#1. (5/31/10)

Today was an odd day.

I woke up at 10 am after realizing Amanda was to have picked up Townsend in Meadville at 9:30. Glad I wasn’t required to be there; I don’t even recall being told that she was leaving!

So I got up, and realized that the grass needed cutting, and from 10:30 am to just after 1:00 pm, I mowed the lawn. Didn’t finish it all. But a large majority.

Then I got ready for work. Jut as I was leaving, Gypsy ran out the door and tried to escape. Bad dog! I had to run her down in my dress clothes!!

Went to work, and it started out decently normal; should have realized something was awry when the housekeepers left and some of the rooms needed to have towels put inthem. Ended up being a bath towel polka all night. Delivering pillows and cots and cribs and sheets, as well as the bath towels. And I ran out of clean towels with about a half hour to spare on my shift.

Off tomorrow, hope the rain isn’t so bad.

iPod Touch

A week or so ago, I lost my mp3 player…so we decided to get a new one. I bought an iPod Touch, and it is my new best friend (electronically). Figured I would just say that. Back to watching the Pirates game. 3-4 so far this season…let’s hope for the best this year.

Daydreaming…

Yesterday, Amanda threw the idea out there that she’d like to learn some of my songs, freeing me up for singing and playing lead. Could you imagine that?

…the spotlight shines through a dark stage. Just two bright white lights on two blonde wood stools, each with acoustic guitars on a stand next to them. Facing the stage, the left side guitar sparkles in a purple paint, a beautiful Alvarez with a floral underlaid fretboard. The right side guitar, a honey-blonde Gibson Hummingbird, first has the look of being dirty, but knowing who’s guitar it is, you know its just old.

Two figures walk into the lights, to raucous applause. They sit down, flash a smile to the audience, and the woman starts strumming the chords to “Don’t Give Up On Love” and the crowd cheers and whistles. The man starts singing, “For years, your heart’s misled…” along with 5,000 other voices, and the night begins.

The two artists, playing to their hometown crowd at the classic 1980′s styled Tullio Arena, jump and yell and strum and shout, just like they always have, whether it was at Docksider Tavern in the middle of then-Erie, PA (before it was renamed Tom Ridge Memorial City, PA) or at Madison Square Garden, the site of their many-times-over platinum live album.

For a duo that leaves other male/female duo’s in the dust, they sure laugh and carry on with the audience as if the money never touched their pockets. Like their summer home in Fairview wasn’t ever built. Like they never bought two matching sportscars. They remain….amateurs at heart.

….I type this as I stand at the front desk at the hotel, in the same pants I wore last night, with having not played a guitar in over 24 hours. Sometimes this job can get so boring. Maybe someday I’ll have a Gibson Hummingbird. Who knows.

I don’t know where to start…again

Twitter has really taken away a lot of energy I’ve had regarding blogging. (I’ve got Amanda into it, and now she’s tweeting funnier than I am.)

Oh, wait. What am I saying? Start over.

Hey folks…its been another long time since I’v—- nah screw that apology shit. Start over.

Right now, I’m about as happy with my place of business than I have been ever. EVER. There’s a certain person who has finally decided its time to move on that has made my second shift life pretty much hell for a year and a half.

I haven’t blogged daily (on a regular basis) for that long. I blame it all on her. I blame a lot of things on her, but I won’t bother with that today. Maybe another time.

So I’m here at the front desk writing my first blog (in the hopes that there are more to come) and…honestly I don’t even know where to start. So…I’m gonna end it there. Maybe more inspiration another time.

Thanks for wasting the two to three mintes reading this.

The Best Radio Station Ever

Normally, an opinion piece would be negative. Recent events in my life have made me realize that maybe being negative isn’t really the way to go, so I’m going to write an opinion piece about why a local radio station is the best ever!

WXCS 92.9 FM, a low-power station out of my home city, Cambridge Springs, PA, is without a doubt the greatest radio station I have ever heard. And yes, this includes satellite radio stations and online stations.

First reason why – its a private station. There is something to be said for the fact that it only comes in in our town. Its our little secret. Too many things have been spread out over the country and have been ruined because of it (see NASCAR). I’m proud to be able to tell folks that this great radio station only exists in this small little area.

Secondly, they have a killer, killer playlist. I listened to the station for two hours and marked down each song the other day. Among classics as “Rock And Roll” by Led Zeppelin and “Crosstown Traffic” by Jimi Hendrix, they also played songs by independent artists (Darrell Scott’s “The Invisible Man” and Rodney Crowell’s “I Want You #35) that moved and shimmied seamlessly into the classic songs that were offered. In the mornings, they play blues from Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, and Son House. There are days that they offer an hour of alternative and heavier songs, and they also have a few radio shows by some local folks (Spa Report on Saturday mornings is an interesting sports show hosted by a couple young guys).

Thirdly, THERE ARE NO COMMERCIALS. You don’t hear the stupid radio jingles for the same companies you hear OVER and OVER and OVER again on radio stations in larger cities. Occasionally you will hear an advertisement for a local benefit or the station’s broadcasting of a Blue Devils high school basketball game, but other than that, it is ALL music.

I can’t stress enough how great it is to be able to have a station like this. It is inspiration, it is beautiful, and most of all, its OURS.

Cell Phone Bans

On January 5, 2010, the city of Erie, PA enacted a ban on using cellular phones while driving. In this post, I will argue points that will reflect a negative stand on the issue.

First, cell phones are just yet another distraction in the long line of accessories to the driving experience. My father owns a 1926 Ford Model T, and it did not have a radio. In fact, the first mass produced car with a radio didn’t come around until 1947. 

Whether its a push button radio, fumbling around with cassettes (then CD’s), to present day GPS devices, all distractions are just a part of life that, although agreed that distracted driving is unsafe, can’t be avoided by slapping a law on it.

Speaking of distractions, tell me one serious way that using a cell phone is more distracting than drinking a bottle of pop and talking to someone in the passenger seat. There isn’t. And with the cell phone, you don’t have to turn your head to make your point in conversation! The bottle of pop can be replaced with a package, a cigarette, anything really that takes your hands off of 10 and 2 is a driving distraction…including screaming kids in the back seat.

People have been driving distracted for decades, and the same amount of traffic offenses happen. Best thing you can do is make sure YOU are paying attention and drive defensively. There will always be tailgaters, horn honkers, people eating breakfast on their way to work, someone swatting at a spider on their legs, a driver fixing up her makeup in the rearview mirror, etc.

Enacting a primary offense (!!) law on one piece of distraction to the driver is too far of a reach by government. I am very liberal on many issues, but this may be the first time in my life that I have a serious problem with the government overstepping their bounds.

Behind The Music: Put Your Hands On Me

“Put Your Hands On Me”, which has yet to really be released, had really been in the works for many years.

When I first started playing electric guitar, one of the first things that I learned that sounded Hendrixy was the half chords/hammer on that you can hear all over electric guitar blues solos now (best heard on “Little Wing” by Stevie Ray Vaughan and also on “Yellow Ledbetter” by Pearl Jam).  I always loved how barring the ninth fret created a chord that sounded thicker than a normal chord.

Now I realize that the low E string creates a lower octave ring with the barred E chord ( x 7 9 9 9 7).

Anyway, enough technical talk. I goofed around and made a little instrumental back in 2001 called “Walnut Street Shuffle” that was on Kelso Drive. It features that little hammer on – pull off at the ninth fret, but not much else.

The same sort of musical idea led to “Melting Time Away”, which ended up making an actual progression out of the tune, 1-4-5, and led to a pretty cool blues solo (probably the best electric guitar I’ve ever recorded, and it all was the first take). It was on I’m Nobody Without Myself in 2004.

So I was goofing around with my new GNX-4 pedal and I moved that ninth fret position to the seventh fret and it was like magic – POOF! It created such a cool little blues jam, and I messed with that for almost a year without lyrics.

One day I was sitting on my porch and the lyrics came to me. Basically, the song is about a guy who watches a girl at a club every time he goes in, and decides (even though she’s kind of out of his league) that he is going to talk to her. She gives him the time of day, but she doesn’t want to stick around very long.

When I was a teenager and I’d see a girl that I thought was too pretty, my dad always told me that he had heard that the prettiest girls were the ones who never got asked out because guys would think they weren’t good enough for them. It helped my confidence tremendously (although I didn’t act on it for a LONG time) and put those ‘hot girls’ in a more human context.

So the guy DOES get turned down, and it SOUNDS like a sad story… but the last verse basically ties it up by saying that its best to give it a shot and be turned down.

Wait a minute lets make sure / You say you don’t want no more / If you don’t, my hands are tied / At least I can say I tried

It has been my most successful song to date, and I’ve played it on the local college radio station WERG-FM 90.5.

Not bad for a song that started blooming almost ten years ago!

Behind The Music: Building A Spider Web

A song that first appeared on my very first CD, Kelso Drive, “Building A Spider Web” is a basic verse-chorus that has always received a different set of compliments.

One summer night in 2003, I was sitting on the porch of my new apartment in Erie, and down tuned my guitar’s first and sixth strings to D. I was just noodling, and started playing the same position chord as in “Born On The Bayou” by Creedence Clearwater Revival. I kept fooling around with it, because I thought the sounds of the E7 with a bass D in it sounded pretty cool. I played the same riff for, gosh, about a half hour I bet.

At one point, I looked down at my shoes and there was a spider on my foot! I quickly kicked him off into the grass. As my eyes wheeled to the right, I saw a HUGE spider web that apparently this little creature had been spinning. So I started with the lyrics…

I’m building a spider web / I’m building my home / I’m beginning to like this place / ‘cuz I built it alone

As the song progressed, I went into the house and started penning more words. As I was writing, a friend of mine called and he was telling me how lonely he was. He had recently broken up with his wife and he just felt like a hermit in his house, didn’t want to go outside, just felt content never leaving the house again.

There is nothing in this space / a few bugs and myself / a picture of your pretty face / and my heart on a shelf

As I turned to a chorus, I continued on with the same “please come back and save me” feeling…

Gonna build it strong and tall / Gonna give it my all / Can’t live without you, you see / But I know it won’t bring you back to me

When I recorded it, it was basic voice and guitar. I double tracked the lyrics, trying to use octaves to make it more mysterious sounding, and it worked for the most part. I did, however, forget to SAY “Can’t live without you, you see” while I was recording it, and when I listened back, the pause left in its place was awesome. So I left it the way it is.

My cousin, Tom Walter, was a disc jockey at a university radio station in Pittsburgh, and gave me my very first taste of airplay with the song. I put it on the SoundClick.com website and it was as high as #20 on the Acoustic charts for the first month it was on the air.

Not bad, considering I look back now and hate the way it sounds! But its still a really cool, spooky tune that I continue to perform.

Sports Monday: Roller Hockey

If you’ve only known me in person the last few years, you’d probably have no idea that I love hockey. I don’t watch it much anymore, I don’t collect cards, hell, I don’t even wear my (high school) signature hockey jerseys anymore!

But if there is one thing I miss, its playing the game.

I was introduced to hockey by my mom’s second husband Bill, when he started taking us to East Coast Hockey League games in Erie, PA. The Panthers became an obsession to me; I carried books around at school that detailed the standings and scores from all the NHL seasons, and my mom custom made a Panthers jersey with my name on it.

During my teen years I was also playing hockey. We couldn’t afford to have me play ice hockey, so I picked up on the roller hockey craze that was sweeping the US in the early to mid nineties, and I ground through pairs after pairs of skates and plastic sticks and PVC hockey goals and lost countless numbers of hockey balls.

The first time I played roller hockey was in the back driveway of an apartment we were living in in Erie. This neighbor named Brad had a Fisher Price soccer goal that he used to shoot a puck at, and I was given a stick and told to play goalie the first time we played the game together. We had a few kids from the neighborhood join us, but it was nothing like the eventual crowds of kids I found at the trailer park that I lived in from 1991-1995.

Those four years I played goalie behind droves of boys and girls running or skating around the end of the road. Windows broken, car tail lights busted, trailer skirts busted up…yes, those were the days. I had leg pads made out of car seat foam wrapped in duct tape. Every few weeks I would draw the stitch lines from the various stylish goalie pads of the day. I used a baseball glove as a catcher and another thin piece of car seat foam wrapped in duct tape for a blocker pad.

As the years went by, I met a group of kids in Edinboro who would eventually become the friends group I had into my adulthood. We played at a tennis court behind a pizza place. I bought better equipment, but was becoming more focused on the goalie position. I loved being the last defense. Became known for it really.

After we graduated high school, I heard about a weekly pick up league at a skate rink, nearby to my dad’s house. Sure enough, there was some REAL talent there. My friends group went, but most of them were just dabblers in the game. I loved it and took it very very seriously. After only a couple weeks, I was the only one who was left from my friends group who hadn’t stopped playing.

I took lessons from some of the best players our area had to offer, even one who had played in a professional ESPN-televised roller hockey league in the mid-90′s peak. And I got better. I got stronger, faster, quicker, and smarter. I gave some thought of moving away to play the game professionally…but it was just pipe dreams.

In fact, I was getting older. The group of guys that had been playing when I started in 2001 had stopped frequenting the skating rink. The players were getting younger, and all of a sudden, seven years later, I was the second to oldest player there. Very depressing. So I stopped frequenting. I had a few other things in life that became more important, and I eventually stopped going altogether.

Over the last few years I have started to pay less and less attention to the game; I’ve not been attending the Otters games (the team that replaced the Panthers in Erie) and I am finding that I wasn’t even super excited about the Penguins winning the Stanley Cup last year. The last time they won I was jumping around the house!

Am I just getting too old for it? I don’t know. I know I miss it. I got a PlayStation 3 for Christmas and also a copy of NHL08, which I find to be very interesting but it still isn’t catching my attention as much as I’d like. There are lots of other things going on in life, but it worries me that the large chunk of my adolescence is falling away with the departure of hockey from my worldview.

What do you think? Chalk it up to age? Or I am just not putting things in perspective?

Work Story: Queue “Losing Horns”

Unfortunately, I only worked one night this week, so I’m passing on the entry for today. Nothing really great to tell. But I am back to five days this upcoming week so I might just have something fun to say by then!