• Several Ways My Past Parallels Van Halen’s

    Several Ways My Past Parallels Van Halen’s

    I was in the middle of working on another post when the news of Eddie Van Halen passing away jumped out at me as a notification on my computer screen. WTF?!?

    As a guitar player, that kinda hits pretty hard. Mainly because he was one of the most influential guitarists in the history of guitar. It was common knowledge that he did have throat cancer, but last I had heard he had it beaten back. Apparently that really wasn’t the case, or maybe I misinterpreted the prior news when it was first announced he had gotten it and was dealing with it.

    Whatever the case may be, the world of music has been smashed in the face yet again in 2020. I texted a friend immediately on seeing the news asking: can 2020 get any more fuckin worse? People are making “bingo” cards of all the crazy shit that could happen in 2020 – I’m guessing no-one had Eddie Van Halen dying on their playfield. I certainly didn’t.

    In the grand scheme of the world, most people may never understand.

    What makes it kinda crazy to me is that there was a point early on in my career where I had a parallel to Eddie. While attending music school a buddy of mine, Justin Sayne, wanted one of the pickups out of my first guitar, a Fender Squire Strat. We spent an afternoon in my apartment pulling the strings off, the pick guard off and then he took his drill out with a massive drill bit. See he wanted a fender single coil and was willing to give me a humbucker in exchange. We had to drill out the body of the guitar in order to fit the humbucker into the space where the single coil was previously ensconced.

    It was true guitar hackery in its basest form. No measuring tools, no router, just pure human eyeballing of how deep and wide to drill into the wood each time as we removed wood. It looked absolutely awful when we got done. Then we had to hack the pickguard. Again, no router, no means of measuring other than placing the pickup on the pickguard and outlining where the intent was to melt it out with a soldering iron. Yeah, you read that right.

    There we were in a studio apartment with a hot soldering iron trying to be delicate with staying on the line to punch out multiple holes to remove the excess plastic to fit the pickup in. It smelled awful and stunk up the place. Once we got done with melting it out, we had to sand it smooth so it didn’t look excessively stupid.

    We got it all wried up and reassembled. That was my trial by fire to modify a guitar. Much like Eddie’s infamous frankentstein guitar. He built that from scrap parts and assembled it to be something that he wanted that wasn’t really on the market. Of course when we did this there were plenty of guitars on the market that were Fenders with two single coils and a humbucker. As a starving music student, you don’t have the option of picking up new guitars all the time. So it was born out of a trade of necessity.

    Over the years I made additional modifications to the very same guitar.

    After music school I opted to give it a custom paint job. This was an undertaking not unlike Eddie’s as well. He was notorious for stripping guitars and spray painting them with various colors. Mostly using tape and making bold shapes. My adventure was a tad different. Having a father that is known as one of the most influential graphic illustrators in art history, I had a bit more of a guided approach. Once I pulled the guitar apart, it took me days to remove the cherry red paint job that Fender had originally given the guitar. Days. Days of hard sanding. It felt like forever getting all the layers of that shit off. Once I got done with removing the paint I ended up thinking I wanted a single humbucker pickup instead of the 3 pickup guitar it was.

    Next step was filling in the unneeded pickup holes. That took a few days as well. It took a lot of wood filler and time to dry. Despite taking my time, I still managed to screw it up. The wood filler shrank more after the paint was put on and if one looks closely at the body, the outline of the old pickup holes can be seen.

    My dad tried to research what type of paint he should use for the images that were going on the guitar. We didn’t really have a direct line to any guitar manufacturers at that time, remember I was still learning how to play. Even though I knew this is what I wanted to do with my life, I was a total unknown from a small town. Eventually someone told him to use auto body paint for its durability. He bought some different colors that were needed for the paint job and started to make his stencils for the scene depicted on the guitar. Once he started painting with his airbrush, he got a bit agitated. What the problem was is, auto body paint is super thick, not very viscous. He clogged his super expensive airbrush meant for much more delicate work. It took time to clean it out and then figure out how to thin out the paint and stop it from clogging the apparatus.

    He got the image done and we took it somewhere to put a clear coat on it. I’m guessing it was auto body clear coat. Not the kind of clear coat that guitars would normally get. Something in the clear coat process muffed up the image of the snake in a spot or two. My dad had to paint over it a bit more to fix it, then we sent it out for more clear coat. Again, something that you wouldn’t see from a distance but up close you can see a bit of the layers in the paint job, which kinda gives it a bit of 3D effect up close.

    Desert Guitar

    I call it my Desert Guitar. You can see why.

    That wasn’t the end of the modifications. While Eddie eventually had multiple guitar makers fanning all over him to be his next guitar maker, I had my friend Justin. Eddie’s Frankenstein guitar got laser measured to be able to match the feel of his well worn neck. Modern tech allowed Ernie Ball to computer cut new guitars to feel like his monster. For me, I haven’t reached that point. However, at one point in an airport while hanging with the boys from The Boogie Knights, the guitar player John was playing on my Desert Guitar. He loved the feel then took one look at the headstock and said: That looks so 80’s metal.

    I had a moment. A moment of like, fuck I don’t represent that and I don’t want my guitar to scream that either. I got on the phone with Justin as he was making guitars for a living (still does). The neck I had was a “Jackson” style Warmoth replacement neck for Fenders. I said, can we do something about the headstock to make it look less 80’s metal. Justin asked me to send the neck to him. Once home I whipped that neck off the guitar and shipped it out to Justin. He asked if I had any ideas and I said: just make it look not metal. I didn’t have a plan and modifying something like a headstock isn’t really the easiest thing. Justin did what he could and sent it back to me.

    At first I was like WTF happened?!? Justin lopped off the pointy end and put some strange grooves in the front of it, which meant a need to put the machine head for the high E string somewhere else. I didn’t want to buy a new neck because much like Eddie’s main axe, I had this neck broken in to feel great when playing. So I had to learn to enjoy the new look. I also had to get used to the fact that the machine head for the high E operates backwards from how most bottom of the headstock machine heads work because it was originally on the top. I still use it this way now.

    I’m not sure if Eddie ever loaned his guitars to friends. He probably did. Wolfie, Alex, Valerie, Ted, any of you know? Due to my living arrangements, meaning that I lived with Jeff Scott Soto, I had multiple musicians in my orbit and lot of them were awesome guitar players. Because I was the resident guitar player and had quite a few guitars in the condo, my axes would give picked up and played by more players than I. Lots of guitar players aren’t very good with this, but it never bothered me.

    The Desert Guitar was always the one people tended to gravitate towards. I can think of a couple of reasons for this. One, the paint job. Two, the headstock. Three, the simplicity of it, it had a single humbucker and one volume knob. Four, it sounded really damn good. Whatever it was, guitarists that played always wanted to borrow it for recordings. I was happy to oblige if I wasn’t using it. Thus my Desert Guitar has been on even more recordings than I used it for.

    The weird thing is, nothing about the guitar screams well built, accurate measure, etc. What I mean is, it should sound awful and feel like shit. The exact opposite is true. It feels great and sounds great. We all know Eddie’s guitars sounded great and people that buy the worn in versions from his template say they feel great too. Which goes to show, you don’t always need a perfect instrument to be a great player or to sound amazing.

    Now that I’ve spewed all that out while listening to Van Halen for the past couple of hours. I’m going to leave you with this…

    We’ll always have the legacy that Ed left, but its highly unlikely there will ever be a guitarist as mind-blowing as Ed was. He took the instrument places most people will never go. For that we should all be grateful. There are those of us who will really miss you Eddie Van Halen. Thank you for doing what you did and how you did it.

  • Nincompoop Musician Speak

    Nincompoop Musician Speak

    We’re all in a state of what the fuck right now. Knee deep in the era of COVID-19 where people are lost. The smart ones are sheltering in place, especially where they’ve been ordered to. The bold one are going on with their lives like they’re invincible and it won’t get them. The worriers #1 are running around wondering if they’re going to fall ill. The worriers #2 are scared the economy is going to collapse. At least this is the vibe I’ve been getting from the media and from a plethora of social media posts. You know the kind, where you can pretend you’re having a scintillating conversation and hoping that you’re going to change the other person’s mind. Though the reality is, they think you’re stupid and visa versa.

    I have a lot of musician friends who are scrambling because all their gigs dried up. They’re not making money. So they take their live show online to live stream it and are now part of the cacophony of all the other artists doing exactly the same thing at the same time. Yes, I’ve done a live stream or two, only due to being asked to do it. I didn’t promote them and yet they still garnered some viewing numbers that surprised me. The reason why might be having recording quality sound live, not just a laptop mic.

    This led me down a path of looking into means of doing more of them, but as a show. Research is also the name of my game. I’ve put my learning cap on and figured out how to expand it plus make it easier to do. Those first two were a pain in the ass because it involved too many steps. Not any more. What’s the plan for the show, two songs, some chatter chat chat and a cover. No particular order.

    Do I plan on promoting it prior to doing it. No.

    Reason? I’m tired of promoting things. There’s a happy place for me in the process of creation. The unhappy place is the promoting of myself because I’ve done something. Totally antithetical to any unknown musician. All you ever hear is how awesome they are. How brilliant they are and then you listen and the reality of it all smacks you in the face. Not all musicians are awesome. That’s unfortunate simple reality.

    promoting my music

    Yes, the internet and computers have made it so anyone with an inkling can cobble something that might resemble music together. But is taking pre-made musical bits and pasting them together, then cackling over the top of it really being a musician? Not really. It might make you an ok arranger, but it’s not really making music is it? No.

    Lest I digress. I’ve recently been relegated to a typical nincompoop musician who has nothing to say. By someone that doesn’t even know me. That isn’t the bothersome thing. I can relate, meaning I concur. Most musicians today can’t form cohesive thoughts as they’re working on their brand and posting on social media X amount of times because some ‘expert’ decided that’s what had to be done to gain an audience and become an influencer. The music isn’t the focus. Uh. No. Fuck that.

    Why do bands from the past, pre internet influence era, tend to have large listenership? Because the music is that fuckin good that people what to hear it. Do I have music that is on par with that? I’m pretty confident in my abilities. I leave the rest up to others to spout off about my creations. Though sometimes I do get caught up in the self promotion thing, out of lack of options. At this point I want to stop that part and concentrate only on the creation. Cause if what you create isn’t turning heads, then blowing your own horn is a waste of time.

    Which is something I brought up with another friend who is getting into the music business. He made a comment about a podcast I launched with my friend Chris Hellstrom in April of 2020. This friend felt we needed to say: subscribe to our podcast, from within the podcast. To promote ourselves. When I brought that up to Chris, he said the same thing I feel about it and along the lines of what I’m writing now, that is – if what we’re doing isn’t compelling enough for the listener/viewer to hit the subscribe button without us saying it, then we’re not doing a great job and should stop. Thus, we aren’t likely to start self promoting from within the podcast. All the podcasts that I listen are like that – no ridiculous internal self promotion.

    Inside The Recording Studio Cover ArtGear shift

    See the world has splintered so much and it’s all coming to head with COVID-19. It’s impossible to be all knowing any more. There’s way too much out there and there’s no gateway any more. It’s an ocean and a whole lot of it is mediocrity. Was it the movie Amadeus where Soliari (is that his name) self proclaimed himself the leader of all the mediocrity in the world? Which is why Chris and I are goin with the attitude of if we don’t want to watch or listen, why would anyone else.

    Which is kinda how I’m gonna have to think about the Two Songs and a Cover. I’m thinking about little things I can do to make it stand out. One thing is the stand-by for start screen. I made a motion graphic movie today for my standby when I start the Restream app. While it’s not the coolest thing ever, its definitely more advanced than a vast majority of peeps I’ve seen as of late. I know that sonically it’s in the upper 1% of all live streams I’ve witnessed.

    Hell I watched a supposed live stream by major country artist band where they tried to make it look like they were all playing in their own homes at the same time. But it was obvious they weren’t playing together as the music was perfectly in-sync and not live. The guitar player was picking notes that weren’t in the music – dead giveaway they were miming. All well and good, just don’t try to fop it off as live, like they did.

    Because I have a recording setup, I’m fortunate enough to make it sound quite polished despite being live. No distortion from an over blown mic etc. Couple that with what musician friends would call a very consistent performance ability and what industry peeps would call hyper catchy songs and my differentiating point is who good I can made it sound. That’s where I want to be, in that spot where people get it and want to follow.

    Beyond that, yeah, I have a brain and desire to do other things that shouldn’t make me sound like a nincompoop. Would the discussion of simple math do for now? A primary reason is due to people claiming to be woke/not controlled by the media or “fake news’ only to spout gut feelings and not facts when it comes to COVID-19. I write that because the math is saying exactly what the experts are saying. Why people have a cognitive dissonance with facts, math and/or science is baffling. Right?

  • Injuries

    Injuries

    2020 got off to a start of injuries.

    Over the holidays I had a bizarre fall coming home from skiing. The driveway is a little sloped and I took a slightly wrong step, one leg shot out and I landed on top of my other leg. As I was going down I was thinking, please don’t break, please don’t break. Funny what we can process in the span of a split second. I could feel my bones in my lower leg start to twist. Then it was over. Maybe another millimeter and I might be in a cast right now. Instead I had a major sprain in my ankle and knee.

    6 weeks later and I’m still having moments of noticing tender movements of my ankle. Thus it’s not 100% healed yet, but getting close.

    Musically I’ve been working on finishing a multitude of projects for artists I’m producing to music I’m doing for me.

    First thing that got finished was a single for a female artist out of Utah. That was a long time coming. Happy to have it done and when the artist finally gives me a release date, I’ll make note of it here.

    Another project I’ve been working on is MūSE PC, a songwriter’s collective where I’m helping other songwriters to improve their songwriting chops. One fun project we’ve started is a group writing / recording project for a single song based on lyrics that everyone involved will get credit for.

    I have multiple singles that have various states of finish. By that I mean I have a spreadsheet of things that each song needs to have completed before I can schedule a date to release it. I have 2 that are completely in the can and done. However I’m looking to have at least 6 done and in the can before I start my release schedule. Lots of them need music videos. Which is where I need to work more on brainstorming ideas for them. Some still need lyric videos, and while I had been working on a lot of them I’ve hit a wall on one where my idea might be a tad more complicated than its execution is realistic. Thus I need to reassess if I should change it out. In the mean time you can get down with this fantastic song.

    I finally got asked to submit a composer’s reel for an upcoming film project. First time I’ve ever been asked to do so. So I had to spend some time hunting down all the projects I’ve done music for to be edited together into a cohesive unit for the project. While doing this task, I started to realize how many projects I’ve done and never got the final product sent to me. I guess I’m usually so busy moving on to the next thing that it was weird to go back and look at what I’ve done in the past.

    Now that I’ve got some of these things done, I can get back to finishing the steps for these singles. Though I’m guessing that right now it won’t be until May before I start getting more music videos finished.