Tag: art

look at me now

Hey all,

Time for another one of these songwriting videos. This one is a fictional story about my car… but it draws from real life experience.

What I don’t mention in the video is that the impetus for writing this song came from Mike McDonald of Jr. Gone Wild fame when I did a songwriting circle with him, Kimberley MacGregor, and Sean Herbert (we actually did a few of those…) and I mentioned the 7-year cell-replacement factoid (mentioned in the video above) in relation to another story I was telling, and he encouraged me to develop that idea further.

Anyway… enjoy!

getting it

At this point, I have a number of daily practices. I’m a bit of a creature of habit when I’m home, partly because when I’m not home, I need to adapt. This is fine, and I have no problem doing it because it’s part of a greater plan, but when I am home, I keep it pretty rigid.

I was recently reflecting on the pandemic times with someone, and was reminded of the practices I had in place that have gone by the wayside, though many are still in place after several years. Then I began to reflect on all the podcast episodes and audiobooks I’ve digested since then.

I’ve really dug into philosophy and self-betterment over the past 5 years as a vegan, and longer, actually, as I was already on my spiritual journey when I came to veganism (though that was a big turning point). The rub is that once these things became part of my modus operandi, I didn’t have to focus on them specifically anymore.

I don’t have to think about stoicism because I’ve adopted it.
I don’t have to think about veganism because I’ve adopted it.
I don’t have to think about not drinking alcohol because I’ve adopted it.
I don’t have to think about endurance training or weightlifting because I’ve adopted it… they are a part of what I do. I do not thinkk about the merits of doing or not doing any of these things because the decision has been made a long time ago to do them.

It’s easy to think about the morning journaling and evening yoga practices that fizzled out after the pandemic, when demands on my personal time resumed, but it’s somehow less easy to think about the practices I have that stayed with me because they’ve just become part of what I do. Even so – as I type this and mourn my lost evening yoga practice, I suddenly remember that a Yoga Nidra practice gets me to sleep every night.

I also have to trust myself – something I’ve struggled to do for years, because I was not trustworthy for a long time. I couldn’t be trusted in a room alone with a box of donuts not that long ago, so this trust has come slowly, but at the base of my being I can always trust that I am doing my very best. I know that, because we are all doing our very best. So now I must trust that since I have tried all of these practices and some stuck while others didn’t, that the ones that didn’t just weren’t for me.

That is to say, just because someone wrote a book about daily journaling doesn’t mean that I have to journal daily. I journal weekly… and you’re reading that journal now! I also write songs with both frequency and urgency… so to say my writing practice has fallen away isn’t a fair assessment, either.

At any rate… this recent reflective time has shown me that; although there are miles to go before am finished, I am getting it. There are always things to try and things to stop trying… but I have to trust myself to hold on to the important stuff and filter out the suggestions that don’t mean so much to me.

I’m getting it.

The irony of this post is that despite trying my very best, I somehow managed to overlook the fact that last week, I didn’t manage to get anything posted. It was going to be a songwriting featurette but I just didn’t get it done in time.

So for the first time in 3 years… I missed the mark. Ahh, well.

crazy is just what i do

Hi everyone,

It’s time for more of this:

I wrote this song in my apartment when I lived in the City Market building across the street from Canada Place in Edmonton… so in the first verse where it says “I watch the sunrise in the reflection of the building across the street” – that building is Canada Place.

I hope you enjoy this video and this song. It’s very fast, and sorta hard to play… but the song used to be much slower and much longer, and actually pre-dates The Confusionaires by a year or two, now that I think of it… but it drives the point home so I hung onto it!

Thanks for watching and reading.

a plan

Sometimes it takes a minute to unhitch the load of things I take with me everywhere I go. The stress of my family, the stress of my job, the pressure I put on myself to write, record, and perform music, my body dysmorphia… but there are times and places when I am able to check all that junk at the door and just be present and do what I came to do.

Generally, I have a pretty clear mind as I head into most situations. I’ve gotten pretty good at worrying about work when I’m at work, and worrying about working out when I’m working out, and worrying about music when it’s time for that… but those pressures are always there, even when I’m not acknowledging them.

But I’m learning how to check that stuff at the door on occasion and it’s really enriched my life in a big way.

What I’m realizing now is that I need a place for everything (and everything in it’s place) and that primarily pertains to my calendar. 6 weekly training days are designated, 2 evenings of recording new music, travel days for work, travel days for my main band, time with my family… it’s all in there.

Sure, plans change from time to time… but it’s a lot easier to change a plan if you have a plan to change, as opposed to not having a plan and having everything fall apart on you.

All that to say… I’m living an amazing life full of love and creativity. I spend time with amazing people. I accomplish amazing things. I travel to beautiful places and entertain wonderful audiences… and everyone that needs a piece of me seems to get the appropriate amount. I’m sure some people would like a little more… but I’m certain that if they had more of me, they’d send it back.

I’ve read up on stoicism a bunch over the past few years, and I’ve in so doing, I’ve managed to put into practice the notion of not worrying about things I cannot control. For me, this is paramount to a balanced life, because there are so very many things I cannot control… including, but not limited to:
– other people’s expectations and/or opinions
– other people’s artistic output.

The Roosevelt-attributed quote ‘comparison is the thief of joy‘ rings and reverberates off the inner walls of my skull a lot lately, and it’s such an important thing for an artist to remember.

I’m truly grateful for the opportunities afforded me and I hope there are more coming, and that eventually I can provide people with opportunities as well.

output

I’ve mentioned this before, and I’m bound to mention it again… but in my spare time, or rather, our spare time, we three Confusionaires are working on another record.

We live in exciting times, and in exciting times, time passes very quickly. We are already behind schedule on what my ideal timeline is… we started later than I’d wanted to, and now we’re recording songs in our ‘spare’ (ha!) time, gathering once or twice a week in our rehearsal studio to attain live-off-the-floor versions of songs we’ve been working on and playing live. This ‘spare’ time pops up once or twice a week between out of town shows, and at the end of long work days.

That said… we work pretty quickly. We can typically get a song done (recorded to completion and edited) in a couple evenings, so one song per week assuming we can get together twice that week. Birthdays, anniversaries, condo board meetings pop up every so often and gum up the works… but this is our process.

It’s difficult for me not to put a deadline on these things… I’ve issued deadlines that have been sorely missed but if I’m being realistic with myself it’s because I want it to be done.
Done.
And fantastic.
Done and fantastic takes time.

So I wrestle… belabouring lyrical choices and harmony vocal parts right up until the time they’re recorded, but also writing new songs that won’t even make it onto this album (but I have to get these things out and down on the page because they’re COMING OUT OF ME whether I like it or not, and this is a particularly fruitful season.

Yes, there are seasons to these things and I feel like it’s all hitting me at once right now, in the most amazing and glorious way. It’s truly exhausting and it’s actually caused me to almost completely forget to post to this blog – something I haven’t forgotten to do in this blog’s entire 3 years. But when it dies down, I assure you it’ll be very frustrating, and I’ll probably take to this blog to register my feelings about it throughout the world wide web. I assume some bolt of lightning will hit me and tell me what to do in that off-season but that’s ultimately a problem for future-Davey.

But for now… I make hay while the sun shines.
And despite the so-so weather forecast the Canadian prairies are getting these days… THIS sun is shining quite a bit.

legacy

I won’t lie… it does feel a bit ‘on the nose’ to write a blog post about Ozzy Osbourne, but I’ve been sitting with this news today and I felt compelled to wax about it.

Not necessarily about Ozzy specifically, though it’d be remiss of me to ignore the fact that if you picked up a musical instrument after the year 1977, you have been either directly or indirectly influenced by Ozzy Osbourne. You might not even like Ozzy, but I promise you that a whole bunch of your musical influences loved him.

But what an incredible legacy. This man; and he obviously wasn’t the only one, worked exceedingly hard at something that nobody really understood until he was approaching middle age, when all of a sudden, you could look back on the dozen or so albums he’d made; both on his own and with Black Sabbath, and conclude that he was both prolific and proficient.

I won’t put myself on Ozzy’s throne, here, but that’s a situation I relate to. A lot of musicians and writers probably do… but as I look back on my own dozen albums or so, and the artistic works I have ahead of me, I know what is to get into my fortieth decade and only now have people starting to put together the notion that I am actually fuckin’ good at this rock & roll thing.

Most of us leave this plane of existence, and all we leave behind are a few belongings and a name. Those of us who are fortunate enough to find our vocation might leave a little more. Life is not to be struggled through so much as it is to be lived with purpose, and it’s that purpose that gives meaning to our struggle.

Ozzy was fortunate in that he actually threw in the towel a couple weeks back. He played his final shows with all of his friends and was sent off… pushed out on the iceberg, so to speak… and for all I know, it was that sudden lack of purpose that put him under. I can’t and won’t speak to the notion that his death was assisted other than to acknowledge that there are rumblings to that effect, but I won’t join in the possible spread of misinformation. The more cynical of us might conclude that; one way or another, Satan called him home at the end of his contract, but I find that more than a bit dismissive.

If a shark stops swimming, it dies.

The same is statistically true for many retirees within a few years of their retirement, uness they find some new way to frame life outside of the career they’ve known their whole lives. Though, 10 days is a short time. I saw Ozzy in the neighborhood of 20 years ago and if you told me it would be his final tour, it would have made sense. He’d lived a life of excess, and been diagnosed with Parkinson’s years ago… so it’s probably more appropriate to attribute his survival to his final performance to sheer willpower.

At any rate, a Rock & Roll Titan has fallen, and I tip my hat to his prowess and his incredible legacy of music and influence. To say that I’m indebted to him and his small army of incredible performers and collaborators would be a gross understatement.

Rest in Power, Prince of Darkness.

output

There are few things as simultaneously satisfying and consuming as making a record, and for those that don’t know… I am perpetually making a record.

I am constantly writing and composing, flushing out ideas, scrapping ideas, ash-canning entire songs, re-writing, changing keys, piecing concepts together, and woodshedding songs. I honestly can’t tell you how long it takes or how many songs I go through… but if I had to guess, I’d say I spend between 12 and 18 months writing 1-2 songs per week in an effort to get 12-15 that I am really happy with.

The best of the best get brought to my band, where the finishing touches are put on them, they’re tightened up, and performed live a handful of times to unsuspecting audiences, and then when there’s enough of them… typically at least a dozen, but as many as 20… we set up microphones and record them.

The recording process; since we have historically done it ourselves, takes another 3-5 hours per song (1-2 evenings per week) before we send it off to get mixed by someone else… a couple months later, we have a final mix. Within a month of that, we have a master, and roughly 3-4 months after that, we have vinyl records and songs you can stream.

I won’t get into the financial part of if, because it doesn’t matter, and we do as much of the tactile work ourselves as we can stomach which saves on costs, but we’ve also done this many times in our various bands before this.

By the time the record we just started tracking is ready for public consumption, some of these songs will be a couple years old. One of these songs is as old as the band… as it just never got recorded because it was never ready. I’ve rewritten the lyrics 3 times over before finally deciding to keep it instrumental, and spent some time building voicings around the original melody.

All that to say this:

Whatever you’re doing is happening in the time it’s supposed to take. The main criteria is that you’re happy with the finished product… and if you’re not, then it’s not done.

Nobody will ever know; or be able to put a monetary value, on your process.

The best art is made because it’s in you to make it.