Home

I just moved into my apartment. During the winter I lived with a family (my best friends and mentors) and since then commuted around the state, toured around the nation in an RV, and lived in New Orleans where little sleeping goes down anyhow.

But this place.... My own loft apartment in one of my favorite towns, down-valley from Vail. This spot let's me stay relatively stationary while playing weekly gigs in the valley, where our fans have dictated that we play early and often this summer season. But more importantly (I really never minded the mountainous commute, although my body might tell otherwise) I have my own space to create. To be loud, quiet, exacting in my practicing, sloppy in my writing, whatever I choose at any time or never at all. I can see the Eagle River out my window and already have a modest studio set-up in the corner of my room for new demos.

I've entered into a nice, steady period of songwriting recently. Like anything, songwriting takes practice and only a few gems can be mined from years of consistency. Except consistency is creativities' sworn enemy. You would think (and if you read this blog, you're right most of the time) that special occasions, situations or circumstances spark the creative process. Well how then can you expect to wake up and feel so special every day? Tasting the same coffee, toothpaste, reading the same paper, engaging in the same awkward morning ritual with your co-workers every morning makes one feel pretty regular. Sure I'm happy to be alive and recognize the immense beauty around me (especially in this here valley), but waking up at high altitude after long nights filled with overly-appreciative, whiskey-bearing fans makes me less inclined to write that hit tune, filled with the exuberance of life itself...

The key is to realize you're not special. That's right. Mom was wrong. She might have said you were the cutest boy at school but then you graduated and this is the real world, son. So when songwriting, don't stretch for the special, unless the feeling really hits you that you've stumbled upon divine lyrical wisdom, something everyone MUST hear. Instead, shoot for the common denominator, there are only a few human stories to be told: love, death, money... what am I forgetting here?? But those concepts are all so grandiose. Everybody wakes up groggy, goes to work stressed, comes home and hopefully has enough energy to maybe ponder those other grandiose concepts. So write for those people.

Either write about how you understand what their life is like, empathy some call it. Or write about love and death and life in a way that in that spare second between chewing his meatloaf and the start of the season finale of Lost, someone might understand what in god's name you're babbling on about, and see the world like you do, through your eyes.

Southern Air

The air is just sweeter down here. Pulling into Charleston was like emerging from a cold dream into a new paradise. Only hours before I had gone to sleep on a cold mountain highway in Appalachia after driving all night till dawn and now woke near the beach, saltwater smell drifting through the cabin. The beach felt replenishing. After months of trying to stay warm under layers and layers of clothing in the High Rockies, I couldn't help but jump in the salty Atlantic three or four times, cold water, waves and all.

The show on King St. was packed and rowdy. We were told the female/male ratio here is 7-1. In the Vail Valley it's one female for every seven dudes. I'm moving to the beach...

Something about the South promotes a heavier, slower way of playing music and leading life, for that matter. Of course, in my mind nothing can compare to New Orleans in the Spring. The flowers, sun, music, festivals, and beautiful people mix about in a heavy stew of history and funky energy and the result in spectacular. We'll be there by Friday. You are welcome to come visit!

I'm writing and playing guitar every day in the RV. This is the absolute best way to travel down the road in America and observe America, 55 mph at a time.

Who needs a tour bus?

Cabin Fever

The real problem is how cold it has been in Denver so far this winter. Beyond the fact that I've spent the last four years in Louisiana softening like a powdered beignet, the temperature has officially reached record lows this year. The other night it was -19F at the airport, just a few miles up the road from our house. As I was trying to remove the guitars and drums from our trailer in the middle of the night to keep them from freezing, my hand froze solid to the metal lock. I don't really know what Shakespeare meant by "Now is the winter of our discontent...", but I think it had something to do with the thin layer of flesh peeling off my palm as I disconnected the lock from my hand.

There are several good activities for musicians to pursue during the winter. During an intense spout of boredom I found this video of slap-bass originator Larry Graham of Sly and the Family Stone, "thumpin' and pluckin" away on a song called "POW". Nothing warms the soul like some funk from the height of the period. Take special note of Graham's wildly fringed costume, adding to his already exuberant stage presence.

While I'm on the computer observing those funky forefathers who came before us, I also like to lay down some funk of my own on GarageBand, that ubiquitous but functional recording software that comes standard on Mac's these days.

While many will make the arguement that GarageBand has turned legions of wanna-be deejay bush leaguers into undeserving recording artists, I personally believe there is an art to using such a simple program in a creatively fufilling way. And nothing kills time better than indulging every musical whim with nothing more than a computer, mic, guitar and keyboard.

Perhaps the one task I am consumed with out of excitement (and not boredom) is that of running For/Sure Productions LLC. We are happy to announce the first official artists confirmed for Mountainside Mardi Gras 2009: Papa Grows Funk and Johnny Sketch and The Dirty Notes, two solid funk bands from New Olreans, naturally. Contracts, budgets, artwork and publicity are just a couple aspects of running a huge festival that I avoid thinking about while trying to fall asleep at night, and try and focus on during the day.

Using this ultra-new, crazy concept called the "internet" will be key in promoting the event. Soon we will launch a Facebook group for those who'd like to get involved with the festival in exchange for tickets and the experience of "day of" operations (backstage at a Lil' Wayne concert is where I consider to have earned my promoting merit-badge).

The internet can do lots of things, even help us book shows in New Orleans for our move in February. But the World Wide Web won't keep you warm in the winter...

Music helps a little.

I recommend doing what we did in college on the rare occasion it got cold in New Orleans. Hang blankets over the doorways to your living room, blast the space heater, cuddle up with your browser and write a blog. I'm feeling warmer already...

Winter Update

Singing some songwriting in Nashville.

Apologies for neglecting the blogosphere for the past month! Life in Colorado has been so busy, yet strangely comfortable, that maybe I haven't felt the need to relate the woes of tour life to the public. I wanted to highlight some things that Frogs Gone Fishin', For/Sure Productions and myself will be up to in the coming months, so I can get back to more esoteric musings about that crazy thing called the music business.

I've been in Nashville since Monday; Portwood (guitar, FGF) and I had a hellish time spending 12 hours in the Tourmobile trying to make it back to Denver after a two-day mountain run, followed by a 6am flight to Tennessee for an acoustic gig at the venerable 3rd and Lindsley.

After all the smack I've talked about this town in previous posts, you are probably wondering why I would forgo three precious days (out of only two months) in Colorado to head back out on the road (to Cashville of all places...). We do have some very good friends here. But, the real answer lies in an ongoing strategy to try and promote our music in every way possible, outside of the two or three shows a week FGF plays. Portwood and I played acoustic versions of around 15 Frogs songs on Monday night and closed for a well know band, popular in the 90's, called Blessid Union of Souls. You will certainly remember hearing this song from pop radio, circa 1996. The Blessid guys seemed in good spirits, despite a notable decline in their popularity since the 90's: a good example of the absurdity of radio and record label inflation in the 80's/90's.

Promoting our music also means doing interviews and making sure our album is available to the public in as many ways as possible, a task mostly undertaken by Oh/Ya Records.

In the promotion company realm, For/Sure Productions is very busy contracting bands and artwork for Mountainside Mardi Gras which will be officially announced sometime in January or February next year. I'm learning a lot about artwork and design by interacting with our artists at Right On studios in New York. They are doing a lot to aid me with my visually based inadequacies.

In my personal pursuit of writing more (the recent lack of blog postings excepted), I've applied to write about the CO music scene at a hip publication based in Denver. I'd love to expand my writing scope in this way. Blogging is great and a great way to let your community know what is happening in your life and work. Assignments coming down from an editor at a magazine would be a different challenge altogether and probably limit some of the more jaded opinions I have about the industry from coming out. I would be focusing on bands and their music instead, which is really all that should matter to me from an artistic perspective.

I use that perspective to keep perspective on my life as a musician, promoter and (hopefully) writer. Or as Kenny Rogers put it:

"I Just Dropped In To See What Condition My Condition Was In"

Next post, an interview with Ivan Neville of Dumpstaphunk.

Songwriting

Songwriting is something I think about a lot. I think about it way more than I actually do it, which is indicative of how complex the process actually is (or how lazy I am?). We've had a couple days off the road in Houston, before heading to Dallas tomorrow, to relax and think about new music. Just like a lot of art, songwriting is a universe of dualisms and unless one can free their mind of these competing concepts, songwriting can be very difficult.

The main dualism has to do with who, or what, the art is being created for. Most artists will agree that they produce their product from within, for themselves. Then again, if the artist is the only individual who enjoys the result, the artist will die of starvation and certainly not make any more art. However, if an artist focuses solely on what her audience might want, she will become disconnected with her art form, eventually disillusioned enough such that she ceases to create altogether. Quite the conundrum, no? This equation is the source of terms like "tortured artist" or, more applicable to music: "starving artist".

I cannot really speak to how other art forms are created (my drawing skills operate around a 3rd grade level and any attempt to write something longer than a blog looks like a diagnostic test for A.D.D.). But, I can say with some level of certainty that most of the music in the world is created without any outside influence on a conscious level. It is simply too hard to visualize a crowd of people and ascertain what they would theoretically want to hear. Such knowledge can only come after the fact, after playing lots of music in front of lots of people, lots of times.

This isn't to say that no outside influence is present in songwriting. Whether they like it or not, songwriters will always operate in the framework of the collective human music consciousness, even if their goal is to write something completely new. Nothing new can be written without first having a complete sense of what has been done already in human music history.

Of course, these are all aqueous, esoteric concepts; probably more useful for you to ponder yourself than to read my blabbering. So, I'll close with a poem about our hitchhiking buddy and his dog, who I wrote about last post.

Turquoise necklace and orange energy vest
A dog and a backpack, on a mission
For herbs in the Ozark heights
Deep in the mountains, a moon-cycle of medicine
Miss Wilbur, Shaman of the Night
No human thinking, don't think too much
Discover the dog light
Miss Wilbur, Shaman of the Night

New Solo Tracks

First of all, a shout out to the healthy music scene in Dubuque, IA. We've had a blast here over the last three days, picked up an unscheduled gig last night, and made some friends who are going to follow us up to Minneapolis to party and see the next couple shows.

I've posted some new solo tracks on Myspace for the public ear-hole, so click on the title of the blog post, it has a link to something related to the blog every time I write. In case you can't locate those huge letters at the top of the screen, it's http://www.myspace.com/trevorjonesmusic.

99% of my creative mojo juice goes toward Frogs Gone Fishin' these days and as such, I have little time for any solo musical activities. Before we went on tour however, I recorded around 12 tracks by myself in my apartment in New Orleans. I used a simple program called GarageBand to produce the tunes, which essentially lets me sit in my bedroom and record with little else but my instruments and computer, a very low pressure creative environment where I am my own engineer, songwriter, producer, performer and critic.

As a result, the songs turn out much more conceptual than structural, and I have the opportunity to play passages how I mentally conceive them to sound. I also get to play every instrument on the tracks. Though my drumming skills admittedly need some polish, "The Zoo" features a funky drum loop I created by simply resting the computer on the floor tom, pressing record, and going nuts (later pruning the track for a tasty loop, which I played bass and sang over).

This is quite a different process from writing/recording songs as a band. I greatly enjoy bringing the meat of an idea to a band, only to watch them apply their creative alterations, how they hear the song in their respecetive mind's ear in order to create a piece which we can all feel apart of.

Both methods of recording are fun and both necessary for artistic development. The truly amazing part of the process is the technology which musicians, amateur or advanced, have access to. This is a double-edged sword, as GarageBand has probably produced far more naseating noise than collosal compositions to contribute to the world's collective catalogue.

But hey, it's all music right? We'll leave that discussion for the next post...