October 2009 - Frost on the vine! We got the garden in just in time...but between work on the farm, helping out at my folks house and playing with The Mobsters (as well as hosting a bunch of the Jam Sessions at the Tap Room in Ypsilanti) I haven't been doing enough studio work. Hopefully that'll change very soon! Cynthia's family is at my house en masse right now but after the festivites are over, I'm gonna start work on my next double-secret project. I've got a crazy idea and it just might come true! More later.
July 2009 - Been a busy guy again...got a bunch of studio work done, The Mobsters EP is finished and printed, got my folks out to Montana for the family reunion, worked on the farm and the garden and the lawn and, oh yeah, the basic 40 hours a week at the day job...whew! I need a nap. But things are getting a little better, and there's a little time freeing up for walks in the Summer with Cyn, which is good.
Just finished a benefit gig for the Crossroad Festival with The Mobsters at the Tap Room in Ypsilanti. That music series has been a little ray of sunshine in that sometimes-benighted community, and they had a small shortfall of cash, but with the help of the tireless volunteers for the cause, and the band Just Jill and us playing, we raised a nice chunk of change that'll help out a good deal. Kind of an nice thing to be able to do, and fun besides!
I'm starting Mickey Richard's next CD...actually he's roughing the arrangements out on my software right now, and we'll go into production in the next week or so. I'm thinking this one should be even better than the last, and that one got some pretty good reviews. Looking forward to that!
April 2009 - Setting up the new studio annex, which has taken up most of my "free" time. I'm getting ready to finish my latest CD, and start recording one for Mickey Richard, as well as a couple of other artist's projects. That and muckin' about with various musical ensembles...I'm doing some of the Tuesday dates with The Witchdoctors Plus One, over at the Tap Room in Ypsi; and The Mobsters have dates throughout the Summer I'll be playing as well. It should be a great time overall!
March 2009 - Finally got off my duff and put up a Press page here, with the current review from Zeitgeist and a few of the older reviews of my last CD. A few people were asking how to find those so I compiled them all on one page, for those of you eccentric enough to want to read 'em. Now I need a nap.
March 2009 - Some news from the legendary Lord Litter of Berlin Germany, champion of indie music, underground radio and interesting and eccentric artists everywhere (and hey, he fits in that interesting eccentric artist category himself pretty well)...my new CD is in play on his show LORD LITTER'S MAGIC MUSIC BOX! It's broadcast on Radio Marabu http://www.radiomarabu.de/ and is syndicated on dozens of stations from Germany to Italy to India. Click on the link above to hear it live in streaming audio! I love the new technology. Lord Litter is always playing amazing stuff, things you'll never hear anywhere else but should, and has been a wonderful, helpful promoter of my music and countless other artists as well. Thank you, sir!
March 2009 - Some late-posting gigs with The Mobsters...on March 24th we'll be at the BluesStage in Napoleon. Only a short set but it'll be a party! BluesStage is a great venue, a cool bar and an excellent restaurant...well worth a little drive.
On the 25th we'll be adding our efforts to the Assembly Line Music Marathon out at A.J.s in Ferndale. It's a benefit concert to help boost national awareness of the plight of Detroit autoworkers...by getting into the Guinness Book Of World Records for "Longest Continuous Concert", since there'll be music 24/7 for 10 days straight! We'll be on at 5:00 in the afternoon. All the props to bands like the Six Foot Poles, who went on yesterday at 5 in the morning! Stop down and enjoy the music, and the fantastic food as well...or if you can't make it out, check out the streaming video of the whole event at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/the-assembly-line-concert since it'll be going on till the 30th. But do check it out, and be part of Michigan Rock history.
Next day on the 26th we'll be doing a short set at the Tap Room in Ypsilanti, along with many other talented artists playing at the fabulous Brian Brickley's Blues Night. This has been a really great series, and we're really happy that Brian and Lisa got this amazing venue going. There are always some great surprises and amazing performances happening here, and once again the people, the food and the ambience are fantastic. One of our favorite joints anywhere, stop down and say hi! John says he'll buy you a beer.
March 2009 - New gigs and CDs on the horizon! The Mobsters start performing next month (after a few minor setbacks!) around the Southeastern Michigan area...check the schedule as it unfolds at their website at www.themobstersband.com to keep informed. Any similarities between their site and this are merely because I'm doing both sites right now, so if you're liking this one go check out that one too.
Mixing down the new and as yet unnamed album...looking good so far! It always takes me a lot longer than I think it should though. Where IS that George Martin when I need him? Oh well.
We just got a very nice review of "Arphus" from Stuart A. Hamilton for Zietgiest Magazine! Check it out at http://www.the-rocker.co.uk/ , and maybe leave a comment your own self. While I'm on the subject, anyone who wants to write a one or two sentence review over at CD Baby would be more than welcome to! It couldn't hurt, and it would make me feel all warm and cozy inside. By the way, both Zietgiest and CD Baby are incredible places to look through to find more great indie music...bookmark those guys and visit every now and then...
February 2009 - Surviving through the evil last months of winter, our hearty heros of Michigan stumble on. Bad weather, financial reversals and the mange beset us all, but we continue, glazed eyes staring out into the hope of spring arriving sometime in the future like a celestial UFO, there to take us away to a better world.
Myself, I been sick...got a strain of influenza that sneaked beneath my yearly vaccination, and it nearly took me away for good! I don't really remember much of last week except fever and pounding headaches and crazy unrelenting pain in my sinuses and my joints for days on end. I'm up again now but weak as a little kitten. Hopefully this is the upswing, and I'll be able to get back to work!
I have finished some things this month...a new website for The Mobsters (check it out at www.themobstersband.com), which should make that concern a little more acessable to them what is interested. I have fun doing these sites, and I hope you enjoy them...drop me an email if you do, it's nice to hear from y'all.
Anyway, I'm on my way to the studio right now, to look and see what's got to be done to finish the next CD!
January 2009 - A crazy and interesting time is being had by ALL, I would think...watched the new President being sworn in (go man go!), heard about the latest crises in the Mideast (well, there's always at least one), saw the video clips of yuppies jumping to their deaths from the tops of their SUVs due to the bad economic news...it's all been very exciting. But mostly I've been running back and forth trying to survive and ward off frostbite, while playing a bit of guitar and occasionally going to beat myself up in the studio.
The dead of Winter...how I wish I could hibernate like the big bears, and wake up in the Spring, groggy and stylishly slim...
December 2008 - Remember when I talked about the cold of last month? Well, forget about THAT...apparently the early chill was just a fortaste of the punishing freeze that was ahead. It's pretty bad, weather in the teens and high winds that bite right through those colorful layers you bought at the resale store. Crazy stuff. The cats aren't going out at all now, clever beasts, and they keep looking at me accusingly...I guess they think I'm to blame.
Rehearsals with The Mobsters (the swing band that hired me last month) are going well, although with my being the Front Man/Singer/Guitarist I'm up to my eyeballs in lead sheets, with lyrics and new arrangements to learn. It's taken my focus away from my next album's tracks for a while, but that's actually kind of good for me...I was getting kind of crazy in the Reptile House studio with it all. Since I do a LOT of the recording myself I often don't have someone to give me feedback on tunes. I think I do alright mostly, but sometimes I'll spend a week or two on a triangle part or something, a little silly really. So a break is good. And it's a fun band, although I still have to institute more of that Drink/Drugs/Craziness that I was talking about before. All in good time though! Right now I'm concentrating on those swing guitar parts.
November 2008 - November blew in cold this year, catching us by surprise and freezing our hoses to the ground (literally). On the farmhouse, we play catch-up with insulating windows with plastic, caulking up cracks and covering the walls with multicolored tapestries glorifying my heroic battles with authority. It's warmer that way. In the bedroom, specially trained felines perform footwarming duties at night, and huddle together to perserve body heat by day. The roads are icy and my fabulous crome-finned Cadillac slides from side to side on the dirt roads, narrowly missing various jaywalking deer, possums and racoons.
In a moment of boredom I looked up the "Musicians" section of Craigslist...and a notice said "Do you like to Drink and Do Drugs and Get Wild and Crazy?" and I thought, well, sure...so I wrote back. Turns out they were old friends of mine from the Detroit Blues scene who are re-forming their Swing band, and looking for a Singer/Guitarist. So we jammed a bit and it seemed like a great fit, and I'm getting fitted for my Red Tiger Zoot Suit this week. I'm liking having a chance to play some Swing guitar again! We'll keep you all posted. Turns out that they were just kidding about the Drugs/Drink/Wild/Crazy thing though, which kind of dissapointed me a bit. But with my influence that might just change. One never knows, do one?
October 2008 - Well, it's another season here in Michigan...the air is cool and clean, the trees are turning from various shades of green to brilliant reds, oranges and yellows, and crazed footballers are roaming the streets of Ann Arbor, waving banners of a strange device and terrifying or baffling city residents who could care less about sport. Out here in the swamp, things are a little quieter, although we don't have to drive far to be in the fray...but why do that?
"Sliver Or Slice". I'm honored and very happy to be connected to these great people and their organizations. Stop in and check out the label's site, and take a listen to some of the other fantastic artists there, maybe purchase a CD or do a digital download...there's some outrageous and wonderful stuff there!!
Still keeping to my performance sabbatical, mostly...I did a festival date with the Witch Doctors as a substitute bassist, and I played a gig with Danny Pratt and the Shuffle Cats this weekend, but that's it for this month! I don't have anything booked but studio time in November, either. Unless someone makes me an offer I can't refuse, I'll probably be laying low until after the holidays, working on new recordings and jamming with my friends. After that, though, anything could happen...
September 2008 - This has been a crazy, and pretty hard, month for me personally (hey, just look at my blog!), but things are getting better. It looks like right now that Reptile House Records will now in the U.K. be a subsidiary of the fabulous and legendary Stone Premonitions Records, which is in turn distributed by Stone Island Records! It's gonna take a little time to get everything together, but we should have them handling our European distribution very soon. As I've said before, both of these "Stones" are very cool organizations, and well worth checking out in their own right...and of course even more so now, since they have the great taste to carry my CDs.
Last month saw me playing out at the Crossroads Festival in Ypsilanti Michigan, with Guitarist Mickey Richards and Drummer Dan Allen, under the guise of my old band The Infinitones. It was good fun for all, many hijinks were had and beverages were drunk, and the other two bands playing (The White Ravens and Muruga's FreeFunk) were delightful! The Crossroads series has been a great thing for downtown Ypsilanti, and we've been very happy to see it continuing and growing. Hey, we'll see everybody next year! And if our band was a little over-boisterous, well, I'm heartily sorry, but just try to get over it. No goats were damaged during our set...It's only rock and roll after all!
August 2008 - Arphus Schmarphus Horkus Porkus, the new CD, is now getting a PILE of Radio Play! Thanks to our friends Tim & Terri from the amazing Stone Premonitions, we're now in steady rotation on both Radio Six and the Starship Overflow program.I'm stoked! Radio Six is a groovy eclectic independent web broadcast radio station in Scotland, and for some reason I'm listed in the Male Vocalist catagory. I had no idea I was a Male Vocalist! And when you see that the current song is "Fish" from the CD, it's stranger still...but I'm goin' with it! Beowulf Kingsley, Male Vocalist. But Radio Six has a wonderful playlist and loads of great shows, lots of the time I'll bring it up on a webpage and just leave it playing in the background while I'm doing something else...like right now for instance! There's cool stuff playing all the time.
The other organization that's playing the album is another real honor...the Starship Overflow, the current incarnation of The Overflow Radio Show, which had its roots back on Radio Caroline, the original Underground Pirate Radio Station of Britain back in the 60s! It's being broadcast on Radio Seagull in the Netherlands, and several other web stations around the world, just click on the link (you know, their underlined name up above!) to get the URLs and times. They're doing amazing work...it's a FANTASTIC show...worth checking out even if my fabulous tunes weren't on it. Plus their website is hilarious! Seriously, you're gonna want to check out both of these stations, and they're only a click away. This modern technology is really something, eh?
June 2008 - Well, some of the big news I guess is this new website! I had to streamline things and it felt like the right time to do it, so here it be. My old site is archived, and you can view it HERE, but I'll be doing revisions and news and such on this new one. Write me and tell me what you think of it.
Of course the other news (at least to me) is the Brand New and Improved CD!! Better than all those other CDs, loaded with vitamins, high in fiber and low in carbs, ARPHUS SCHMARPHUS HORKUS PORKUS is the perfect album for listening to while lying in the tall grass at midnight watching the meteor showers, or while driving in your Batmobile on your quest to battle evil.
Go to our MUSIC page for more details and free listens, or buy it at our site on CD Baby HERE. Really, check it out, it's cool.
On my gig front there is NO news, as I'm on sabbatical right now while I'm helping my folks out here in Michigan, although I've not ruled out some tour offers in the Fall. I'll be playing one show in August with my friend Mickey Richard in Ypsilanti, both doing our own music, I'll post the date when I know it. I'm just spending a lot more time in the studio...and at the rancho with Cynthia, commuing with the cats.
