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Exploring a New Place

Apr 30th, 2012
by lorendavidson.
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In my secret life Day Job, they recently moved us to downtown San Jose, CA. We’ve been here a couple of weeks now, and I’m starting to get out and explore in different directions on my afternoon walks.

At our old building, I had a nice creek trail that I could walk for about as far as I could walk, either upstream or down. And we were close enough to the Bay that we got to see tides in the creek. We were a bit short on manmade amenities though.

Now I’m right next to the San Jose Convention Center, which means I’m near lots of restaurants, hotels, and major corporate offices. It’s a big change.

I’m learning, or rediscovering, some things about my fellow humans in the process of learning my way around.

Today I went north along the Guadalupe River, which involved crossing the river twice and choosing from a network of trails – no more “just walk along the levee as far as you can go.” All of the signage talks about how proud they are of having maintained some of the “natural” state of the river. If you consider concrete webwork on the river bottom “natural,” anyway. They say that animals and fish can still use it, at any rate. Nature adapts, and so do people.

I came back on surface streets, just for something different. I passed a huge condo skyscraper, which boasted of selling “a lifestyle.” I’m not sure what they were selling, but it’s obviously a lifestyle that allows people to exist for long periods of time without interacting with the rest of the world, if they so choose, in a huge, sterile-looking building with parking garage, exercise room, and I have no clue what else. I didn’t bother going in to check.

Coming back, everything was traffic signals and walk lights, making the flow work for cars and interrupting it for humans. Once out of the river corridor, the only greenery was manicured lawns and street trees.

And of course there were those who’ve fallen off the economic ladder, some with their sleeping bags and everything they own in a shopping cart, hoping for a quiet place to crash and a few bucks for food. There but for the grace of God(dess) go all of us – I know quite a few people who are no more than a few paychecks away from the street. And it’s not a great time to be looking for work, no matter how experienced you are. I’m thankful for the Day Job, even as I write songs to poke fun at that life.

Is it any wonder people either go crazy or feel a need to escape? It might be a “lifestyle,” but it sure doesn’t feel like a life.

On the plus side, while I haven’t used them yet there are at least two bars within a block of here. Some night when the commute traffic between here and home looks hopeless, I expect I’ll hunker down for a round or two.

And it *is* a pretty creek in a lot of places, and a beautiful day to be out walking along it.

Gardening – My Other Escape

Apr 28th, 2012
by lorendavidson.
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Ah, springtime! When mens’ fancies turn to…digging in the dirt? Growing food?

Well, mine do, anyway. With my various other projects – rebuilding the edge of my deck, working on songs for the new album, dialing for gigs – I’ve been a bit delayed and distracted from my usual spring planting.

It looks like this will be the weekend when that changes for me. I was out first (or second) thing this morning, to collect my semi-annual three bags of compost from our municipal waste folks. Our arrangement is that I give them all the greenwaste that I don’t compost myself every week, and several times a year, they give me shit right back. 🙂 Three bags of it, all ready to help little things to grow. 🙂

After that, I got back in the car and headed down to Orchard Supply (OSH), to see what they had by way of vegetables. They must have seen me coming – they had a mini-garden center set up in the parking lot:

They were ready for me!

Of course, my hands were full of vegies and a roll of weed mat before I went into the store!

By the time all was said and done, I’d accumulated the following goodies:

  • Orchid food, for the free orchid I got back after the holidays at work
  • A six-pack of bush beans
  • Three different heirloom tomatoes – Mortgage Lifter, which I’ve been hearing about for years, Russian Orange (new to me), and Sweet 100 (because I like cherry tomatoes)
  • Three full-grown strawberry plants in a pot – to fill in around my fruit trees where I have spaces
  • An Ancho Poblano pepper, so I can do salsa later in the summer
  • A pair of Mud gloves. These are like kitchen gloves on steroids – hardy enough to stand up to digging in the dirt, but hopefully sensitive enough for those planting and weeding tasks I’d previously been doing bare-handed, because the leather work gloves I already have are way too coarse, and I can’t feel a thing through them.

So now I have all these plants, that I need to find homes for and take care of. It’s sort of like puppies in that way – I can’t just let them sit around the house until they die of neglect. As it’s now noonish, I’ll leave them where they are until around 4 and plant them then – it’s better not to expose them to the harsh noonday sun right when you transplant.

Several of them are in a new biodegradable type of pot, similar to peat. The roots are growing right through the walls. I figure I’ll just slash the sides of the pots and put them in whole; that way the roots will have more ways out and I won’t have to disturb the roots on those plants to put them in.

And then I get to figure out what I can do with them when they grow up.

New Album Update – “Of All the Rum Joints…”

Mar 31st, 2012
by lorendavidson.
2 comments

Cover for "Of All the Rum Joints..." - new albumI’ve been working hard with producer Kevin Johnston and with artists Dave Daily and Albert Hinojosa, and some of the early bits of this new album are starting to fall into place.

The title, as you may have heard, will be “Of All the Rum Joints…” It’s my fifth album, and the second on which I’ve used a song lyric for the title.

Albert is responsible for the new Cafe Tropicale logo, visible in a slightly altered form in the album cover graphic. Dave took that logo and some other bits of guidance from me and created this way-cool cover concept. They’ve both done excellent work so far. Dave is also working on a couple of T-shirt ideas for me right now.

Another bit of trivia: Partly by design and partly by happenstance, I do album covers that alternate having and not having my picture on them. So albums 1, 3, 1nd 5 (this one) have my picture on the front; 2 and 4 do not. So the odds are good that the eventual album six won’t either. But as I haven’t even finished this album yet, I’m not making too many plans that far ahead. 🙂

Meanwhile, Kevin and I have approximately finalized the song list for this one. There will be eleven original songs and two covers. The covers will be a reggae version of John Denver’s classic “Sunshine on my Shoulders” and my own interpretation of an old Doors tune, “Moonlight Drive.”

Here’s a list of the other songs on the album. The links, where provided, are to “snapshot in time” and “homebrew” versions; the songs have continued to evolve, and will likely be different on the album. But still worth listening to.

  • “Green Flash” – upbeat and using an alternate guitar tuning, this is a song about watching sunsets for that elusive and rare atmospheric phenomenon known as a “green flash.” And it’s about the journey being as important as the destination. Stuff like that.
  • “Looking at You” – A few months back, I realized that the song “Margaritaville” and the movie Casablanca pretty much had the same premise – boy meets girl, girl dumps boy, boy goes someplace with palm trees to drink it off. Which may be powerful, but isn’t very empowering. So I wrote this song, which is really “Margaritaville” meets “How Do You Like Me Now?” It provides the album title and theme.
  • “Voodoo Lounge” – I’ve written earlier about this song, which has undergone some revision since the earlier version I posted about. We’ll be going musically to some of the less savory corners of New Orleans to flesh this one out.
  • “Fly Away” – This was inspired by a couple of other songs, that I won’t name here. It’s upbeat and lively and hopeful, because I think we all need that to look forward to every now and then.
  • “One More Rum” – This song took shape one day as I was contemplating one of the Greatest Lies in the World – “C’mon, man, we’re only going to have one more round and then we can go home.” Never happens. It’s becoming the signature “last song of the night” when I play, and will be the last song on the album.
  • “Pontiac Motel” – This song has no beaches, no boat drinks, and no bars in it. I’ve had the title kicking around in my “hook book” for at least five years. It’s really a counterpoint in some ways to everything else I write – we fantasize about walking away from our jobs now and then, but there’s an entire class of people who don’t have jobs – the homeless – who probably fantasize about having lives like the ones we fantasize about escaping from. And if your employer were bought out tomorrow, or went out of business, or just decided, “hey, let’s let a bunch of people go,” how many paychecks are *any* of us away from living on the streets?
  • “Island Moonlight” – Everyone loves being in love…right? But even the best romance has its bad days, and sometimes you question whether it’s all going to work out. In this song it does, thanks to the magic of island moonlight.
  • “Way Out” – In addition to an interesting play on words in chorus, this song is going to put the “rock” in “trop rock.” Really. I was stretching my writing skills in a particular direction, and this is what emerged.
  • “Somewhere, Someday” – One man’s dream of Paradise.
  • “Tropical Therapy” – Because I’d been trying hard *not* to write Yet Another Margaritaville Near-Clone for many years, and realized that I’d succeeded. So, having proved I could write nearly everything else, I proved I could write this too.
  • “Living Key West” – One of my friends is musician Howard Livingston, who posts about his carefree, happy life in the Florida Keys. A lot. Some might even say to excess. I say it’s easy to live on Key West Time when you’re in the keys; it’s a bit more of a challenge for those of us in the “upper 48.” But it can be done, and this song is about how I do it. Any resemblance between my song and Howie’s is out of love, done with his blessing, and as far as I can tell, doesn’t cross any legally bad lines anyway.

Song of the Week: Voodoo Lounge

Dec 29th, 2011
by lorendavidson.
2 comments

Hey there!

I’m going to try to share as many new songs as I can, over the next month or two. These are songs I’m thinking about putting onto my next CD, in draft form. The mix is my “homebrew” version, and will likely be very different when the album comes out next summer. It’ll almost certainly be better there. But it’s a chance for you to start to get to know the songs themselves, and a chance for me to hear what *you* like.

Today’s offering is something I call “Voodoo Lounge.” It’s something I wrote to fill a hole in my catalog – I don’t have a good New Orleans blues number. I expect it’ll get the whole “smoky blues” treatment by Kevin.

The story behind the song is…well, I made it up. 🙂 That said, anyone out there who actually knows something about Voudou isn’t likely to get *too* annoyed at me, because I tried to get enough of the details right.

I’d like to know what you think of it, so please leave comments or send me an email.

Here’s the song: Voodoo Lounge

I hope you like it.

And Happy New Years!

Loren

Vacation Travelogue – My Pictures

Dec 8th, 2011
by lorendavidson.
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In which I post a few pictures and talk about a few of the memorable moments of my trip last month to the Keys. Note that these are all *my* pictures, and none of them have me in them. I may do another post with other people’s pics later, and I’ll edit and link it in here.

Let’s start up at the top of the Keys:

I saw a manatee!

Florida is home to the endangered manatees. After nine years, I finally saw my first manatee while in Key Largo. 🙂 I’d been sitting at the bar when I saw folks gathered around the boat dock and heard some commotion. I figured I should check that out, and sure enough, we had a manatee stopping by to listen to the music! 🙂

(Note: You’re not supposed to feed manatees *or* give them water, like was happening here. I wasn’t doing any of the above; I was just taking pictures. 🙂 )

The folks throwing the Pit Stop Party in Key Largo have a nice flat boat that they took folks out on. I got to go on the Tuesday night sunset cruise:

Sunset in Key Largo

And I got to stay in a beautiful house on the Atlantic side, with this view in the mornings:

Key Largo morning

From here, I went down to Key West, and saw more cool scenery at Southernmost on the Beach:

Southernmost - beautiful beach!

One of the big events of the weekend was the Street Fest on Friday. Buffett showed up, after I’d retreated from street level to friends’ rooms at the La Concha. Here’s a pic showing some of the crowd near the stage, which doesn’t do it justice:

Ground-level view at the Street Fest, pre-Buffett

If you look at the hotel behind the stage, I ended up on a balcony above the tile you see, on the second floor.

I sing about sunsets at Mallory Square. Well, Saturday night I couldn’t see the sun set, but I went down there anyway, and had a drink by the water next door at the Westin:

Sitting at water's edge near Mallory Square

It was windy, with a front coming in. And getting chilly. The sunset boats were seriously reefed:

Reef them sails before we capsize!

The sunset cruises are fun. You get live music and free drinks included in the price. The only thing not guaranteed is a view of the sun setting.

One of the most wonderful views I found of the water was…wait for it…at the Key West McDonald’s on Roosevelt Blvd. I’m not making this up:

Because I deserved a break.

I believe this qualifies as the cheapest Gulf view dining in the Keys.

I’ve felt very much connected with my ocean- and Gulf-view pictures today. There are other pics of various music-related stuff; I’ll try to put those in another post sometime. I wanted to share the sheer beauty down there, the stuff that gets right into my gut and unknots it and puts a shit-eating grin on my face.

Yeah. That stuff. I love me some Florida Keys.

New Song – Looking at You

Dec 7th, 2011
by lorendavidson.
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Hi,

Today I begin a new series of occasional posts about my upcoming album. I don’t have a title for it yet, but Kevin (my producer) and I have started work on it, I’ve written and polished most of the songs for it already, and as I turn out “scratch” demos for him to work on, I want to share a few of those.

First, a word about “scratch” demos: A scratch demo is a preliminary version of a song used in this case to give my producer something to build the production of the song around. Sometimes it’s a fair idea of what the final song might sound like; sometimes not. It’s like the first draft of a novel, or the pre-colored version of a comic panel.

I’m currently making scratch demos in GarageBand; I used to make them in ProTools. I might do a post about that process, as it might be interesting or enlightening to someone at some point. But that’s neither here nor there right now.

Today’s demo is of a song titled “Looking at You.” It consists of one guitar, one vocal, and canned Apple Loop drums. Other than a little reverb and EQ (equalization/tone shaping), not much has been done to it.

The story behind this song is interesting. As many of my friends know, I’m a big fan of the movie Casablanca. I can quote large sections of it, and occasionally annoy whomever I’m watching the movie with. 🙂 It occurred to me a couple of months ago that the stories of Casablanca and “Margaritaville” have a lot in common: Narrator loses girl; narrator goes someplace tropical and starts drinking heavily. The settings, subplots, and outcomes differ significantly, but both seem to start from roughly the same place.

I thought, “Well, what if Rick got to Casablanca and discovered it was perfect for him? What if he met a new lady, made lots of friends, and got over that faithless Ilsa? What if, when she shows up on scene with her husband, he tells her, “Y’know kid…you dumping me in the Paris train station was the best thing that ever happened to me.” What would that look like? Would it make an interesting song?

I thought it would. So I started work on a song that I call a cross between “Margaritaville” and “How Do You Like Me Now?” And the title, and a few of the lyrics, pay tribute to Casablanca, as they should.

I’m hoping that the final version will end with a steel pan playing a few notes from “As Time Goes By.”

Check it out here: Looking At You

Love it? Hate it? Let me know what you think.

Living my Bliss – What I Did on my Vacation

Nov 15th, 2011
by lorendavidson.
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(Yes, the title of this post is a tribute to post-summer essays from my childhood. My vacations have improved somewhat since then.)

I’ve now been home almost a week from this year’s Key West vacation at Meeting of the Minds (MOTM). It’s a working vacation for me, because I need to be out performing, networking, and otherwise promoting myself as a Trop Rock artist. So there’s always this inner conflict going on between “need to be at X event(s)” and “want to sit by the water and do nothing.”

This year I made sure to do some of both. I was going eight days in a row partying, and I knew that if I didn’t pace myself, I’d never make it through. So I did, and I did, and my voice was in better shape on my second Monday than on my first as a result.

I did get out to play in quite a few places, and you can see a lot of the pictures on my Facebook pages. I played with and around a bunch of my fellow Trop Rockers, and had something I was invited to play at every day this year – a first.

Here’s a partial list of the cool and talented folks who either invited me to gig with them, or whom I actually did gig with: Captain Josh Ramsteck, Chris Sacks, Dusty and Barry of the Conch Fritters, Gary PhillipS, Barbara Smith and Scott Paulsen, John Friday, and the good folks at BeachFront Radio. Thank you, one and all, for inviting me to be part of your party.

I also wrote drafts for two new songs down there, one more than usual. 🙂

Even cooler than that: I’ve been doing a lot of spiritual work the past year around embodying and manifesting bliss in my daily life. It’s easy to be blissful, driving through the Keys and looking at the gorgeous scenery. Something I consciously focused on this year was drinking in all that natural beauty and the magnificently-elated mood I’m in when I’m down there and “storing” it inside me. Now that I’m home, all I have to do is remember one or more of those really cool, magical moments when I could look out at the water or breathe the air, and no matter what’s going on, I feel better. And I’m still smiling about 95% of the time.

My friend Howard Livingston calls that “Living on Key West Time.” I call it “Island Standard Time.” It’s the same thing no matter what you call it – remembering what it’s like to be in that beautiful place, surrounded by several thousand of your closest friends, excellent music, good booze, and spectacular scenery, no matter where I am or what I’m doing. Heck; I’m even smiling my way through rush hour traffic.

If you were down there too, try that the next time you’re faced with something that’s been stressful for you in the past. If you weren’t down there, remember the last really wonderful and blissful time you had, breathe that in, and remember it when things threaten to get a bit shitty. What’s the worst that can happen?

Sunday 11/27 – Loren Davidson Music in Your Living Room!

Nov 15th, 2011
by lorendavidson.
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Good news! I’ve finally assembled a gift bag full of round tuits, and am scheduling my next online concert via StageIt. Here’s the link:

http://www.stageit.com/loren_davidson/post_thanksgiving_recovery_show/5820

For approximately 50 minutes, I’ll be playing music, telling stories, and sharing a good time with whomever shows up. And it’s all as close as your computer! 🙂 Expect a few of my songs you might already know, maybe a cover or two, and a few relatively new songs that I’m thinking of putting on my next album.

My friends who showed up for my last StageIt show had a great time, and most of them have been gently nagging me to do another one. So here it is. Nobody wants to leave the house on the Sunday after Thanksgiving anyway – the football games are mostly over, the turkey remnants have been frozen, and either you’ve made it home from your relatives’ place or you’ve tossed all your guests out by then and told them to go home. And if you’re a shopping fiend, you’ve probably done that to death by Sunday and you’re ready to mellow out a bit.

How it Works

In order to watch the show, you will need to create an account with StageIt if you don’t already have one. Sometime between now and the show date, go to their home page and click the “Sign Up” link at the top right. They’ll want some info from you like an email address and payment info, and they’ll want you to buy at least $5 in “notes,” which is what you’ll use to buy tickets to shows and to tip performers. Like me. 🙂 Each “note” is worth ten cents, so 50 notes is worth $5.00.

While I do list a suggested ticket price of $5, I’ve left it editable, so you can adjust it all the way down to zero if you want. But I hope you’ll consider paying the price and helping me afford to produce my next album. Or pay my next bar bill.

A few minutes before show time, click the link I placed up above, sign in, and kick back with a cold one. The show will appear, Webcam-style, once I start it at my end. The quality is relatively good – a couple of my friends had it on a big screen TV last time!

You’ll have the ability to type comments to me during the show, and I will be interacting with you, reading your comments between songs and talking to respond – it’d take too long for me to type replies. 🙂 I won’t be able to see you, but we’ll be having a conversation.

After the show, we can move the conversation to my Facebook page or some such, but they let us continue to chat there for a while after the end of the show – they did last time.

Note: I’ve had issues using Firefox with the StageIt software. Consider using IE or Safari. If your screen freezes or crashes, reload your browser and the concert URL.

Thank for reading all this, and I hope to “see” you at my show on the 27th!

If I were Jimmy Buffett

Nov 4th, 2011
by lorendavidson.
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It’s funny…I was originally thinking that I’d be writing some travelogue-style posts about my Keys “working vacation.” And I might still do that. However, in the process of taking some down time tonight, away from the hustle and bustle of Duval Street and the Casa Marina, I started pondering something very different.

For those who are just tuning in and haven’t been following the whole thing on Facebook, I’m at the Meeting of the Minds in Key West – an annual convention/festival/party for Parrotheads. It’s the twentieth annual such event, and the ninth that it’s been my privilege to attend. Hopefully I’ll also have some reflections later on how my participation here as a musician has evolved over the years, but that’s also a topic for another time.

The perennial rumor is that “Buffett’s going to be here.” We hear it every year. Generally, the expected time is one show or another featuring many of the Coral Reefers, members of his band. The last time he actually *did* show up was in 2004. It was a memorable year for me, for multiple reasons. The Buffett show at the Casa during a Peter Mayer concert was one of those reasons.

This year, there has been a last-minute scheduling shift on Friday afternoon for the Street Fest on Duval right outside the Margaritaville. The new schedule lists Mac MacAnally and a “Surprise Guest” to do a show around Mac’s new album. Several other major programming items were timeshifted to make room for this. So if Jimmy’s going to show up this year, this makes sense as one possible time. Then again, Mac knows everyone in Nashville, so we could get anyone from Zac Brown to Kenny Chesney.

And on Saturday, all of the Coral Reefers – except Ralph Macdonald, who’s had some health issues – will be doing a show at the Casa. It’s another possible time for Jimmy to show.

Personally, I think he could show at one, both, or neither. But if *I* were Jimmy, let me tell you what *I’d* do:

I *might* show up at both. It’d be a zoo, but the Key West PD and con security could probably handle it. But where I *would* show up would be the Trop Rock Music Awards on Friday night. I’d show up to encourage all of the new artists doing their (okay, our) best to create new stuff based on the inspiration of Mr. Buffett and others. I would at least stop by, give a short talk and present an award or two, and maybe arrange to meet all the award nominees personally, just to give them some encouragement from the Head Parrot. I’d do it just because it’s the right thing to do, and because other than paying some extra money for security – which I, as Mr. Buffett, would certainly have in my other pair of pants – what would it really cost me? A day away from fishing and flying?

As the TRMAs aren’t that heavily-attended, he could attend without being horribly mobbed, at least initially. And as the word spread across the island, it would bring more people to the TRMAs, which would be worthy.

(Note: Despite much effort on my part and a great song originally in contention, I’m not an award nominee, and wouldn’t get to meet Jimmy as part of this. I still think it’d be a good idea.)

Don’t get me wrong. Jimmy doesn’t “owe” us anything. He’s produced some great music, which we’ve taken as inspiration to do other great music. He’s helped instigate some good community service among the Parrothead Nation. That’s all he has had to do, and he’s been compensated for that. He doesn’t have to do anything more.

But it would sure be a kick if he *did*.

I’m just sayin’.

My MOTM 2011 Schedule

Oct 21st, 2011
by lorendavidson.
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On the road to Key West:

  • Sun 10/30, 3-9 PM: Freaky Tiki Party, Ft. Myers – with Jimi Pappas, John Friday, Tiki Thom, others
  • Mon 10/31 – Tues 11/1 (all day): Pit Stop Party, MM101, Key Largo – with Captain Josh and a cast of many as they pass through

In Key West:

  • Wed 11/2, 4 PM: BeachFront Radio “Welcome to Key West” Party – Southernmost at the Beach. Part of a full lineup of Trop Rockers.
  • Friday between 11 AM-2 PM: Jimi Pappas & Friends, Green World Gallery
  • Sat 11/5, 1-2 PM: Green World Gallery, 712B Duval St. – Solo show

Other possible appearances:

  • Thursday between 2-5: Kelly McGuire’s songwriter showcase, Lighthouse Ct.
  • Thursday between 12-4: Chris Sachs & Friends, Captain Tony’s

Are you having a party in Key West during MOTM? Want some music? Call me – 510-821-1812. Have guitar, will bring fun.

I’ll be appearing in other places, both with and without my guitar. To find out where I am in realtime & hear about some of the cool stuff happening during MOTM: Follow @lorendavidson on Twitter.

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