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This was a big, big week. I had big plans for this week’s blog, but life got in the way. Big time. This isn’t something that just “happened” but is more along the lines of a new chapter in life. Since it’s not only going to impact this week’s blog (and future blogs), but my…

Every song needs a strong heart If we consider the chorus to be the heart of a song, I concluded this song’s to be weak. But I think I found a way to make it stronger. This week we cover a lot of ground, so I thought maybe that called for video. Happy Thanksgiving! All…

In the end, it’s pretty simple When Marth and I first started drinking wine, we just liked what we liked and called it good. Then we started regularly going to a weekly wine tasting. A man who grew up in a winemaking family in Croatia took us under his wing and gave us “private lessons”,…

Songwriting 101: Where do we start? After reading last week’s blog, my wife Martha asked a simple question – “is this the way everyone does it”? I realized that there are a couple of points that need to be clarified before going much further. There are multiple songwriting processes There is no right or wrong…

Interested in having input into directional decisions on a song for the next record? If so, read on! If not, hopefully this will be interesting, nonetheless. Decisions, decisions … On one level, writing a song is really an ongoing series of decisions. I have a song I’m working on right now and I thought maybe…

Nothin’s The Way That It Really Appears There are many songs that have a combination of sunny, lighthearted music and darker, serious lyrics. That technique has a name that escapes me, but it’s a thing. House of Mirrors is that style of song. Lyrics typically mean different things to different people, and I’d guess this…

The short list I once was encouraged to make a list of 5 people, without whom my life would be in a significantly different place. I then needed to make sure they knew what they meant to me. One of those people was lost to Covid-19 this week. Ken Banwart was a giant in his…

My Dreamgirls Background vocalists get no love. Hollywood (or Motown, if you prefer) even wrote an award-winning movie – The Dreamgirls – on the subject. But today’s post is about two background singers I love very much … my daughters Kate and Kayla. We’ve sung together all of their lives and having them sing on…

Maiden Voyage launches on Wednesday Welcome aboard. All hands are on deck and at the ready. But before we push off I’d like to raise the virtual glass and say a toast. Because I have a LOT of people to thank. Four months ago, when I decided to release the album on my birthday, that…

Fair warning: there’s no comedy in this post. Today I’m going to talk about a song that is very important to me, inspired by some exceptional people who are struggling with what is easily one of the most unrecognized and misunderstood developmental disorders we encounter today – Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD). From the beginning I…