my songs and shows
Several weeks ago Icy Cinema played our first gig, an evening of ambient music called enoscapes1, which was wonderful. The recording didn’t turn out great, so Darrel and I joined Gray in his music room on Monday night to record the three tunes we performed that night. Here they are.
Here are Darrel and Gray getting sounds as we set up.
One song that sticks with me, one that I wished I'd written from the first time I heard it, is Love Rescue Me by U2 (with Bob Dylan). I often sing it to myself as a creed, a prayer. I love how the last lines reframe the present with a sober hope that reach for a better tomorrow.
I've conquered my past
The future is here at last
I stand at the entrance to a new world I can see.
The ruins to the right of me
Will soon have lost sight of me.
Love, rescue me.
As the story goes, Bono was in L.A. on the Joshua Tree tour when he woke up with this song in his head, wondering if it was a Dylan song. So he drove out to visit Bob in Malibu and the two finished it together.
When Austin's Music and Entertainment Division launched a pilot program to pay musicians to be street performers, I applied. I got an email a month ago and today made $150 for playing an hour set at 500 W. 2nd St.
Luckily there was a little shade tree I could stand beneath and a breeze to keep me from sweltering. It turned out to be a lovely hour where I tested out my new busking rig (a Roland Street Cube) and streamed it via Facebook Live. I start singing at about 2:10.
I've been looking for an opportunity to be part of Outside Voice - Art TV, so I'm happy to have kicked off the collaboration on Saturday with Ron Pippin's ever-resourceful, ongoing, family-art project. I entertained the troops at Creative Reuse day singing singalong songs to the kids and parents busy with all sorts of projects as part of their open-house for the West Austin Studio Tour.
Here's robot Ron, a cardboard kid cyborg, and they dome they were working on while I was singing.
Here is the state of the album as of April 3: Six songs close to being done and two sketches at the end. I'm psyched to have a draft of the artwork with a little cartoon me meditating my mantras.
