My second son has been writing and recording more music. His latest, Nowhere, just went live. He constantly amazes me with his creativity. Writing and recording music has been a constant in my life since the late 80s. I think one of the key beginnings of that arc was when I was on staff with Youth With a Mission in Lausanne, Switzerland. Several friends and I started a practice of writing birthday songs for whenever someone had a birthday. We usually just did rewrites of existing songs and then performed them during lunch or dinner, to the great embarrassment of the song’s object.
And things progressed from there, into my first two albums (acoustic folk with my good friend Lionel), the hard rock Autumn War years of playing in bars and random venues in the Chicago area, to the folk-protest of several albums I did back in California (precipitated by the rewrite of the Monterey County General Plan and all its attendant lunacy), to the more recent electronica of my Inflatable Hippies effort, as well as a Christmas carol album with completely rewritten melodies but traditional lyrics.
Creating music isn’t always the easiest thing. As compared to eating snacks and watching Netflix or any other number of rather pointless pursuits.
So, hats off to Jesse. You can find his music (13 songs so far) on Youtube, Amazon, Itunes, Spotify, Deezer, etc etc. Here’s a Youtube link to get you started. Nowhere, Stories and Circus Act are his newest songs.
Speaking of hats off, my brother Mike is currently coordinating planes and helicopters out of central North Carolina, in order to move supplies into flood-ravaged spots in the western part of that state. He’s a helicopter instructor at the JAARS base in Waxhaw and has been flying helicopter and fixed wing for decades.
Remember those parts of the East Coast in your prayers. It’s only the first of October.