If there is one thing that helps me feel more alive, it’s travel. This month has been full of it. Another thing that helps me regain some flair for what I’m creating & doing is NAMM, which was last week. One last thing that helps a tremendous amount is spending time with musical friends. Plus as I get further into this song-a-week thing, it’s a major Vision coming to fruition. All of these things happened in the last week.
It wasn’t more than 5 minutes into NAMM with my friend Chris Hellstrom before we ran into another friend of mine who spotted me right away, Tariq Akoni. He’s an amazing guitarist whose resume is a who’s who. From there it was pretty much a non-stop whirlwind of checking out the latest in music related gear.
Actually NAMM isn’t just a way to see all the new gear and software from every type of company known to man. It’s a veritable family reunion. As musician’s tend to be in silos of creation or performing – they don’t tend to see the long standing friends and peers for good stretches of time. Hell, there are some friends I tend to see but once a year. Sad, but true. And NAMM is it.
The best part of it is catching up on everything everyone is doing. I have one friend who works for a major bass company, and yes he is a really awesome bass player. He randomly got into doing music for Anime in a horror genre and now he seems to be the go to guy for that. This has happened in the last year.
When he heard about my releasing a song a week every week, he remarked – you mentioned you were planning to do that. He was happy that I actually pulled it off.
The list can continue, but the general response from all my endorsement companies was one of amazement. Mainly because I kinda took myself out of the loop for about 2.5 years. Which was the time I started doing all the Atmos, remixes and remasters. They’re now seeing the result of the “time away” which really wasn’t time away.
An ancillary benefit of NAMM is the chance to make new friends or connections and there’s also the possibility of seeing some amazing music performed live. This year’s NAMM was no different. I’ve got a new endorsement in the works (this is another hardware company and I’ll keep it quiet until I have it solidified). Plus I saw two fantastic shows.
One show was at the House of Blues and it involved older Metal dudes, called Metal Allegiance. The highlight was an opening band from South Florida, they were like a cross of Rage Against the Machine and Tool. They were pretty well suited to the spot they got. The second show was a charity thing called the NAMM Jam. It involved multiple name brand musicians all doing a bunch of covers of famous music. It was more than fun to hear what they did.
The most comical moment of that show was when a singer asked what key they were doing the song in and Nuno Bettencourt responded: In the key Be Quiet.
A big way that I get to recharge is spending some time late at night drinking whiskey with long time friends and shooting the shit about life. Kinda odd how that can refocus goals and how we can all commiserate on this rock we call home despite all the crap going on. Add to that getting some great food and the end result of the equation is that: Life is good.
This week will see the release of my song Vision. A re-release off of the E.nergy A.udio R.evolution album. It’s a satirical look at how people can get easily brainwashed by television. Or more to the point duped by it as well. Especially now with social media and how AI can be used to spoil reality. The crazy thing is, I wrote it 25+ years ago, it was prevalent then and it’s even more insane now.
I’m going to ask that if you’ve made it this far, you should join my Jody Army list. And you should push Vision into your earholes. I guarantee it will get under your skin, into your eyes, and infect your soul.
Stay tuned more to come.
