leftovers

"Out in the Sandpile" is a game, of sorts, that my siblings and I used to "play" often when we were growing up on the farm near Paradise, Kansas. Originally, it started because my brother and I had these toy cattle trailers, which we would play with in a sandbox that my dad had built. Us country bumpkins called it a sandpile, even though it was a real sandbox. One day we turned the toy trailers upside down and decided we had build a town. Our young imaginations soared and soon, we were scavenging all over the farm and going through our toyboxes, looking for things we could add to the burgeoning city. My first character was named Kitty Kiffany, after my cat named Kiffany, and I decided he was a "pioneer" and the founder of the town. I'm not sure if the town had a name at this point. As time went on, the town spilled out of the sandpile and eventually took over what used to be an ice skating rink that my dad had built for us to use in the winterti

One of my earliest memories about music is riding in my parent's big blue Chevy van as a very young child, and listening to my parents 8-track tapes. Those long-ago times are very vague and foggyin my mind, having almost been completely forgotten until a few years ago when I did some deep soul searching and tapped into them. I do recall a few of the artists represented in my folks' small collection of those infamous black cartridges. Blondie was a favorite of mine (and still is, to this day). Creedence Clearwater Revival - don't remember any of the songs off the top of my head, nor do I remember Anne Murray; although I did remember the artwork and recently bought that album on vinyl and didn't recognize any of the songs. I particularly remember "Betty Davis Eyes" by Kim Carnes but I'm not completely sure whether this was on a soundtrack or something, or if my parents actually had a Kim Carnes 8-track album. Last is my most remembered artifact of the 8-trac

I haven't been blogging lately, so what have I been doing, you may ask? Well, this past week was a whirlwind but a lot of the work I've been doing is fun work, so it's all good. First, my band is finishing the final touches on our new EP, "Sidesaddle Sweet Talk" which will be released at LA Pride (June 10th). There are some cool remixes, a new version of "Mustache Rides" (which would be the third studio recording of it) and two new songs that I'm really proud of and excited about. Both of these new songs were sort of just throw-aways to me, things I had done on the Korg a very long time ago that I didn't suspect would ever see the light of day. Luckily for me, I have two very talented bandmates who took these tracks, and wrote amazing lyrics and musical parts for and took them to a new level. One of the tracks, "Delay", was further enchanced by our producer, Hoagie, who elevated that song to completely new territory for us - and I c