Browsed by
Category: songwriting

Museday Mumblings (Vol. 76) – A Case of The Musedays

Museday Mumblings (Vol. 76) – A Case of The Musedays

Well, it’s a Museday. The last time I posted was in late September. Clearly life is having its way with me right now, as I’m not particularly inspired to even blather on here on the blog.

This series was meant to be almost a meditation – every Tuesday (or so) I’d post about some topic, whether it be musical or otherwise (but mostly musical), and it would keep me creating and creative. But a few things happened over the last year or so that really messed with my desire to share much of what’s going on with me publicly. People who are too sensitive. Beloved friends slightly younger than me who died suddenly. The tennis match-like back-and-forth of worthiness and worthlessness that is being a sensitive artist.

I desperately want to WANT to create. I desperately want to FEEL like people I depend on for music-related things are all on the same page. But time creates distance, distance increases anxiety, anxiety breeds worry, worry breeds resentment. I’m not saying anything is REAL about how I feel about the various things I’m doing or my relationships with music stuff, but it’s definitely making me feel less motivated in general, and kind of depressing me (and thus keeping me from working on stuff).

But let’s take stock. Let’s have ourselves one of them certified, Erin-phrase-coined “Gratitude Adjustments”:

In 2022, I played a PILE of wonderful shows with my boys in Chandler and The Bings. And I played my roles as bassist and singer well in the vast majority of them, which makes me very proud. We had a great bonding experience with our trip to Laredo that was only sullied by a bad stomach bug which led to the very first time I’ve ever left the stage to vomit…and then vomited off the side of the stage out of the view of the crowd. It’s quite a story that’s quite gross, and if you’d like to hear it, I’m happy to tell it in person.

My solo shows were mostly pretty good, and I was VERY consistent this year, basically playing every first Saturday except for July. I love the venue, the staff is wonderful, people tip very well, and I really need to grow this side of my musicianship. I think it would be good for my development to have some bigger crowds to play to, though. So I’m going to work towards that in 2023, stacking up the wonderful venue I already play and maybe even finding some more…

I got some very cool new gear and some of my existing gear got an AMAZING update that inspires me to play more, which is good. I keep meaning to make videos about the guitar and little amp, but that’s another casualty of life in general. Just hasn’t happened yet.

My body has held up pretty well considering I packed on an extra 15 lbs this year. Going to do my best to get that off in triplicate this year, hopefully by my birthday in September. That might be too tall an order, but progress toward healthy living is most important. My health is paramount and I need to stick around for my kiddos.

To close this out:

I am thankful that I can still do this music stuff.

I am grateful that my health so far has remained pretty good (gotta figure out the heart flutter, but…)

I am hopeful that I can stay disciplined and make the necessary changes to lead a more healthy lifestyle.

Now that this is turning into a “Goals” post – completely unrelated to the fact that it’s a new year, mind you – my goals are now to get healthy, get better at playing the songs I perform, get working on my ear training and theory knowledge, get the worthy songs I’ve written recorded, mix the old ones that were already recorded better (and improve the performances if necessary), get some new songs together, release some new music (having one song on the streaming platforms seems kind of sad), get my goddamn ass in gear in general, and get some MONEY.

That’d be nice, right? Rent is EXPENSIVE. Shit, everything is.

Anyway, thanks for reading and I plan to get back in this Museday Mumblings habit again. Have a happy day whenever you see this, and may you stay healthy and safe.

Peace be the journey!
TMS

Museday Mumblings (Vol. 68): Inspiration, Machines, Cranky Old Mofos

Museday Mumblings (Vol. 68): Inspiration, Machines, Cranky Old Mofos

My musical mission thus far in 2022 has centered on a few things: Playing good shows. Getting my gear all in proper operation. Learning how to use my new tools (patchbay, Behringer X18 mixer). Forming inspirations into ideas into actual songs.

I’ve succeeded at the good shows part – I played great in both of my Bings shows, and at times was so locked in with Jay every bit of both of our performances made the other’s even better. Excellent crowd in San Antonio, too.

My solo show was a bit hit or miss, working my way through my first on-stage slow-motion anxiety attack. I couldn’t get air, which made it extraordinarily hard to sing. Then, hilariously, I used the altered tuning feature on my Line 6 Variax to play Wonderwall with a “Capo” on the second fret, and promptly FORGOT TO CHANGE IT BACK! So the next group of songs (Drift Away, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Always Something There To Remind Me, I’m A Believer, No Such Thing, and Hey Jealousy) were all played a WHOLE STEP HIGHER than I usually play them. Which made the whole “not having any air” thing even worse. And made it so I didn’t even end up playing one of my “standards”, the Turtles underappreciated classic “Elenore”, because there was no way in HELL I’d be singing that chorus in F#. I literally just stopped the song and moved on. I felt like such an unprofessional loser, and it ruined my evening. I came home a ball of nerves, and I think mildly freaked my wife out. Being someone who’s more of a depressive than an anxious person, it always freaks me out when the stress hormones get rolling, and it’s hard to recover. I think a pharmaceutical would have been helpful (perhaps a Xanax), but I don’t have that stuff. In the end, the venue was happy, and if I’m being honest with myself, even though I was falling apart inside, I still sounded pretty dang good. Just not as good as I normally would sound. I am kind of glad I didn’t record this one, though.

Moving on to the technical stuff – using the wonderful substance Deoxit, in the past few months I’ve cleaned the pots and jacks on a bunch of my aging things and it’s brought them back to life, particularly my “first guitar” – which technically was my brother Robert’s first guitar – now all it needs is to have its nut glued in properly and it’ll be a fun little pseudo-Telecaster to bang around on. I also cleaned up the pots on my basses, bringing them back to proper function, and even rescued a presumed-dead guitar wireless by merely cleaning the output jack. All I need now are some new strings on some of these guitars and basses and we’ll be in business.

Speaking of guitars and basses, I sold one in December. A Dean ML bass (looks kind of like the guitar Dimebag Darrell from Pantera used to play). It never worked for me, and it was a four-string, so I wasn’t using it, it was basically just collecting dust, and since I only paid $49 for it on a blowout sale at Guitar Center over a decade ago, I still made money on the deal, selling it for $100. I probably could have made more off it, but I just wanted it gone and the dude seemed nice.

Last Thursday I had to head down to San Antonio for the day job and on the way home decided to pop by the Guitar Center down there, and discovered a two-pickup version of my “#1” Sterling by Music Man Ray 5 bass that I use in Chandler and The Bings. I couldn’t believe it. More than that, it was on sale for the same price as I picked the #1 up for back in 2018 (that model has since gone up in price, and this version was even more). I decided to snag it. I couldn’t help myself! Pics or it didn’t happen:

Picture of Ruby Red Burst Sterling By Music Man Ray5HH
She pretty.

It desperately needs new strings and a cleaning/set-up. But I already love it, and that’ll only make it more awesome.

Back in 2021 I got an amazing deal on a Behringer X18 mixer and am just now learning all the little things it can do. It’s going to be central to the new studio setup as I streamline and get things in order. It has amazing routing capabilities and some really cool built-in effects I can play with for doing live streams and stuff like that. This with the patchbay and my ATEM switcher will definitely enable me to do some really cool, interactive stuff from the studio in the future. I just have to get it all plugged up and learn how to make it all work together. I think my Edirol M-16DX, which has been my trusty studio sidekick for over 10 years now, will become the center of my live solo acoustic rig, making setting up and running all that much simpler, because it can live in a rack bag that I can keep set up and basically just plug my guitar and my vocal mic into it and still have effects and stuff I can use.

The last goal is inspiration – and translating that inspiration into new material. I’ve already written down multiple new ideas for songs – concepts more than phrases, really, but really good, inspiring starting points. And I’ve got a bunch more I’ve collected over the past few years that will be worked into songs. I might even use music that I liked from my old songs and replace the dodgy lyrical content with something based off these new ideas. (It won’t be the first time I’ve done that.) Time will tell for all of it.

I was listening to WTF with Marc Maron and his interview with John Mellencamp, and it was really fun listening to two cranky old motherfuckers talk about all kinds of stuff relating to John’s career, music in general, and how to exist on the planet. In fact, two of the aforementioned song ideas directly came to mind as a result of their conversation. So I’m already snagging that inspiration wherever it may show itself.

In summary, I’m excited for the new year at least as my musical experiences are panning out. I love learning new things and feeling energized when it comes to this stuff, so I’m very optimistic that if I make sure I’m investing time in this instead of sitting on my ass watching Rick Beato videos (not that those aren’t awesome), I’ll actually make some headway getting my shit together and creating things. I like the progress my friend Mandy has made with her dedication to live-streaming on Twitch, and I think maybe I’m going to try and make a Musical Schizo concert there a regular part of my week, once I decide on a day and time to do it and get more used to how all that live-streaming stuff works.

Thanks for reading, take care, be safe, and remember to love one another.

Peace be the journey!
TMS

2021 In Review…And A Look To 2022

2021 In Review…And A Look To 2022

The first quarter of the year was pretty lame. Not a whole lot going on that was new.

Started back with gigs in May. (YAY!)

Joined an awesome Yacht Rock band but punked out because I had to accept reality the playing level expected didn’t fit with my current lifestyle. It still makes me sad when I think about it.

Blogged many, many times but got super inconsistent at the end of the year (depression does that to you).

Made many great improvements to my home studio building on all the great improvements from 2020. Hey, I figure if I live in this room for work, it might as well be decked out, right? Upgraded the live bass rig from a little HX Stomp to the HX Stomp XL, which has more footswitches. Very happy with the change.

Went to California for a family vacation. It was more of a trip than a vacation, because it was the opposite of relaxing, but it was wonderful to be back “home” and see some California family and friends. The Golden State is as much a part of me as anywhere else I’ve ever lived, and I still miss it. If I win a large sum in the lottery, I will buy property there.

Discovered great new music – Mammoth WVH’s debut album is EXCELLENT, as was their live show. I Don’t Know How But They Found Me (aka IDKHOW) somehow escaped me when they were the alternative music press’ retro darling a few years back, but now I know who they are (thanks to my bud Dennis) and dig the SHIT out of their stuff. They’re 80s in all the best ways, but current – if you like the idea of Duran Duran and The Cure having a baby, you’ll probably dig this.

Wrote ZERO songs. Didn’t even compose riffs or anything this year. Not sure why…just not all that inspired. I did do some livestream noodling.

Returned to the stage as a solo act thanks to my friend (and excellent livestreamer) Mandy Prater recommending me to the awesome people at 360 Uno.

And I think that’s about it.

Definitely going to get things set up in the studio in 2022 for easier musical creativity and make it a point to make stuff. I might even make videos of the process since I have that awesome-but-basically-unused live streaming mixer. And Bathroom Schizo videos!

Or not. Since I like to believe I’ll do creative things but I rarely come through because life and my mental state often get in the way. STAY TUNED!

One thing that’s definitely happening in 2022 is a return of the weekly format for the Museday Mumblings. I slacked hard in Q4 and I find that embarrassing.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful 2022!
TMS

Sick. And more CATB and Adam S. Stuff.

Sick. And more CATB and Adam S. Stuff.

It’s weird to be sick. I haven’t been sick in a long time. But whatever’s going on with me right now is…well, it just sucks.

I assume it’s not COVID, being that I’m all vaccinated and stuff and I’ve been Mr. Careful. It’s like my body has a cold. I don’t have a runny nose or anything, but I’m just – weak and hurting.

I felt alright for band practice yesterday, which was SUPER FUN even though it was kind of hard work, and we’re super excited to play our first big show back on May 1st (assuming the rain that’s supposed to happen all week is gone by the weekend, like the forecasts are saying). So, YAY Chandler and The Bings!

I watched a great tribute to Adam Schlesinger that Rachel Bloom posted on her YouTube. Makes me want to go back and do a actually good recording of my tribute song to him.

If you have time to kill, check the tribute out and maybe it’ll help you understand why I loved this guy so much…

Back to the couch. Have a wonderful day. I’ll have a Museday Mumbling for you tomorrow, probably. As usual, I’m not even sure what the topic is going to be, but hopefully I’ll come up with something interesting.

Peace be the journey!
TMS

Museday Mumblings (Vol. 19): Creativity Doesn’t Care About Your Tools

Museday Mumblings (Vol. 19): Creativity Doesn’t Care About Your Tools

I spend a decent amount of time on message boards and in Facebook groups watching conversations between gear whores desperate to find the “next awesome piece of kit” that will finally let them express themselves as an instrumentalist, and get those ideas out. Of course, it’s utter bullshit.

Creativity has nothing to do with the tools you possess. It’s a bitter mistress. I’ve been over this many times on this blog. I get new gear, and I get NOTHING new out of it. I have all my same shit, and I write/create new stuff. There’s no consistency. And sadly, more often, nothing happens.

Right now, I have a pretty nice little setup in my studio. I have a stable of guitars and basses that I find enjoyable to play and that bring out different facets of my personality as an instrumentalist. I have a nice little Alesis electronic drum kit that allows me to pretend I can play drums. It has a USB port that allows me to record the MIDI from the drums so I can change the sounds and fix my mediocre playing. I have a couple of keyboards (one Korg, one Yamaha) with some great sounds that allow me to pretend I can play keyboards. I am an avid and long-time user of modeling gear, which recreates real guitar and bass rigs and all kinds of studio gear so I don’t have to own piles of vintage amps and speaker cabinets. I have a mixer that allows me to record its individual channels as separate tracks so I have complete control of my sound and can record multiple things at once. I have a new computer with great specifications that allows me to run the most modern and amazing Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) and plug-ins (which are computer versions of those modeling things I was talking about earlier. All of these things are here, plugged in and ready to go. I could be recording music constantly.

But of course, I don’t.

Because I have been in a real creative drought. It started out with some self-editing, and then it just became a pattern of telling myself nothing is good enough. I’ve been trying really hard to allow myself to create without having any opinion about it as I go – instead judging it once I’ve gotten it out. This does work to some extent. But the problem I have now is that so much of what I’ve already done is kind of stuck, wallowing in its mediocrity. I don’t know how to make it better, and since I haven’t been creating new stuff, I have nothing to replace it with.

So to stoke the fires of creativity, I started writing on this blog on a regular basis. I talked about doing more videos like my “Bathroom Schizo” series, but couldn’t work out the details on that. Now that I have some new recording gear, that is DEFINITELY happening soon. I’ll probably start with a new one of those each week, likely starting the first week of October (I’m going to do a big pile of them and release them weekly). I’m trying to do my traditional daily “noodling” and I might start recording little videos of those noodles for Instagram. I feel like if I get in the mode of creating it will finally justify my outlay for all my wonderful equipment over the years. And it will assuage any guilt for doing nothing with the cool things I have to create stuff that someone with a ton of ideas could use to make great things.

In actually-creative news, my closest inspiration as a creator, my buddy and Chandler and The Bings bandmate Patrick Soler has taken the vocal stems from our “It’s Gonna Be Me” single and created his own version in a sort of synthwave-meets-trap remix. It’s rad, and it comes out on Friday. I will post the link on my Facebook page when it’s released. He also made an awesome video for it. Look out for that.

And please stay tuned for some more performances of covers and originals by your faithful Schizo. Definitely going to happen a lot coming up. Hopefully it will kick me back in to creator mode so I feel like I can express things and maybe write something good.

Plus, just posting this video because I thought it was awesome. I’m a big fan of Rick Beato, and his video from today was excellent, so here you go:

He has an amazing ear-training course available that I’m going to get once I have some extra cash. I feel like working on my relative pitch in this way, tied to the theory, is the key to a lot of other musical concepts for me. But we’ll see.

Thanks for reading. Stay safe and happy. Wash your hands, wear your mask, physically distance (not socially – we need each other, so get on the phone, video chat, whatever). And in case you didn’t remember – Black Lives Matter.

Peace be the journey!

TMS

You Can’t Always Get What You Want…

You Can’t Always Get What You Want…

I have a serious issue now. I desperately want a $2100 bass. You see, Ernie Ball/Music Man came out with their new Stingray Special series, with roasted maple necks that have stainless steel frets and updated bodies that are lighter, and updated electronics that are punchier and quieter. Of course, it’s not happening. I don’t have that kind of cash.

Cut to a few weeks ago, where I was doing my normal Craigslist perusal, and I came across a guy up in Cedar Park selling my $2100 bass for a mere $1295! I literally did not have the funds to scrape together to get this incredibly-cheap offering of EXACTLY THE BASS I WANT – Black. Maple fingerboard. One pickup. Just like the Sterling Sub series that I’m playing now as my #1 bass, but lighter and more pro in every single way.

So I’ve been anguished about it for a couple of weeks now. And the ad has finally timed out on Craiglist, so no more drooling over that which I can not possess. I did send the guy an email basically begging him to keep in touch if he still happened to have the bass next month (since I plan on scraping together money and selling things). I’ve heard nothing back. I’m sad.

So what does this tell me? Well, I snoozed and most likely lost. And I simply cannot justify spending almost $1300 on a bass, even if it is the $2100 bass I so desperately wish to own.

But if on the odd chance I do hear back from Allen from Cedar Park…well, I guess we’ll see how my willpower handles it.

I don’t NEED this bass…but damn if it wouldn’t be a hoot to have it!

In other news: Things with The Bings are going as wonderfully as before, better, actually, because my voice has been solid. We’ve been killing our Thursday shows at Stereotype, with people showing up basically just to see us and then clearing out once we’re done (except on the Saturday gig – they hung out – we wish they’d hang out on the Thursdays, too, but it’s nice that they’re there for us specifically). Not sure what the future holds with that. 2019 might be something different there. We’ll have to see. I do look forward to seeing some of my “buddy bands” there, though (like HighRoad, Zoodust, and especially Hit & Run). They’re all being booked when we can’t make the shows.

I’ve been cleaning things up in my studio and getting things all wired up for proper use in preparation for work beginning in earnest on some recordings. I know if you look at the 10 years or so I’ve been writing this blog that that seems like more of the same promised bullshit, but this time I really have all the pieces together and am feeling some creativity, so it might not be any of the songs I’ve already written – it might be writing new ones from all the progressions, melodies, and riffs I’ve been recording on my iPhone for the past six or seven years. I’ve got good software and plugins and I’m raring to go. Now it’s just finding the moments of quiet necessary for getting things down. I think I can manage it. 🙂

I’m probably heading out to a jam night tomorrow to see some friends and maybe rock out a few tunes I haven’t played in a while. I might even see if they’ll let me play drums on something. I haven’t done that in front of an audience since a Slaphappy gig in Georgia about 15 years ago.

On the “gear I actually own” front, the HX Stomp has been PERFECTION for my gigs with The Bings. And I got a new set of quad-driver in-ears for cheap on Amazon that have been perfection as well. It’s crazy – I haven’t even been running a speaker or amp. Just BIG FAT TONE from a teeny tiny pedal.

Thanks for reading my update, and have a wonderful Christmas and New Year – if that’s your thing.

Peace, love, and good happiness stuff…

TMS

Life and Baby

Life and Baby

The last pieces I wrote for this site were back in March, before my youngest son was born. I had every intention of keeping up with this page more, and turning it into a site tracking the progress of my latest musical project, but baby is more important. This ended up on the back burner. Now that the little dude is 7 months old, and things are sort of normalizing in a way, I decided to pop in and be creative for a second, and maybe write something about what life has been like for me, but the reality is, life hasn’t really changed. Well, that’s not true – life has changed A LOT – but my musical life hasn’t changed one bit. I’m still not recording as much as I want, not getting my songs together for the album I announced over a year ago, and basically just playing shows with the Bings and hitting the occasional jam night when I can (far less frequently now that baby is here). It’s okay, though. I’m pretty happy these days in general. Because of some other life changes, my two older kiddos are living with me full-time, and it’s nice to have those turds around. They’re so good to their little brother, even if they’re incapable of babysitting him. Getting them here has been quite time-consuming, so even more time away from music and blogging. But again, things are starting to normalize a bit and as we get past the unpacking and settling phase for them, we’ll be ready to make some moves on the music part.

As all this is happening, the Bings have gone through some ups and downs, but mostly ups, and now we’ve got a sort of regular show happening on Thursday nights at a place called Stereotype. This past Thursday the evil “I suck at harmonies” monster came back and reared its ugly head, which when added to the fact that I was suffering some horrible back pain due to all the lifting and moving of things, made my night the worst show I’ve played in about five years or so. When I sang lead, things were fine, but outside of that, it was a shit show for me. The good news is that we’ve got another show this coming Thursday, so redemption is around the corner. I’m going to use different in-ears for this show, so hopefully I’ll be able to hear better and thus sing better. We shall see…

You’d think I’d have more to say, but I’m just tired. More to come in the next few weeks. It’s been four or five years since the last set, so I think I’m going to start posting new videos of me singing solo with an acoustic in the bathroom. I just have to decide which bathroom I’m going to use, and what songs I’ll sing. I think Elenore by The Turtles will make an appearance. Perhaps some more gems from my solo acoustic set just for fun. And maybe some Bings songs, too. Maybe I can convince Pat to come over and do a duet with me in the bathroom. That’d be a first.

Thanks for your continued attention and have a wonderful Halloween, All Saints Day/Dia De Los Muertos, and November in general.

TMS

P.S. Ba-by Shark doot do do do do do…Ba-by Shark doot do do do do do…Ba-by Shark doot do do do do do…Baby shark.

Thoughts on “Artistry”

Thoughts on “Artistry”

(note – Just some thoughts. I wrote this piece back in March, but am finally publishing it now. Not sure why I never hit publish.)

As someone who has spent the majority of his musical life as background music for people getting drunk, it’s hard for me to relate to what it must be like to actually create music as art. Sure, I’ve written my fair share of songs, and I have pretty strong opinions on what I like and don’t like about things I and others have created, but I’ve never seen myself as an artist, or my work as artistry.

I wonder sometimes if that’s just me avoiding actually putting myself out there for judgment or if it’s putting art on a pedestal, or a mix of both. I definitely am proud of some of the stuff I’ve created, and I’m definitely proud of some of the ways I’ve put my stamp on other people’s work through my experience in cover bands of various types.

I’m inherently not a precious person when it comes to creating musical things, which is to my detriment, I think. I do believe I’d have something to offer as an artist. I just carry this inbuilt suspicion and animosity toward the very act of being precious, with the notable exception that I’m all in if it’s an artist I love – they can be as precious as they feel they need to be and I’m still eating it up. But I wonder if it really does come down to fear that nothing I could ever do would measure up to the things that I like.

Stepping away from music for a bit – when I was first creating audio productions, long before I worked in radio production, I was very particular about things being “just so”. I really crafted the things I created with a lot of care. When I started making commercials, I would do the same, and take tons of time just trying to get them perfect. Once I worked in radio production full time, I learned that I simply did not have enough time to spend hours on one 30-second commercial. I really had to speed it up to get things done. Then I became a production director all by myself, and had no time to be precious about it – I just had to get things done.

One might think I’d be able to carry over that “get it done” attitude to music, but the lack of hard deadlines in music has kept me from really feeling like I’ve ever accomplished anything. People flog the “art is never finished, only abandoned” cliche, but it is a real trap if you think you can keep working on something forever. That’s what I’ve been doing with a lot of my own music. Nothing feels good enough for me, and almost every time I’ve shared something, it’s mostly met with indifference, which reinforces the idea that I’m simply not doing anything interesting. Which is largely true, if I’m being brutally honest with myself. I have my retread pop punk-style songs, and my retread power pop songs and my retread sort of singer-songwritery songs. Nothing is all that “me”.

I grapple with the whole “me” thing as a writer. It reminds me of a time in high school. I was doing my normal thing of talking in every voice but my own (doing accents and characters and basically being a teenage Dana Carvey wannabe) and my best friend Brandon had grown tired of my antics, grabbed me, and said, “What do YOU sound like?” It’s funny how much that resonated. It went far beyond just doing a surfer dude voice followed by a fey German accent. It sticks in my head to this day, but it’s morphed into something even bigger. Perhaps even something menacing for me as a creator. What do I sound like? Honestly, I’ve been avoiding that for years, mostly because every time I create something, I really hate what I sound like when I’m not basically doing a style impression of some other artist I admire. Who am I kidding? I hate that, too, because it’s not original!

Which brings me to the whole point of this spiel: Artistry. How does one define it? I struggle with it all the time, because I feel like 25 years playing in cover bands has basically robbed me of any artistry of my own. I am a pretty complete musician, because I’ve played many different genres of music and can slide into most musical situations quite comfortably, but I never feel like an artist or feel like anything I do is truly artistic. I’ve gotten close to it from time to time, especially during improvisational performances at jam nights, and coming up with parts to complement the crazy ways we redo things in Chandler and The Bings, but with the music I’ve composed, I don’t know that I’ve ever gotten there, to a place where I’d consider it art. I’ve definitely tried.

Thanks for reading!
TMS

Further Musings on The Bings (and Chandler Bing)

Further Musings on The Bings (and Chandler Bing)

Chandler Bing was by far my favorite character on the sitcom “Friends”. I had already been a huge fan of Matthew Perry from some of his earlier shows, and he’s the reason that I even decided to watch “Friends” when it hit the airwaves in 1994. Well, not the only reason, because I had seen Courteney Cox in a few other things at that point and was a little obsessed with her. But together they were for sure a win for me – funny quippery from a familiar face and an absurdly beautiful woman I could watch? Sign me up. It premiered when I was in college. September of 1994 – so it was my second year living up in the dorms. Friends became an event back in these pre-widespread-internet days. Groups of coeds would gather in the TV lounges every Thursday night for this bit of “Must-See TV”. At this point in my life, most of my friends were young women, so of course I was going to be roped in for the Thursday night festivities even if I hadn’t been a Matt Perry and Courteney Cox fan. I thought the show was a little ridiculous, but I really loved their wisecracking ways, and aside from Ross, who was a whiny bitch, and Rachel, who embodied pretty much everything that could go wrong with a woman to me, I really enjoyed the show. It was so thoroughly white-person-90s that it seemed targeted directly to the Gen-X temporary denizens of my very small, very white college town. And every time you hear someone say, “I was SO not happy” or something to that effect (the emphasized negative), you have “Friends”, specifically Matthew Perry as Chandler Bing, to thank for that.

So how does it all relate to music or me being the Musical Schizo? Well, there was another character on the show, Phoebe Buffay, who was an aspiring singer-songwriter and would play her hilariously bad songs at “Central Perk”, the coffee house where all the Friends hung out (and one of them worked). Around that time, perhaps a year later, a coffee house opened up in my very small, very white college town called the Java Hut. There were plenty of Phoebe Buffays that played that place. One of them was actually not terribly bad, and he was the roommate of a friend of mine. This singer-songwriter would enlist my help because I was the only person he knew who owned a PA system. I’d cart my rig (Peavey XR600B and two 10″-12″-horn column speakers) down to the Java Hut and get it all set up so he could play his music for the caffeinated clientele. He wrote songs about all kinds of things – life, love, Star Wars – he just wrote endlessly. His notebook of songs was ENORMOUS. At this point, I think I had written about 20 songs, and they were all pretty terrible blues songs or things forced into some neat riff or chord progression that I had come up with that didn’t really have a story or any sort of decent melody. After meeting this person, I was inspired to write more – and better – and to figure out what it was that I really wanted to say. I went through a five- or six-year period where I wrote a lot of songs, most of them still terrible, but more and more they started to represent things on my mind, or stories about characters in my life or characters in my head. Then I got married, had children, got full-time work, and life started to distract and intervene.

They say major life events like getting married or divorced and having children can really inspire creativity, but weirdly my most creative periods have come when I’ve had nothing going on. When life is really boring and I have nothing else to do. Periods where I’ve gotten over the initial grief or joy of some big life event and psychologically feel “okay”. My most recent big tough life event was probably my divorce in 2013, and to date I’ve gotten basically zero songs out of it. I did meet a wonderful woman and she’s inspired a song or two, but my writing output has been utter shit for the past 10 years. When I have the time I don’t have the energy, when I have the energy I don’t have the time. I’m sure many creative people have the same issues. It doesn’t help that I generally assemble my song demos in the same digital audio workstation software I use for my day job. When I come home from staring at that for eight hours, I’m not exactly inspired to stare at it any longer just to get song ideas down. I’ve thought about using other media to write stuff, and every time I have something vaguely inspiring I make a note of it on my phone’s built-in recorder. Thus far, that’s resulted in one new song. The song inspired by my fiancee but not directly about her necessarily. It’s been through a couple of demos and I’m not fully satisfied with it just yet, but it is quite a stylistic departure for me:

But moving on, I have in my head that I really want to be more creative. I feel like I want to write new and better songs again. I have a studio space where this is possible. But it’s not happening because I can’t decide exactly how I want to focus my creative musical energy. I don’t know if I want to write new songs or improve myself as a musician in general, by working on my relative pitch and understanding of theory, so that when I do write, I can connect things more easily. So my life with music has been one of pleasant distractions for the past few years, since my songwriting output went down the tubes. I’m not sure if the pleasant distractions are WHY my songwriting output is in the toilet, but they have been very pleasant – my long and satisfying (if up and down) run with Roman Holiday, my abbreviated tenure with Nudge, my many fill-in gigs with Texas Players and Mark Chandler, my even-more-abbreviated time with Flext, my false start that was The Dangerfields, and all of my wonderful solo gig experiences. Which brings us back to my current pleasant distraction, Chandler and The Bings.

I detailed in my last post that they have managed to soften the hard candy shell that represents my “musical perfectionish” tendencies (not “-ist” because that’s unrealistic). We come up with clever reworked versions of songs and that’s pretty inspiring – to hold on to the essence of the song and make it relatable but put a new spin on it that better fits our personality as an ensemble. It’s the same bit that I found endlessly inspiring working things out with Roman Holiday, creating rock band versions of 80s synth-pop tunes. Our wonderful shows with engaged and happy audiences have made me understand more and more that if you just have fun, they’ll have fun with you. I want to carry that fun back into my creative endeavors, so I think my next plan is a fundamental lifestyle shift. Taking a little bit of time every day to just create something, good or bad. Just to remind myself that it’s fun and that I love creating things. Because I DO! So, much like realizing that I need to have some physical exercise every day, and committing to that, I’m going to make the commitment to have a little creativity exercise every day, too. This blog post is the first example of that. Musing about life in the mid-90s, my love for “Friends” and how inspiring it can be to just love creating music, art, whatever. I AM A CREATIVE. It’s time to start behaving like one again. A creative that doesn’t create is nothing. I’m tired of being nothing.

Related unrelated comment: I once wrote an episode of Friends in college with my wonderful roommate Mary because we had a TV Writing and Criticism class together. It was great. Well, we thought it was great. But it was certainly great fun to create!

Expect new stuff from me soon, because I’m going to document my creations here on the blog.

Thank you for reading, and peace be the journey!
TMS

P.S. Come see a Chandler and The Bings show – it may not be perfect, but it sure is FUN!

The Dangerfields, Solo shows, keyboard, fitness, etc.

The Dangerfields, Solo shows, keyboard, fitness, etc.

Updates:

The Dangerfields are still in progress, and we’ve played one more show since my last post. Okay, that’s not really accurate, because it’s not The Dangerfields, really if Lee isn’t playing drums. But it was a nice try, although an overally unpleasant experience for a variety of reasons. (Kudos to Ernie for filling in and doing a good job) We’ve had a couple of rehearsals since then and the last one was very inspiring – we’re starting to sound like a BAND – which is really good. Finding time to schedule shows around our lives and Lee’s other band is the next trick, but we’ll get to that. So life is good in the world of no respect. 🙂

I booked a few more solo shows at Scoreboard, and I’m very excited to be back there. I’m going to try and make my PA and light rig even more simple for easier setup-teardown, which is a delightful challenge.

I bought a Korg X50 synth at a pawn shop, and it’s already inspiring me with its sounds. I’m excited to become a better keyboardist, and I might even learn some songs on it for the solo gigs. Wouldn’t that be weird?

Finally, I’m back at the gym on a regular basis. Time to get in shape and stay in shape. It’s already making my joints feel better, and once I’ve worked out a way to eat better with my weird sensory food issues on top of the regular gym activity, I’ll get lighter and will be able to start exercising a little harder.

I have been inspired to improve my overall musicianship, but I also really want to tap into whatever emotions are flowing through me now. I’m very happy with my life in general – my work is pleasant, my home situation is awesome, and I feel very loved. And that sort of peace usually keeps me from being all that expressive with music – I just don’t write all that much. I have had some serious moments of worry and pain, though, with family far away, first from Hurricane Matthew (everyone is okay, but it was scary), and then through a friend’s loss this past weekend.

One of my best friends in the world, both musically and non-musically, just lost his brother. I can’t really imagine the emotions he’s feeling, but it’s made me very, very sad, because his brother was always such an encouraging spirit, supporting our musical endeavors and really just showing us “the love”. If I ever had to do a crying scene in a movie, I’d think about losing one of my brothers – the very idea is that level of pain for me, and I wish there was something I could do to help my friend through this horrible time.

I wish there was a way to express it as well as I think Neil Peart and Rush did on this song:

The world will miss you, Darin.

Peace be the journey, all!
TMS