EXPLORING CREATIVE PROCESSES: PART 4 (THE TEST OF TIME: Section A) Part Three of this series left off with getting to the root of all knowledge, and the act of personal discovery to find core elements of pure authenticity as I made the commitment to “make a gumbo”. Gumbo starts with the roux, for all…
(with all due apologies to Larry David and his Soup Nazi) I woke up on Friday morning feeling shaky, but good enough to get my ass out of bed and produce. Wednesday and Thursday were rough. I had the flu and all its attendant projectile symptoms, but primarily a raging fever. I don’t write well…
Alan and Jamie Notarthomas One the most valuable series of lessons that still serve me today came from the tutelage of Alan Rowoth. I had just joined a band called The Works, and they were pretty hot at the time. The band had burned through two incredibly talented piannaplunkers, Tommy Canfield and Andy Rudy. Two…
Thanksgiving is rapidly becoming my favorite holiday. It used to be Christmas, but things change. Last Thanksgiving I spent alone, eating the only thing left in a barren cupboard for my “abundant feast to be thankful for”: a bag potato chips. There are certain core concepts in my life experience that I won’t compromise, and…
I found myself at a party in a house on Crawford Avenue I used to live in, and I didn’t know where I was. Friends I hadn’t seen in a few years were gathered together to commemorate the life and death of a friend and brother, and I happened to be in Syracuse. So I…
Introduction I was at my friend Bob Acquaviva’s house yesterday, and ended up in his attic. He converted it into a studio, and we were listening to some new projects he’s producing, and looking at old Shuffling Hungarians video from a telethon shot way back when that a friend had recently mailed in. Funny stuff….
Author’s Note: Many readers of “The Daily Dose” have asked that I continue to tell stories of my experiences as a working musician in Central New York, instead of some of the other subject matter I’ve been tackling. I suppose that those requests have been made in part due to my thread contributions in the…
Author’s Note: “Friendships are funny. You think they will last forever, but life intrudes. Trajectories that seem to coincide for a time, skew unexpectedly. As I age, I’ve come to accept that phenomena a little more gracefully, but as a child, it’s hard to understand what was seemingly set in stone… wasn’t.” These two “Daily…
I moved down to New Orleans in the autumn of 1997, and I got hit by lightning a year later. My first year of my unexpected Yankee Relocation Agenda was going pretty well. I thought I was only going to be visiting “The City That Care Forgot” only momentarily to produce a the 25th anniversary…