Time to drop a little knowledge on ya in order to find my new single Rise Up. It released on Friday January 20 and can now be found on your favorite digital service (hint, my favorite is Spotify). That means you’ll find it at places like Tidal, Apple Music, Deezer, YouTube, and more.
Listen Here
Of course you could also listen to Rise up right here on my website on the Rise Up page. Of course that page also contains the lyrics, artwork, and liner notes. Kinda like having a web version of hardcopy version’s full blown information.
Significance of Rise Up
You might ask yourself why did I release it on Inauguration Day? Its a great question that has a real live answer.
The answer is, I felt it my duty to call out the fact that the country has elected the wrong person. A person who claims to be for the “little” guy, but in reality is solely out for himself and his family. If there is one thing that I hope to achieve, it is to have people Rise Up against going backwards in this country. My desire is to see people gather and protest. To demonstrate. To call out the elected leaders to start doing their jobs rather than creating chaos.
Enjoy
In all, regardless of whether you are a republican, democrat, independent, Green Party, tea party, whomever – you can put this song to use. In fact, I’d love to see you putting it into action. Share your photos and videos, of your using it for protest, with me on Instagram or Twitter. I’ll be happy to RT or share the love. Go forth and make use of your freedom, before you lose more of it. Enjoy it, sing it, share it!
Looking back on a year that for a lot of us was probably not our greatest glory is a hard thing to do. I think the one thing that got a lot of people down had to be the deaths of a lot of entertainment icons. Musicians, actors, and creative types that many, if not all, of us are familiar with. Its sad to see icons pass away.
Sizzling Trendy Music
While I didn’t really grow up thinking about pop music, I have come to embrace it pretty hard in the last year. But it doesn’t mean I wasn’t aware of many of the popular musicians who passed away this past year. The main reason for the embrace isn’t to be chasing trendy music, but rather to spread out and create more interesting music. Rock feels like a dead subject – especially when most rock isn’t being overly adventurous in sonic terms. Pop music on the other hand is ingesting so many different vibes that it becomes really hard to ignore.
Fantastic Spotify
Spotify encapsulates the beauty of finding out what is trendy music. Streaming music and especially Spotify makes it incredibly easy to listen to more music than you can shake a stick at. For me it means taking time to listen to what is topping the charts. This in turn gives me the ability to tear apart the instrumentation and the concepts that led to the creation of the song. That in turns improves my writing, my arrangements, and my production skills.
An Inspired Past
While I don’t spend a ton of time dwelling on the past, I did spend time appreciating the music of many who passed away this year. Part of what has stood out is the timelessness of the music created by artists like Prince, George Michael, David Bowie, Glenn Frey, Leonard Cohen, and producer Sir George Martin. That’s an incredible list of people who redefined the music industry in decades long before I started playing an instrument.
Impact With The Now
Newer music like Daya, Shawn Mendes, The Weeknd, Alessia Cara, Bieber (yes, I’m putting him in this list), and DNCE shows how I can incorporate a variety of styles and make them something new. Looking forward into 2017 I’ve got a line of singles I’m excited to get released. Every song is different from each other. There’s even some that are a serious departure from my normal concept of releasing music. Think someone like DJ Snake or Calvin Harris, more trendy music and I’m looking to keep people on their toes.
Demolish Your New Year’s Eve
So on this final day of 2016 I want to wish you a fond farewell to a poor year of entertainment deaths and welcome you to an exciting year of new music. Wherever you end up partying tonight, I hope you’ll have a seriously mind-blowing time. I also want to see you survive any experience you use to ring in the new year.
See you on the flip side with new music to play for you!
Cooking up a storm over the holidays. That is the modus of my Christmas vacation this year, which is extremely fitting based on the kind of year entertainment has had. Unless you’ve been under a rock its patently obvious to me that its been a horrendous year for legends and icons of music and film.
Hell within 48 hours of Christmas we lost George Michael and Carrie Fisher.
George a musical icon that created some amazing music and of course Carrie who was part of one of the biggest movie franchises in cinematic history.
Cooking What
Beyond the strange string of deaths that lined 2016, I spent a good portion of the year creating. There’s been a new design on the website. There’s been over 60 new songs in production for various co-writes and other things. I’ve been writing new music for release. But my favorite thing this Christmas is the cooking lesson I got as a gift from my sister.
She’s got some great connections in her little spot of the world and its led to us having a nice lesson in cooking last night with Chef Veronica.
Chopping & Cutting
The menu started with crab cakes – so very tasty. It was followed by the group of us chopping up all the ingredients for the main dish Duck L’Orange with ravioli.
The beauty of all the chopping is that I received a super amazing chef’s knife. So sharp that I barely had to drop the knife on the item I was cutting and it would cut itself. Like a hot knife thru warm butter. Drop.
Seriously, having the right tool in your hands makes doing something so much more enjoyable. Like in music, having a great instrument can help you sound better, having a better knife and help you cook better. I’m sure of that assessment. Its probably a lot like getting access to a top end compressor while recording.
One cooking technique I learned was called supreme. Supreme is the art of cutting out citrus so that you don’t have the membrane to deal with while cooking. Yet another reason to have an amazingly sharp knife.
Sharp Knifes
Speaking of sharp knifes tends to remind me of a guitar teacher I had who refused to have any glass or knifes in his house. His reasoning had to do with having an incredible fear of severing his hands – which would mean an end to his ability to play guitar. Aside from rock climbing and bowling, I never shared that fear. For me, rock climbing is super rough on the muscles for my guitar playing. Thus I don’t have a problem with glass or knives, but I don’t do rock climbing and I bowl with my right hand (so I don’t waste my left hand for days on end). BTW – I suck terribly at bowling.
Ravioli
While I’ve made regular pasta, aka spaghetti, in the past, I’ve never made ravioli before. Its a slightly different ballgame in the pasta field.
We got the filling, a mushroom and ricotta filling, finished and chilled first. Then we turned to the pasta dough where we spent time running it thru a pasta roller, over and over. Nothing new there. But when it came time to make the ravioli, thats where things took a turn.
First you lay out the bottom and then get your top half together (hoping that you get them roughly the same size and shape.) Once you have the bottom you dab out the filling in uniform spots on the flattened dough. Once there’s a line of filling, you place the top over it and press down.
I learned a cooking tip that its wise to use an egg wash to help seal both sides of the ravioli together. Meaning I had to do this prior to putting the top on.
Then I had some fun with a couple of different ravioli cutters that were laying around. A heart shaped one, a round one, and also with a pasta cutting wheel to make square ones.
Duck
This was the first time I had cooked duck as well. Chef Veronica showed us how to score the skin prior to cooking. Duck is not like chicken. Much like a Les Paul is not Moog. It requires an entirely different method to cooking. So we scored the skin with crosshatches. Then set it into a hot pan to start searing and cooking the fat side down.
That’s when the pasta took its turn dunking into a hot bath. What’s awesome about fresh made pasta is that it cooks in roughly 3 minutes.
Ding.
Out of the water came the pasta. The ravioli got covered with a brown butter sage sauce. The fettuccini was topped with the duck and a tasty orange sauce (made from the supreme’d oranges).
Eat Up
What a tasty and fun way to learn to cook something new.
It gives me an idea of how I could bring the idea of producing music into someone’s home…
