Lady Gaga & Bruno Mars, “Die With a Smile” I am the hugest Bruno Mars fan – the first time I heard the ride-out on “Uptown Funk,” I swooned. (OK, Mark Ronson gets some credit for that one). And then, when I attended the 2012 Grammys, I got to witness Bruno and his crew DANCE – OMG, get my smelling salts! He is keeping the art form of melody alive in today’s rhythm-machine-gun-lyric-hip-hop [...]
Chappell Roan, “Good Luck, Babe!” The inaugural artist for this series is hard not to like (at least for me). She is gorgeous in the campy way drag queens are, but with a soaring voice and sense of humor. The drumbeat on GOOD LUCK, BABE! reminded me of BILLE JEAN and it has a moody 80s vibe all through it. The lyrics are great – the rhyme of “truth” with “sunroof” is fantastic. [...]
There is a crack in everything. That is how the light gets in. - Leonard Cohen It seems like we are all mired in some kind of mud right now. I know for me, it's the loss of a lot of things: a friend, a family member, knowing my friends in NC, SC and GA are digging out of actual, literal mud from the hurricane. (And don't even get me started on the [...]
I probably say the word “gig” more often each day than any other – with the exception of the word “awesome” and possibly an iconic profanity I won’t memorialize here. But what IS a gig anyway? Why do we even call it that? A “gig” started life as a kind of carriage – here’s a wonderful picture of that two-seat bucket with big wheels. It would be hard to fit a band in [...]
Top to Bottom: Band, Old Roman Road (Celje); Audience in underground Celeia Ruins (Celje); GH & Klemmen Kotar, sax (Divaca); Marko Crncec in the snow; Jazzy al fresco (Postojna); GH in a classroom (Koper). Croatia, Italy, Austria. Czech Republic - we got to all of them. But my home will always be tiny Slovenia - read on... Fun Fact No. 1- Underground Jazz...I mean, ACTUALLY Underground... CELJE The current city [...]
We don’t think ourselves into a new way of living. We live ourselves into a new way of thinking. – Richard Rohr How do you respond to the above quote from my personal “guidance counselor,” Fr. Rohr? Does it make sense to you? I was raised to believe in God and that Jesus was The Son. There was a lot of modeling in my family for what Christian love is. My Mom was [...]
Fun Fact No. 1- Dance Floor Inspiration 1) We played this beautiful room called THE CLUB in Birmingham, AL. Film director John Badham ‘s family is from Birmingham, AL. THE CLUB has a big poster of Badham’s classic film, “Saturday Night Fever” on their wall. The story goes John B. was visiting THE CLUB and was inspired by the incredible dance floor for his own film. Fun Fact No. 2- A [...]
I'm not here to sell you on anything -- if you like the music, thanks! if you like talking about spiritual stuff, awesome! if you like history and trivia, fabumundo! But I'm not selling anything other than, well...I guess the word that comes to mind is: connection. And then another word after that: community. We all have a very unique journey in our lives. My observation is that how we live basically comes [...]
Why do an album of hymns anyway? The word comes from the Greek "hymnos," a sacred song or poem. Since most everything having to do with the Christian church was translated through the Greeks, that's why we call our church songs "hymns" now (our Jewish brothers and sisters call them "piyutim" and our Muslim family calls them "nasheeds"). To be honest, I'm not the biggest fan of the traditional Christian hymnal. [...]
“What gets you out of bed in the morning?” I asked my friend who had a corporate job. She answered: “Uhm… I don’t know. Probably planning my vacation.” I mulled on her reply then and I mull on it still. It brings up a couple of thoughts for me: 1) every day, I want to get out of bed excited about my work and 2) I never take vacations. Being a career musician is [...]
Can I get a show of hands? Love it? Hate it? Who can’t imagine doing anything else, even though it would be so great to just lie on the couch sometimes and channel -surf. Last night, I fell asleep thinking about set lists and stage plots. And the input list that I am sure missed somebody. And then the suitcase I needed to dig out because I kept forgetting I was leaving for Louisville [...]
At the risk of sounding like a vinyl curmudgeon, there was once a time you’d buy an actual record album in an actual walk-in store. It was an event. Then you’d go home, unwrap it, put it on the turntable, and while it played, you’d read the liner notes and lyrics to all the songs. It’s an interesting fact that vinyl album sales are currently outpacing CDs and digital downloads. That means there [...]
