A reminder, we will be at Anthology ( http://artists.anthologysd.com/jam-band/cathouse-thursday-may-21-2012/) for our big CD release party on May 21st. We hope everybody can make it out for that, it will be a great party with some extra special things going on! We will be playing the entire album and it will be available there for purchase. We hope you can come out and support us for that!

A couple of other things coming up…we will be at the Moore Cancer Center at UCSD(http://calendar.ucsd.edu/DisplayEventDetail.asp?iEventID=25813&iSubCatID=&iRoomID=) doing a benefit for the cancer center and that is May 20th, the day before the Anthology show. It is an outdoor event that is a lot of fun! There will be a crouquet tournament and things like that going on, just a fun day! Come out and support a good cause!

Then in June, we will be at the 50 friends winery on June 9th out in Rancho Santa Fe, an evening in the winery. We played there last year as well, and it was great! You can find all the details on our website at: http://cathousethursday.com/event/50-friends-winery-concert/.

June 16th we will be at Peabody’s in Encinitas (http://cathousethursday.com/event/mr-peabodys-in-encinitas/)! So, lots of chances to see the band coming up soon, including the fair! We are excited about all of the above, and we hope to see you soon! Bye.

The thing that got me thinking about musicians, is the sad deal we have right now. I have so many friends who have made professional livings for a long time as professional musicians and are suddenly finding out that they can’t anymore, because the jobs are all gone, and maybe because of pay for play. This is a call to all young musicians or actually musicians of all ages, to STOP PLAYING FOR FREE!

There is never going to be a career for you people if everybody keeps playing for free. That’s the problem, these club owners don’t care, they have learned to take advantage of musicians. We see now these showcase gigs where as many as ten bands play in a night, playing for fifteen minutes at a time. It’s a complete joke and it won’t do anything for your career, that’s what you have to realize. It was one thing when The Doors were the house band at The Whiskey, they became famous because they were good enough to become the house band, but they got paid for playing they didn’t play for free.

That’s what has to happen because you will never be able to develop an audience from the ten people who are going to see you for the fifteen minutes that your going to be playing. So all this does is play into the hands of club owners who are more than happy to rip off you and your friends by making you guarantee a number of ticket sales or even if they don’t they expect you to buy drinks and that sort of thing at a minimum. It’s a very unfair system that has led to the point that it doesn’t really matter if your a good or bad musician. Everyone is in the same boat for playing for free unless you can somehow get yourself a big record deal, get on American Idol, or something like that.

Well, it’s time for all of us musicians to become activists and start fighting back against this ridiculous system that we have now allowed to come in place where the only people who are allowed to have professional careers are those who go through the machine of things like American Idol, The Voice, and these kinds of things. And while yes those may be viable methods, those people at the top of that certainly come away with some fame and a certain amount of money, but as we have seen most of them are not lasting. Now they may have made enough money to retire for the rest of their lives, but it certainly doesn’t make for a meaningful career. I think that if you tracked most of them down, you would find that most of them are pretty miserable living out their lives trying to get back to where they once were after their fifteen minutes of fame. So lets shoot for something better than that! Lets STOP PLAYING FOR FREE!

If your looking for a place to play, create your own venues or go out and get together with a group of bands and meet a club owner and say “We’ll take the whole night”and “We’ll do it”. You promote it and make some money from it. Stop letting them take everything from you, including your dignity! So, musicians, this is a call to action, STOP PLAYING FOR FREE  (unless it’s for your friends in their home or your home, where you’ll have fun)! You’re friends will like you better because you won’t be dragging them out to these horrible night clubs where they get ripped off for a couple of drinks and the night is over after they hear you play one or two songs.

So, those are my thoughts today. Everyone have a great one, and I look forward to seeing you all at our Anthology concert, which we are promoting and have put on ourselves, which is what I highly reccomend to other musicians. Become entrepreneurs yourselves, take the game by the reins so to speak, and create your own opportunities. Hope to see you all soon! Thanks, bye.

It’s a very special story here because this footage was actually filmed almost 40 years ago when I was a student at United States International University and it stars Thorsten Kaye, who is probably best known for his work on soap operas. Thorsten Kaye is quite a big star and has lots and lots of followers! We released it today and put the notice on his website on his message board and his fans seem to be overwhemingly suprised and happy to find this little gem, as was I!

Now we thought all the copies of this little film had been destroyed. There was a fire that swept through the ranch where the film was stored. It destroyed 5 houses and a lot of artwork of mine. I used to do a lot of projects with a woman by the name of Ann Varnado, we had done photography exhibitions together and she had been my set designer. When I was at U.S.I.U. I was actually a directing major and this is how I came to do this little film.

We have put out two versions of this film. One is a version with spoken words, as it was originally tended. It is kind of a fun thing, the writing itself I was experimenting with what you could call a la Carlos Castenada-ish sort of thing, and we had a lot of fun! I basically wrote it for the environment that we filmed it in, which happened to be my friend, Ann Varnado’s ranch, which is up in the mountains of Ramona. It was kind of a built in set there up in a beautiful box canyon. So it was all shot there and we had a lot of fun with Thorsten and of course some of the other students from U.S.I.U. that were in the longer version.Years later, I wrote a song called “Elena” as well when I was over in England. So now we have cut this footage into a music video. So there are 2 versions: a music video version and then of course the full length version which is a short film. Both are a lot of fun, especially if you are a Thorsten Kaye fan! So hope everybody will check that out!

Also we have the big news about our upcoming concert and CD release party at Anthology(http://artists.anthologysd.com/jam-band/cathouse-thursday-may-21-2012/) on May 21st! Be sure and get your reservations for that very soon. For those of you who haven’t been there, Anthology is one of the premier jazz clubs in the world, and we are really looking forward to it! It’s on a Monday night, May 21st, and we will be doing the whole show(2 Hours) and we will be playing the entire new CD which is “Walking My Elephant”. The CD has just been released on ITunes, so you can find it there, but the official release party which I said is May 21st. So lots of exciting news and I hope you will all check out the new videos and we hope to see everyone on May 21st at Anthology! Thanks a lot! Bye.

We are on our way up to Los Angeles tonight, it’s Grammy night and their should be festivities in LA that should be a lot of fun! Speaking of festivities, here is what we have going on: Last week we got some exciting news that we have inked a deal to play Anthology! Anthology is the premier restaurant in San Diego for Jazz, Blues, and all kinds of things….just a wonderful wonderful place: http://anthologysd.com/index.html! So, we will be having our CD release party at Anthology on May 21st, 2012 for the debut of Cathouse Thursday: Walking My Elephant.

We are really excited about the release of “Walking My Elephant”, it’s a great album that we have been working on. It was actually John and my first project some many many years ago, unfortunately it had to be shelved because I was under a record deal contract and couldn’t release it. So finally years later with the help of the Bagley boys, we have finished it up and are very proud of it. It has some wonderful performances on it, things like: the horn section from Brian Setzer’s Orchestra, Rob Kyle did the horn arrangements and well as played the horn, John and I, and a lot of our friends. It’s a really great album that we’ve been really looking forward to getting out! We are very excited to be playing at Anthology as well, the premier spot in San Diego to play! We hope you can all get out and join us for those things on May 21st, 2012.

Also, on March 10th  we have the next upcoming house party where we will be rockin the house. Be sure and go online to Facebook and sign up for Cathouse Thursday’s ‘Til Death Do Us Party: http://www.facebook.com/events/143537489098024/! I better get back to driving now, so you all have a great day, keep the music playing, and I look forward to seeing you guys at one of our events in the near future!

So now another device that has become very useful these days, that has become my home away from home, is my IPad! You all are hip to the IPad! For maybe a couple dollars (3 bucks, 6 bucks, or whatever) you can buy the Garage Band app for the IPad, which is absolutely an amazing amazing device that turns your IPad into a recording studio! Your studio comes complete with guitars, bass, and keyboards that are all playable! I mean they are amazingly playable and sensitive! The first time you play one of these things, it will blow your mind at what you can do with it. But even just for songwriting alone, it’s great for just the simple act of the recording process. So what I love about the IPad app is it has a little window that drops down allowing you to pick out a section. There is a section counter that lets you pull up section A, B, C, or D and then you decide how many bars there are. That’s a wonderful way to go in and just make something simple. The microphone recorder is incredible as well, you can set it down and record a band, yourself on guitar or piano, or even just singing a song. Once again, it’s an amazingly useful device, like the Looper Pedal, only it allows you to manipulate the information. You could even use it to record tracks if you wanted to!

I am reminded by listening to Keith Richard’s book “Life”, and if any of you haven’t read or listened to it, I highly reccomend that you do so. I listen to it on tape while I work out which is wonderful! The Keith Richard’s book “Life”. It has a lot of information about how The Rolling Stones processed their music and recorded. I always respect the Stones because they were always their own producers, unlike the Beatles, they were the ones that were really behind the sound of their music, for good or bad. Certainly for good because they ended up with such amazing things. Keith Richards actually made many of the tracks, of course he was a heroin addict, so he would work on all these things and then completely forget. So if it had not been for all those tape recorders that he carried around with him most of the time, most of the Stones’ songs would have been forgotten, because he would wake up and not remember what he had done.

So, whether your a heroin addict or not (LOL), the IPad is a wonderful device because you can take it everywhere with you. You can multitrack, you can do everything you want to do, but as a songwriter the main thing is it allows you to create these sections. It will let you create a little chordal section that you can then improvise your melodies over so you can build up your song. It will even let you move those sections around if you want to. You could interchange intros with verse pieces and with chorus sections and move them around as you like to get an idea of what the song is, very quickly and inexpensively!

So, I highly reccomend those two devices, the IPad with the Garage Band app (greatest thing known to man), and if you can’t afford one of those right away, a simple Looper Pedal, which simply allows you to record and stop recording creating a loop so you can then sing along and improvise your melodies with that. Alright, that’s our songwriting tip for the day. I hope to see you all soon, thank you very much!

About 12 years ago, I came back from Europe after having a major hit record over there, with my “No Small Comfort” album. We signed a record deal, however that record deal was not such a great thing for me, and it embroiled me in a lawsuit that went on for years and years.

Meantime, my good buddy and I, John DePatie and I recorded an album in LA. We had a great time recording it with some incredible musicians. Mr. Robert Kyle did the horn arrangements as well as played horn himself. We had Brian Setzer’s horn section on the album. We had the strings section that tours with Steely Dan, and just some incredible players.

It was the first record that John and I made together, and the first outing for Cathouse Thursday! Unfortunately, it got shelved for the last twelve years, but it is an incredible album. So, we are finally able to release it, and we are really excited about it! It’s the “Walking My Elephant” CD, and it will be out in about a month!

We will be having a record release party, having a great time with that as well, which we will get up soon. As soon as we have a date down for that, we will let you know. So, lots of exciting things in the New Year!

Also, I want to give a shoutout to Cathryn Beeks at KPRI San Diego for playing us on the Homegrown Hour last week. That was pretty fantastic, we had a great time listening to ourselves on the radio, as you can imagine, and being able to reach out to more of our San Diego friends.

Everything looks good for the New Year, I hope you all will join us! We have a lot of exciting things coming up. Hope to see you here for our upcoming House Parties and especially for the “Walking My Elephant” CD release party! Thanks a lot, and we will see you all here!

First, on the 13th of January we will be down in the Gaslamp at JJ’s, we haven’t played there before but we hear it’s a really great room. We will be there all night, so come on down and hangout with us at JJ’s on the 13th.

Then on the 21st, we have one of our House Parties up here in Encinitas. It’s going to be great! You can sign up for Cathouse Thursday’s House Party on Facebook. John DePatie will be down from LA and Michael Bowman will be opening for us! Michael’s a great young artist, that we are in the process of promoting and producing his first CD! It’s going to be good, we are looking forward to it! So, he will be with us on the 21st, hope you can join us for that.

On the 22nd, we will be at Orfila Winery in Escondido, and that should be a lot of fun. Come and drink some wine and hangout with us in the vineyard.

Then on the 29th, I will be having a songwriting symposium at my house. Any songwriter interested in joining, let us know. The songwriting seminar will be about what we’ve learned about songwriting over the years and how we can help you over some of the humps, so to speak. Hope you can join us for that and all of the above!

So once again, the 13th we will be at JJ’s in the Gaslamp, then the 21st will be the House Party, and the 22nd we will be playing at Orfila Winery, and the 29th is the Songwriting seminar! So hope to see you all in the new year, Happy New Year, and I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! We will see you soon. Thanks, bye.

We will have places for 10 people, and it will be an all day event, going from noon until well into the night. We will cover all aspects of writing songs, at least on some level, obviously a one day seminar couldn’t cover everything, but we will try to hit on salient points. Things like song structure, generating chord patterns to create songs using different styles of music, and also writing with other writers (which will be a big emphasis that we spend working in groups on songs).

We will also be talking about recording demos, also the buisness of music, and what to do with it once you’ve written it. I will try to give you some of my experience, and what you might be able to do with these things afterwards. We will also cover performing your songs (which I think is something often left out in these sorts of seminars). But it is so important, because as a songwriter you need to be able to go in and sell your songs to other people. So, performance of songs will be a big aspect of what we do once we have written some songs. Now if there are some good songs that come out of this seminar, we will certainly offer a recording opportunity here with “Topless Records”, an opportunity to become part of our publishing empire so to speak, for film and television placement!

So we have a lot to do and a lot to cover! We are going to have a lot of fun! There will be a lunch, everyone can bring their own libation, whatever they like, and we will spend the day. Certainly a little wine never hurt the songwriting process and we are just going to have a really fun day hanging out and writing songs. Hope you can join us for that! Thank you very much! Bye.

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What that means is something is in the social unconscious like the song “Yesterday” by the Beatles. Everybody, or at least 90% of the people in the world probably know that song or know the melody of that song. And certain words are as well. Now certainly Cathouse Thursday doesn’t ring a bell in the same way some Beatles song might, but on the other hand, lots and lots of people have seen the movie “The Great Scout In Cathouse Thursday”. When they see that title Cathouse Thursday, they go hmmm, I remember that from somewhere.

The same thing has been done with many other bands. The Beatles for instance, what people don’t realize is that they didn’t come up with the name. The Beatles is the name of the motorcycle gang in Marlon Brando’s movie from the 1950s called, “The Wild Ones”. Another example would be The Rolling Stones, which is from a blues song. Led Zeppelin is talking about the Hindenburg disaster, which they used on the cover of their first album. So, anytime that you are writing or naming a band and are branding something,  you want to also bring in something that people are going to go hmmm I remember that.

Interestingly, there is an artist now calling themselves Roy Rogers and another guy in which I ran into not too long ago is calling himself John Wayne. Richard Burton for instance, which people don’t realize, is that Richard Burton is actually a long running British actor. The Richard Burton that we know, the one married to Elizabeth Taylor, that was not his name at all, he was just the next guy to brand himself with that name. We can tap into these things and use them. Madonna is a perfect example, now there is something tapping into the social unconscious. That’s not her name, but we can see how everyone knows that term as soon as they hear it. It’s not only a term, it brings up an image. The way she used it was obviously not like the term Madonna, her whole image was more easy virtue so to speak, at least in her early albums.

So try to tap into the social unconscious when your writing. I did it in a song on our album “Nashville Baby” called “Funky Hang Loose”. There is also a video for it online that you can check out. But in that song, I basically list all these dances from the 50s, 60s and 70s that we danced to. So every time anybody hears one of those things, they are hearing something that they have heard before and they go hmmm, I heard that, I like it! Anyway, that’s it. Tap into the social unconscious and you can’t go wrong. Go see “Funky Hang Loose”!