leftovers

It's a nice, lazy Memorial Day and I just finished writing and recording a brand new song, which will serve as a b-side on the forthcoming "Winnipeg Beach" single. A very long time ago, I used to have an imaginary group called DSV which stood for Drees Strecker VanDoren, which included me and two fictional band members, one was a guy (Drees) and the other was a girl (VanDoren). I would draw our album and single covers, probably during class or whenever else I was bored, and make up song titles and lyrics. I only have vague recollections of this, but I remember that one of our "hit" songs was called "Do You Remember" and I only had a basic idea of how the chorus went. Well, this being memorial day, I decided to actually make a song out of that nearly forgotten idea. In the span of about 3 hours, I sat down and came up with the music, recorded it, wrote the lyrics, and recorded the lyrics. It's pretty much done although I will do some mixing and ...

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Wow, it's been a long time since I've done a How I Fell In Love With and this is the first time I've done a city (or even a location). Since I'm gearing up for a fun-filled Vegas mini-weekend, I thought it was a great time to blog this. My obsession with Las Vegas began even before I had ever set foot on the Strip. Back when I was in college, I still hadn't been to many places outside of Kansas, but my parents had taken a few trips to Vegas and I loved hearing their stories about all the lights, casinos, slot machines, entertainers, and the general excitement they seemed to feel towards the city. They would bring back big plastic cups from various casinos, from back when every casino actually had coin slot machines. It's gross to think now that we actually used those cups to drink out of, but back then we thought they were so exotic! When I first discovered the internet, one of my first "online boyfriends" was a kid who lived in Vegas. We had met...

Last night, I performed with the Traitors at the Amp Organization 's "Qore: A night of Queercore/Homocore Music" which took place at Que Sera in Long Beach. For this show, Elene was not able to make it since she has school on most weeknights, so it was just Brandon, Angela and myself. That meant I played the keyboard parts on most songs which made it more difficult for me, and I wasn't able to move around as much, but it's a trade off as it also shows my keyboard playing abilities. I was so happy with the turnout of all my friends who came out to see me, I was very surprised that on a Tuesday night in Long Beach we actually had a decent showing. Back when I was with Shitting Glitter, I always dreaded Long Beach shows because I think we had a few good ones and then I remember one horrible one where tons of people came to see the opening act, a solo acoustic "girl with a guitar," and then proceeded to quickly file out as soon as we started setting up, a...

The first printed review of my album is in the current issue of Frontiers In LA, which is our local magazine targeted towards the gay population here in Southern California. I'm completely thrilled with the review which is overwhelmingly positive, which just a dash of constructive criticism which gives it some credibility. Although personally, I think my lyrics for "A Modern Life" and "Alien Nation" are brilliant distillations on modern culture.