Thoughts
Everything from music to food, fitness and being present in the world.An open letter to School District 2, Billings, Montana
I’m puzzled. I hear you are planning on cutting 5th grade music in Billings. I don’t understand why music must always be on the chopping block. Music is a business as much as any other field. In 2018, the recording industry alone reported revenues of $19.1 billion....
Stretches for my friends
There's nothing like being on the road for a month to remind you of your humanity. Long flights, hours in a car, setting up gear, playing concerts, breaking down gear, eating what you can find along the way, and not getting enough sleep can wear on your body. When...
Song Insight: We Three Kings
Here's your extra bonus insight. Thanks for following along on this journey. I moved to San Diego in 1992 to attend the University of California, San Diego for graduate school. My bass teacher, Bertram Turetzky, hooked me up early on with the talented Keeling...
Song Insight: Angels We Have Heard on High
Pamela York is probably my closest friend from those San Diego days. We met shortly after she moved to town and we hit it off immediately. We would meet once a week to work out new material, challenge each other to expand our repertoire, and eat lunch and...
Song Insight: Silent Night
In my Los Angeles days, Todd Johnson and I played a bunch of duo concerts and even made a tour together in the Pacific Northwest. This wasn’t your typical duo because Todd plays 6-string electric bass. He could do all the melodies, chords, and bass lines without...
Song Insight: Count Your Blessings
This song comes from Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas”. It gets counted as a holiday song because of the show, but I think the theme is good all year round. I also want to give some kudos to Magnus Hjorth. He plays ever so elegantly on this track. He has two little...
Song Insight: Christmas Will Really Be Christmas
I'm back to Lou Rawls again. He was such a badazz. This song is really a theme from the 1960's where issues of social justice were at the forefront of people's minds. I think the message is just as relevant today as it was back then. We need to take good care of...
Song Insight: Christmas Will Really Be Christmas
Lou Rawles sang this song in 1967 on his album Merry Christmas. Ho! Ho! Ho! This was right in the middle of the civil rights movement in the United States. There was a lot of social unrest and people weren't very kind to each other. Thinking about the turmoil...
My American Holiday Tradition: Creamed Corn
I was hanging out in Las Vegas at some point in the early 2000's, and I had dinner at Piero's. Just walking into the restaurant, you feel like you've entered a movie scene where the Rat Pack is hanging out or there is some "Sopranos" action going on in the back....
Song Insight: Snowbound
Traveling back to Montana for Christmas 2017 was an adventure. I almost couldn’t get out of the state because there was so much snow. (My flight was delayed by over nine hours waiting for planes to land.) I heard that they even set records for the most snow ever...
