Cerebellum Blues

Garage band. For real.

That's my Les Paul! It's being played by Jeremy, Son Of Cory, the man who located my old guitar for me and helped me negotiate a deal to buy it back. Rock out, Jeremy!

The heart is a lonely hunter, indeed.

That title, save for the ever-so-slightly glib "indeed" at the end, was written by Flannery O'Conner, a writer whose work is not very familiar to me.

AND I WAS AN ENGLISH MAJOR! Oh, the shame.

Anyway, I first heard this title in a writing class I took with of those highly annoying YOU CAN DO IT! type teachers, and over the years, it has stuck with me. I confess, I'm still not totally sure what it's supposed to mean, since I was too lazy to read the book, but for me it has come to signify that the artistic process -- discovering what's in your heart and expressing it -- is something to be done alone. And this has been a hard truth for me to swallow. Because as someone who suffers from depression, being alone is not a great place for me to be. And yet I LOVE writing songs. Cruel, no? To do the thing that matters most to me, I have to endure the thing that hurts me the most. Naturally, this situation has me feeling good, then bad, then good, then bad, then good... you get the picture. So I decided to write a song about it, a song that in the end has become less a song about discovering what's in one's heart, and more a song about living with depression. I'm not sure it's done yet, but here's what I've got so far:

Yo Yo
Written on The Maton (with special thanks to a long-lost friend of mine named Eric Anthon Eff, who wrote a lyric titled "Yo Yo Boy " back in the '80s)

Life pulls me up
Then drops me down
And I don't see any method to the madness

I try to be tough
I try to act like a clown
I try to keep from falling back into sadness

I take long walks
I try to meditate
And I talk and talk
But even drugs can't change my state (of mind)

I am like a yo-yo
Rising and falling
I'm just like a yo-yo
I'm not the one to hold the strings
I am like a yo-yo
Rising and falling
I'm just like a yo-yo
And every day it's the same old thing (for me)

Life gives me hope
Then leaves me twisting in the wind
And I can't see the rhyme or the reason

I try to cope
I try never to give in
But it's just like trying to fight a change of seasons

And I play my guitar
I call a friend
I take a drive in the car
But the ups and downs they never end (for me)

CHORUS

(MIDDLE 8)
And I walk the dog
And I sleep all morning long
Rock me baby
There's something wrong (with me)

Cause I'm like a yo yo (into solo over chorus)

(MIDDLE 8)

(CHORUS TO END)

Not a bad place to subject yourself to the torture of writing lyrics.

I don't really know what it's like for other songwriters, but for me writing good lyrics is hard. Almost as hard as writing good music. So I'm always on the the hunt for places that are fairly easy for me to get to and where plopping down with a pen and a notebook is about as comfortable and pleasant as it's ever gonna get.

Ages ago, I discovered the spot in the photo, which is located about four blocks up the hill from my apartment. To get to it, you have a trek a long, narrow set of stairs, and while the climb would certainly not be so bad for a healthy person, for me, the narrowness and the steep rise can bring on the vertigo in a bad way.

Lately, though, I've found a trick for navigating such passages that works pretty well for me: look down, never, ever, look up. Suffice it to say, now that I can get to this spot without ruining the rest of my day, I've been frequenting it quite a bit more. Oddly enough, though, despite the beauty of the setting, I find I get my best ideas either walking to it or walking from it. Weird. But, hey, even if I get nothing done, I certainly get a great view.

Les is once more.

Yesterday, I got a call from my friend Cory and his first words were, "I have your Les Paul." A HUGE, MONDO thanks to Cory for finding my old guitar and for opening the door to negotiations with the person who bought it from me back in the mid-90's. Stay tuned for more details and photos. Still in  a bit of shock...

Picturing the journey.

Ah, behold, for here, in all is RAW glory is the first photo I took with my fancy new camera, which I bought so that I could take better pics in the low-light world that is rock and roll.

Yup, I have a lot to learn.

But, thanks to the magic of Photoshop and the sheer amount of data in a RAW format photo, I was able to mine a nugget of fool's gold from my photo mud. Still not much of a shot, to be sure, but a sight better than the first one and full of promise for my future as a photomaestro.

By this weekend, I hope to have mastered at least some of the basic functions of my new camera, otherwise I won't be able to get glorious shots of the Mighty Mike Northcutt laying down some rhythm tracks. By April, I hope to be far enough along in my photomaking skills to shoot the cover shot for Toby Germano's album. Wish me luck. As you can see, I'll need it.

Setbacks.

Like most musicians who do a lot of recording at home, I have workspace issues, meaning, of course, finding enough space to do my work is an issue. Everywhere I look, drives drive me nuts, cables snake, USB interfaces get in my face and paper laughs at our paperless world. To make things ever so slightly better -- hey, I'm a realist, the problem is me, not my gear -- I bought a new desk, which I will fortify with yet-to-be-bought storage stuff. Sadly, however, as I was unplugging all of my gear so that I could remove the old desk and slide the new one into place, I had to get down on my hands and knees and wrestle with some electrical cords. Bad idea. Thanks to my ever evil cerebellum, I was soon in bed with severe vertigo and rising nausea. I tried to keep totally still, I closed my eyes, I breathed deeply, I thought of sandy beaches under a warm sun, all for naught. My confused vestibular system was convinced that I was at sea on a small fishing boat being hit by big swells. And no matter how completely obvious my utter lack of motion was, I was moving. Now, hours later, with my head resting comfortably on couch cushions and my feet propped on the coffee table, I am still feeling a bit more vertigo than usual. And it's discouraging. I mean, I banged my head over TWO YEARS ago. I cannot believe that the simple act of unplugging a few electrical chords could cause my so much discomfort. Ah, but it can. And so a day that I had intended to use to record a new tune, maybe even two, is lost, like so many others since my accident. Not to end on a downer or anything, but this sucks.

The coming rejections.

When I started my album project, I had no commercial expectations or even hopes really. But now that it's farther along and I've put so much time and effort into it, well, um, I can't lie, a little commercial success or other sort of recognition would be darn nice. And I'm bummed I feel this way. I don't want the pressure of pleasing others. And I surely don't want to have to open emails and letters from industry types only to read The Language of Rejection. Oh, we all know it. It's polite. It's encouraging. It tries so hard to feel personal. But it's a damn form letter, and it's a damn shame I seem to be setting myself up to receive a few.

If you have a free minute or two, here's a great post on Rejection from a blog called 37 Days, which I just discovered about 20 minutes ago and which "inspired" this post.

The latest news.

As I work through the recording process for my album, I'm just in absolute awe of the Beatles, in that they were able to work so quickly. In the time it's taken me so far, they could have completed about four albums -- they did, in fact, in 64-65 -- and I'm not even done with one yet. Still, I am more committed than ever to finishing this project, and here's where it stands:

• Music and lyrics for all tunes are done. I think.
• Bass and drums for all tunes are done. Might still do a bit of editing, but nothing major.

Next up, guitars, which will be handled by me, Toby Germano and Mike Northcutt. In fact, next weekend Mike is flying down from Seattle to lay tracks for 8 tunes (the mellower ones, Toby will do the real rockers), and I can't wait to see they guy. I met Mike in LA years ago at Musician's Institute, where we were both working on our chops and songwriting, Mike much more successfully than I! We also shared an apartment for awhile, where we drove the neighbors nuts with too much music. I'll post more about Mike after the sessions, but suffice it to say, I am excited and honored that he will be gracing some tunes of mine with his incomparable guitar playing.

Following the Northcutt sessions, I'll be sending off Coming Together (By Falling Apart) to The Man in Nashville, who will contribute a vocal, and, if I'm really lucky, a touch of guitar. Then Toby and I will record all the rockers, and with luck, by the end of March, I'll be far enough along to schedule singers, one of whom will be Toby.

I've still got my deadline penciled in for my birthday on June 27, but I'm getting a little nervous about being able to make that date. Stay tuned.

My next quest: Getting back my old Gibson Les Paul.

I confess, I'm not quite sure when this photo was taken, but if I had to guess, I'd say it was 1979, give or take a few years. That's my friend Toby Germano on the right, and that's me on the left, playing my long lost, but recently found Gibson Les Paul Standard. This was my first electric guitar. I bought it at Gelb Music with money I had earned doing a LOT of yard work for my parents. I played this guitar in my first band (embarrassingly called Pegasus, I think) and in bands to follow, but over the years, my trusty Les Paul lost favor to my Strat. In fact, by the mid nineties, it would not be an exaggeration to say that my Les Paul had spent well over five years in its case. Unplayed. Unloved. Nearly forgotten. Then one day I decided I absolutely had to have a 17" computer monitor or I would never get my advertising career really moving forward and I would die broke in a trailer park in Tuscon. So I sold my Les Paul to raise cash. My friend Toby (the same one in the picture) called me a fool, said I was making a mistake, urged me to reconsider. Oh, how I wish I had listened to him. He was right. In the years that followed that fateful sale, the Les Paul became an ever more distant memory, as I climbed the ad latter and tried to escape my trailer park fate. But in late 2006, a brain injury took me out the the ad game for a spell and gave me time to think and rethink some of the choices I had made. The choice to sell the Les Paul was high on the list, and the time has come to undo it. Thankfully, unlike my old Fender Bandmaster amp, I think I actually have a shot at getting my Les Paul back. The guy I sold it to still has it and might -- might, I say -- part with it. I will make him a fair offer. Wish me luck. And a HUGE thanks to my friend Cory for tracking down the guitar.

Hunting for my old Bandmaster, I find money's true worth.

My recent quest for my old Fender Bandmaster Amp really proves to me that there are some things money can't buy. And that's good. I'm glad the person who owns it didn't sell it to me. Even after I said, "Money is no object." Because I now know that my old amp is in the best possible hands: a devoted musician's. And truth be told, if he had needed the money desperately, he probably would have sold the amp back to me, but then how good would I have really felt? No, I was hoping my amp was in a collector's possession, sitting comfy in a closet somewhere, existing only to satisfy someone's ego. Because, then, I'm sure I could have bought it back, and with no guilt whatsoever. The whole ordeal reminds me of the time my friend Cory and I were at a Bob Dylan concert, perched on killer seats, thanks to the Man In Nashville. Some Silicon Valley types came up to us and said something like, "How much for the seats?" As though they could just wave money in our faces and compel is to part with our seats -- seats that were given to us out of generosity and a shared love of Dylan -- and see us on our way to the nose-bleed section. We told them no. Politely, too, which is surprising since they really were rude. But then, as now with my amp, money came up woefully short, and that's refreshing, because it shows that even in this world where just about anything can be had for the right price, some things cannot. Although, i gotta confess, if they had offered us $100,000 it would have been tempting! Actually, I say that, but if I had taken the money, I'd regret it now. That Dylan show was one of the best concerts I've ever been too. But back to my amp: I really only wanted my amp. I'm not going to go chasing down a pre-CBS Bandmaster, fun though that might be. This was never about getting a vintage amp. This was only about undoing a wrong I committed years ago. With luck, I'll be more successful with my old Les Paul.