» News as of May 2010

1.  MOVE
The biggest piece of news is that I am now a resident of Nashville, Tennessee.  After making music in Houston for the last twenty-five years, it seems to me that my greatest strength is in songwriting. And if I’m going to be serious about doing music, I needed to be in a place with a serious songwriting business, so here I am.  The way I’ve been telling it is that trying to be in the music business in Houston is like trying to be in the energy business in Madison, Wisconsin.

Leaving Houston wasn’t easy.  I’ve spent more than half my life there, and have made many wonderful friends.  I plan to get back to Texas at least two or three times a year to do shows and see old friends.  (Will be playing at Last Concert Café in Houston during Opie Hendrix’s birthday bash June 5, & doing a longer show June 6.)

2. SILVER LEAF, FALLING RAIN
Another exciting piece of news is that another CD with my music is about to be released by my friend, Karen Antone.  This CD, Silver Leaf, Falling Rain, is quite a departure from anything you might have heard by me previously.  Karen is a poet, and has been working on a series of spoken-word CDs, with original music contributed by several Houston musicians, including Roger Tausz, Steve Olson, Rock Romano, Sweet Mama Cotton, Ilya Janos, Giovanni Capelo, Chaz Nadege, Alan Arevalo, and Dave Tinder.  She is using a wide range of musical styles and poetic forms on these projects.

One of the forms she likes to write in is haiku, the traditional Japanese poetry consisting of 3 lines with 17 syllables (5/7/5).  She wanted to do one CD of nothing but haiku poems, using acoustic guitar and flute.  She commissioned me to write the music, play guitar and produce the CD.  I liked the poems, and was excited to work outside my usual box.   I wrote some pieces for just a single poem; with music as short as 30 seconds, and some wrote some longer pieces for linked groups of haiku.  It was a challenge to write music to fit words that are not being sung, but I’m proud of what we accomplished.  It may be some of the most interesting music I’ve ever created. Well-known Houston musician Jeff Abrams supplied the flute, and there is some percussion, and bass as well.  Karen has decided that this will be the first of her spoken-word records to be released, and it will probably out sometime in August.  I’ll let you know.

» Frozen Hearts

Last year I produced a music CD for Karen, Frozen Hearts, which has a few of my songs as well as several of her own.  Cuts from it have been getting airplay in other parts of the country.  I hope the haiku CD does as well.