was me - but thats the way it goes - Naivety breed naivety - God breed guilt of what we should be - but shouldn't we just accept the energy - the positive that is all around us? Why is it so hard to see our own divinity? Why is it so hard to accept the reality and throw out all the beautiful propaganda? Why do we pollute our minds with fear?
Am I afraid of living my life because of what other people think? Okay - I messed up a perfectly good marriage - I made stupid mistakes that effected people in a way I didn't want to have happen - but hey - thats freakin life man. You can't always get what you want - and what messes with my head is all the bull thrown in our heads from the media or our parents cultural model - or a million other sources that subconciously and conciously (loudly in fact) tell us we aren't happy unless..... Unless what? Unless we live our lives for ourselves? What are we waiting for? Why can't people just stop harrassing you and let you be yourself -
Just because I don't wake up at 8am and work a 9 to 5 doesn't make me an evil person. There is lots to be said for loving what you do - and that trumps making money in my book - although I do hope to break even one day - which means i need to make some money right? HA!
Think of all these silly things we deal with every day - we base our lives on them and around them and they aren't real. Time isn't real - its useful to measure time some way but it doesn't make it real - just because conveniently our bodies are adapted to a 24 hour day doesn't make it wrong to live a 48 hour life. There is so much potential - but its hard to motivate yourself when you have negative crap in your brain from all the media and familyu and friends that wish you were something else instead of being happy in accepting you for who you are. Okay - this is useful excuses right? Thats all it is. Me reacting to the crazy world I live in by living it up day by day - enjoying the community rewards of what I do. There has to be a point where it pays off right? Or do you have to conform? Thats what I faced in my marriage - conflicting views of what partners should be. I'm a big fan of companions - (thats that star trek thing that sucks out salt from people - or that firefly character who makes a living making dates) but in the end I would rather have friends I don't have to build walls around myself for - or conform to limits or be anything but acepting of the world and the people in it. Yeah - there are terrible people in the world that deserve to die - anyone who would abuse someone - hurt someone intentionally. I do a good enough job of hurting people unintentionally - I try to have pure intentions. There are literally too many paths and lives we live within our own time here - and the countess lives before and after - we are all part of one mass - one greater energy - but when people box me in, I guess eventually, regardless of what I want to be - I gravitate to my center - my lovely artistic keep your hands and minds off my frackin self. I love it - and I just have to accept that not everyone is receptive to people living their lives differently. Just hoping you get everything you want out of this life. The first thing that jumps into my head when some starts to tell me what to do - is that they should go do it themselves - my time and my work is more important to me than sacrificing myself to live the life they imagine for me.

Random thoughts of the day on the importance of realizing the NOW. Eckhardt Tolle is a great philosopher and spiritualist of our time (Oprah keeps his Power of Now next to her bed) and it is in his philosophy that he encourages the bliss of the NOW. As human beings in our search for understanding of our universe and ourselves continually define ourselves by where we have been and where we want to go, but the only time frame we have to effect is the everpresent NOW! For myself this has been a big perspective changer, because it helps me realize the divinity in the spirits of people I am with and it also helps me (by filling my NOW with learning experiences) to overcome the bounds of who I think I am and the bounds and contrictions I place on myself of who I could be. The truth is - like that beautiful Cat Stevens song - "If you want to sing out" - "You can do what you want - the opportunities on - and if you find a new way - you can do it today - you can make it all true - and you can make it undo - you - see."
We have to be ourselves - but that my friends can be anything you want - and more importantly - its who you want to be here in the NOW!
Be yourself - be in your NOW - NOW!

Thanks to everyone that made the sale Sunday go very well. Munson Music is more caught up than we have been in a while and looking forward to paying off all our inventory expenses in the long run. This week look forward to some Kansas Acoustic-Electrics entering the door as well as some more St.Louis merchandise.

We have the 747 and the Buddy Rich signatures in stock right now too! Our Halloween Party was much fun! So look forward to our Christmas Party Jam! December 5th 7pm-Midnight! Bring an instrument, bring a friend!
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OUR NEXT BIG SALE!
Day After Thanksgiving - Black Friday - 30% OFF EVERYTHING!
Open from 11am-7pm
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QUICK ANNOUNCEMENTS
CHRISTMAS MARCHING PARADE
We'll have this in our newsletter, but we're going to have a marching ensemble (guitars, banjos, basses, whatever) for all old and new students - sign up at the store but I'll bulletin info - if you're an old student, feel free to come! Much fun
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We will only teach the first three weeks of December, and our rates are going up to $15/lesson - so only $45 for December - $60 in January.
First Lesson Free - 803-405-0570
All Instruments and all ages! Come hang with us - Games, Sodas, Candy
M-F 11am-7pm //Sat 11am-5pm // Now OPEN Sundays  3-5pm
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With halloween coming, I wonder which has the most effect over mankind - reality, or the ghosts of ages past. To look into a mirror even now I see all those ghosts that I have been, and all the ghosts that haunt me - some literally, and some figuratively. Change can be difficult - although inevitable. Even in our resistance to change, we change. It is the one thing that is certain - uncertainty - and how does the mind combat? Invent ideas and concepts that are perfectly absolute - and also that do not exist in the real world. To make ourselves feel more comfortable we buy into an idea that things are solid, that the world around us is secure - and yet every day we deal with doubts and fears that would have us think otherwise - Our minds however are extremly conditioned - we have come to the point where an idea can be much more appealing than reality. The thought of something can be more rewarding than the real experience. In fact, we mislead ourselves into thinking about things on such a level, that we might even be dissapointed when that fire in our mind is acted out. Wierd huh? Food for thought. What ghosts are you fighting in your head?