WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8th, 2008 4:39pm

 i can't believe it... i came in second in the tournament at my fencing club last night. i've only started up fencing again at the beginning of this year so i wasn't expecting to hold out as long as i did. i have to say that there were a few of the guys who weren't there that had to forfeit so it would have most likely come out a tad differently had they stayed in the contest. but i'll take my moment, thank you very much. and the score of the bout was 15-14. you can't get any more 'second' that.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 1st, 2008 10:21pm

 so i'm teaching a student up in my second story sun room today, 'cause my office in the basement is out of commission during all the tile work going on down there, and all of a sudden the glass dome on the ceiling light falls, for no reason whatsoever. it comes down right between us and shatters into a million pieces, both big & small. i was in there just before he showed up working on some solo pieces for a show i've got coming up and at that time and i was sitting directly beneath it. had it fallen just a few minutes earlier, i would have been at the very least knocked silly, if not somehow tragically paralyzed. now, this student had brought in his extremely expensive & beautiful acoustic guitar that he had just told me this great story about how he scored it at a luthier show and how valuable it was when the dramatically loud event occurred. so in true guitar player fashion, as soon as the last shard of glass came to a stop i asked him, "is your guitar okay?". never mind the potential harm that he could have incurred to his person, no doubt leaving me open to a medical law suit of tremendous proportions, although he is a totally cool guy and most likely would not pursue such action. as it turns out, it did hit his toe but he assured me he was alright.

 now, private guitar lessons are not usually life-threatening events. however, after thirty years of doing it, there've been some interesting occurrences. i'll save some of the better stories for later blog entries. however, i will say that one of my favorites is when my cat, benny, who liked to curl up and sleep in my students open guitar cases decided one day to pee in one of them. the student didn't seem to care even though i assured him he was definitely going to care the next day. he showed up at the following week's lesson and opens his guitar case and there's, like, twenty of those little green pine tree air fresheners in his case.

i bought him a new one.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 18th, 2008 12:17am

currently listening to: ' metaview' - taylor haskins

currently reading: ' this is your brain on music (the science of a human obsess)' - Daniel J. Levitin

currently preparing for: 90 minute instructional DVD film shoot & then a three day backpacking trip into the california sierra mountains (10,000 ft elevation)

TUESDAY, AUGUST 19th, 2008 1:07am

 i just got back from seeing steely dan at the fox theater. they were awesome!! keith carlock made the show for me. all those great tunes propelled by solid, aggressive drumming with an incredibly tight groove.

i didn't even know the dan was in town when my new good buddy, gary rich (see blog post 8/19/08) asked me the night before, "hey, what are you doing tomorrow night?". he had an extra ticket that was, of course, right up front. i love it when it works out spontaneously like that. plus, it's been a while since i've been to a concert of pop music that i grew up with that is a "feel good" kind of experience, you know, like going to see james taylor. i can't say, for instance, that i felt all warm & fuzzy inside when i saw return to forever perform 'romantic warrior'. that's more like watching a real cool documentary on the discovery channel.

except there was no 'RTF' logo in the bottom corner of the screen.

MONDAY, AUGUST 11th, 2008 2:52am

 i just went on an incredibly cool road trip with my good friend, michael olivieri, who is the lead singer of the incredibly cool heavy metal band, leatherwolf. they had a show in kansas city so i drove out there to hang and then we were to come back to here and spend a couple of days in st louis. the day before he flies out to the show, michael gets a call from this other band he sometimes works with, desperado, which is an eagles tribute band. their lead singer got punched in the throat by his son (i assume by accident) and they desperately needed michael to come sit in. they had a show at the cumings county fair outside of omaha, nebraska. michael wasn't sure about busting up our trip we had planned for months, but i was like, "absolutely!". you can't ask for a better scenario for a road trip with a rock star buddy than adding a three hour jaunt up to a county fair in the boonies to hear a dead-on rendition of 'hotel california". i also know the guys in desperado so it was a guaranteed good hang. let me tell you...the drive from kansas city to omaha was a trip through the heartland of the fine USA. it was nothing but cornfields, grain silos, and gas stations whose clerks wore their farmers caps slightly a skew. also, cummings county is an hour outside of omaha so it was a real county fair. whenever i go the the orange county fair in california, i'm always struck by that aspect of american culture that we in elitist OC get a taste of. so this was almost like the difference between riding the matterhorn at disneyland, and sledding down the real matterhorn in switzerland (the biggest difference being that on the real matterhorn there isn't an abominable snowman that yells at you at the end of your ride). but i digress...

anyways, it was all an absolute blast and michael is the easiest hang, as well as a totally hysterical guy. we stopped in columbia, MO, to visit an old friend we both used to play music with and finally made it back to STL where i gave michael the abbreviated tour, replete with a visit to the city museum & the arch.

 speaking of the museums, i'm here in my new satellite office, the st louis museum of art, typing away on my macbook pro whilst sitting in the presence of some outstanding picasso's on the top floor, of which i didn't even know existed until today. this place is huge. it's so cool that it's all free and that they don't mind a guy sitting on the bench in the middle of the gallery, typing away on his laptop, with headphones on, listening to bach cello suites.

 so my latest thing is to work on my computer here at the st louis museum of art. we have a huge park called forest park that, although not as large as central park in NYC, it is just as cool in all that it has to offer. there's a lot of streams & lakes, as well as the amazing zoo and a natural history museum. and best of all, it's all free! so i've taken to using the art museum as my satellite office because i find it quite inspiring to write music, blog and pay my bills whilst being surrounded by van gogh, monet, degas, frank lloyd wright, as well as a vast plethora of ancient works from around the world. there's no internet connection but i can still get work done. i just sit here on one of the nice benches in the middle of a gallery room with head phones on and i can work on composing tunes on logic pro 8.
how cool is that? i'm immersed in the highest of artistic energy. although the docents look at me kind strange. i probably shouldn't bob my head so much.

 so i just got back from LA after teaching for two weeks at the GRAMMY summer music camp. this time it was held on the campus of university of southern california instead of citrus college (my esteemed alma mater. when i say "esteemed", remember my talk about relativity in a recent post). anyways, it was a blast, as usual. the kids are great and they really pulled it together at the end. we put them through the ringer by throwing all kinds of musical situations at them and then watch them try to deal. sometimes we don't have to be intentional about it because when you have that many people doing that much stuff that intensively for two weeks straight, you're going to get some choice moments. it's kinda like in mutual of omaha's wild kingdom..."these scenes, whether actual or created, depict authentic fact." we instructors do our best to prepare them for a career in music so we sometimes try to expose them to the sometimes harsh realities of the business. one of my guitar students had his pedal board go down on him right before the final run-through of his set for the big showcase concert at the end of camp. he was severely tweaked by it all & i told him that that kind of shit happens frequently and you just have to quickly adapt, of which he did. i made a mental note at that moment that at next year's camp i am going to intentionally make gear failure happen at a semi-crucial moment for all my guitar students.
hey, they gotta learn. i just have to make sure i don't enjoy it too much when then start to freak out.

 on another note, as in "freaky small-world occurrences", remember my post about hanging out with gary rich, the shoe guy who's now carlos santana's buddy? (see blog post ) well, the last night of camp is where i get to meet a lot of the student's parents who come in to see the kids perform. one of the singer/songwriters who worked with my ensemble had her parents there and her father informs me that their neighbor in marin county is none-other than carlos santana. "wow, small world" i say, as i had just hung out with gary the week before. then i meet the father of this young trombonist from san francisco, and it turns out her dad is a trombonist as well and he plays in santana's horn section! how weird is that? in less than two weeks time i meet three totally different people who all are close to carlos. what does all this mean? probably nothing. i love santana, of course, but i would really think it was cool if i experienced this kind of small world connection to sting.

 so i just got back from a great (& quick) trip to tulsa, OK, to do a couple clinics at saied music. i love family-run music store chains because they're always the coolest people to work with and i like to see the "little guy" hold their own against the almost always evil big chain music store (i won't mention any names but it starts with "g", and ends with "uitar center"). anyways, i met the woodwind teacher for saied music at my clinic and he invited me to sit in with his band at a hip little jazz club in a hip little part of tulsa. i ended up playing with them all night and it was killin', as they say. i love spontaneous gigs. i left for STL at one a.m. and pulled into my sunday morning gig at my friend's church right in time for downbeat. i'm a little nuts with the staying up late &/or sleep deprivation. it's one of my super powers, which is great for late night creativity but sucks for early morning meetings.

THURSDAY, JUNE 19th, 2008  1:32am

 last night i went to see return to forever at the fox theater in downtown STL. it was pretty cool. i'd never seen them back in their day, the 70's, which is when i first got into jazz via fusion bands like RtF & mahavishnu orchestra. for the most part, they rocked and it was fascinating to see the huge crowd go absolutely ape-shit for instrumental music like that. go figure.

 what tripped me out even more was when i met this cool guy sitting near me, gary rich, who is a major huge executive at brown shoes (of the buster brown shoes fame). turns out, gary sat next to carlos santana on a plane a few years back and that's how carlo's line of shoes came about. yes, carlos designs women's shoes. so gary plays guitar, pretty much as a weekend warrior, but get this, he regularly sits in with carlos & his band...all over the world! just last week he played with carlos in brunei. they apparently have bonded over the years and are very close friends so he gets to hang. how cool is that?

 although i guess it could've been weirder...gary could have been an executive at a company that makes feminine hygiene products.

 so i finally made it over to killer vintage guitars here in STL. it's a great little shop in a off-the-beaten-path of town near my house. they like to refer to themselves as "guitar mayberry" because everyone likes to hang out there like at floyd's barber shop in 'the andy griffith show". apparently a lot of guitarists who comes through town on tour makes sure they get over to there to check out the amazing collection of vintage gear. when i say "guitarists", i'm talking keith richards, rickey minor, jack white, and such. dave hinson, the owner, took me upstairs and showed me a completely beat to crap les paul special from 1957 that went for, and i shit you not, $145,000 dollars. as soon as he told me what it costs i suddenly held it like i was at the museum of art holding a rembrandt, which was ironic given that i could've taken my car keys and gouged the thing and it probably would've added value to it. i appreciate vintage anything, however, if i were to spend that kind of money on an instrument, i would buy ten brand new gibson L-5's. it's all relative as far as one's placing of value on any one thing. but i can't help thinking of how many people that money would feed in africa.

THURSDAY, MAY 25th, 2008  1:27am

 so last week was a blast as i got to hang out with the yellowjackets for a few days. they were in st louis playing at jazz STL's jazz bistro club. jazz STL is the midwest's own little lincoln center and they are a great organization that puts on a great series of concerts & they have a very extensive educational program. anyways, i got to see them play some new tunes off of their new record that features mike stern. plus, eric marienthal was subbing for bob mintzer and eric's my neighbor in OC so it was a bonus to see him too. it's funny...since i've been living here part time, whenever anyone i know is playing here in st louis, it's like you have to get together and hang because of the perception that you have this opportunity to visit someone you know who lives far away, even though we all live only an hour away (or less) from each other in LA & OC.

THURSDAY, MAY 15th, 2008  3:24am

 man!...i am having an absolute blast learning logic pro 8. i am relatively new at the digital audio workstation experience so it's all very exciting to me. most of my peers are pretty deep into this stuff and it appears i am the last one to finally learn what it's all about. i'm going through the apple training manual book and that's helping keep the learning curve shallow. this will all play a huge part in my composing the next album. let's hope i don't go overboard with the loops.

THURSDAY, APRIL 3rd, 2008  4:23am

 so, i was in my office and i knocked over my music stand and the corner of it landed right across the grill clothe of my mesa boogie amp cabinet and sliced a big gash in it. fortunately, it didn't hit the speaker behind it. but, this occurred in the same week i dropped a wall wart right onto the cedar top of my godin grand concert nylon string guitar that just happened to be sitting face up on the chair that i was standing over. it, too, ended up with a nice gash on the front of it. now, that drag is that i can accept sustaining gear injuries while you're in the heat of battle out on the road somewhere...like when a crazed fan rushes the stage and knocks a mic stand into the drums and then a cymbal falls into your amp's grille cloth and then everything catches on fire and then...you get the picture. there's glory in those kind of scars on your gear. but when it's just tidying up your office...well, there's no honor in that.

 what might be even weirder is that i just typed this story while listening to sonny rollin's 'b. quick' off of tour de force. it's a wonder i could even concentrate.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26th, 2008  3:24am

 the coolest thing happened last week...mike stern was in town playing at the jazz bistro, st louis's premier jazz club. while he was here he did a clinic at fazio's music store and i ended up driving him back to his hotel since i knew fazio's manager and i was heading in that direction. what a trip!....mike is a great guy with a real old school jazz personality. i went to a couple of the shows that week and they all played their asses off, of course. it was bob francescini on sax, tom kennedy on bass and dave weckl on drums. tom & dave are st louis natives, by the way. but what was really cool is that i got to jam with mike in his hotel room for a couple of hours on saturday morning. he just loves to play guitar. we had a blast.

i swear, i've had the best hook-ups since i've been hanging out in st louis. i still spend half my time in LA/OC but all the best career events have been happening in the midwest. go figure.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11th, 2008  10:46pm

 so i watched the GRAMMY's last night. they were their usual amusing selves (is that the right possessive? geez...my grammar chops leave a lot to be desired). anyways, as director of guitar studies at GRAMMY summer music camp, i feel obligated to watch the whole thing, just to stay in the loop. my favorite part of the show was when vince gill, after exclaiming, "i just won an award, and it was handed to me by a Beatle!", he said, "kanye, has that ever happened to you?". okay, that won't be funny to you unless you know the whole kanye thing about him being the supreme poor loser. actually, the best part was when 'the joni letters' won album of the year. i gotta hand it to the academy, they went with the high choice this year. the last time they did that was when steely dan got it in '01.

 ya know, the awards, they are what they are. it seems a lot of people go around saying they don't really mean anything. but if they won one, you know they'd be shouting it from the roof-tops. i know i would. i almost got nominated for best package of the year when my CD came out in 2004. even with an obscure category like that, i think i probably would've made  T-shirts, with something like...

GRAMMY
NOMINATED!!!

for best packaging

SUNDAY, JANUARY 13th, 2008  9:45pm

 i just got back from toronto, canada, after attending the international association of jazz education 2008 conference. it was especially cool this time because i got to play with corey christiansen & vic juris in the band, MB3. we did a one hour concert on saturday in the really nice theater there at the toronto convention center. danny gottleib played drums and jeremy allen was on bass. and to top it off, we had a special guest appearance by dave leibman, saxophonist extraordinaire. the rest of the week was the usual shmooze-fest that i always enjoy. and it's not over yet for that story (shmoozing, that is) as the NAMM show in orange county, california, is going to start on wednesday. i'm playing with three different bands on three different nights. i've been to every NAMM show for over 20 years and i still have a blast. some people hate them but i always have fun seeing my friends i only see there once a year and, of course, checking out all the cool new gear. plus, you can't beat the people watching. but i gotta say...at this point, all the rockers form the seventies and eighties are in their 50's & 60's and the jet black dyed hair, leather pants & eye liner just isn't working anymore.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 1st, 2008 11:11pm

 i did a very interesting gig last night for new year's. i wouldn't call it a "new years gig" per se, as i wasn't even playing at, or around, midnight. i participated in a benefit put on by the very cool marbles yoga center in downtown st louis. they were raising money for ovarian cancer research and held a 24 hour yoga marathon, replete with refreshments, a silent auction, and live music. they needed players fro the wee hours and that would be me. i was their man for the 3-5 am slot, as that is still a couple of hours before i get to bed lately. so i brought my nylon string and my looper and did trippy ambient backwards improvisations while a roomful of fellow night owls did numerous salutations to the sun. (or moon in this case). it's not the strangest gig i've ever done, but it was a fairly unique performance experience. once i played the grand opening of a pet store. i was paid in cat toys.