All The Things!

Well. I'm still here. Still putting one foot in front of the other. It's been about 10 months since I made my move to NYC and some how... miraculously. I am still here. Alive. Breathing. Thriving? Maybe. That remains to be seen. 

I was reminded tonight of why I came here. When you live in New York, your sense of personal space needs to be thrown out the window. There isn't room. There is no real privacy. Most people wear earbuds or head phones just to get through it. Just to not be bothered. So here I am with a giant man's chest in my face, hoping not to swallow his tie, and I see it. The Q train slowly makes it's turn north just after Queensboro Plaza Station and I see the sun as it starts to set. As the train moves the silhouette of the Chrysler Building comes into view. It slowly slides to the south when it's bigger iconic brother comes up from behind... the Empire State Building. And in a that moment, I didn't care that the giant's phone was practically up my nose. I remembered. I remembered why I love it here. And I smiled, inside and out. 

It's as if this gamble of mine could actually, eventually pay off. This grand city may punch me square in the nose from time to time. But, while it does that, it also seems to pat me on the back and make me feel welcome. Like anything is possible. And it is. 

I want "ALL THE THINGS". In fact, I have already done a lot. My good friend Michael put things in

 perspective for me a few weeks ago. He mentioned that he was watching a TV show. Anthony Bourdain, I think. On the show he was talking to a musician in another country. He asked the musician what is one thing he wants to do in his life. The musician replied, "Play a show in New York City". I would imagine there are millions of musicians who want the same thing. I have already done that, multiple times. I'm lucky. There are also millions upon millions of people who want to visit New York. I live here. I'm not bragging, really. I am living a dream that millions wish they could (and some will!). 

No matter where I am, if I see the Empire State Building I stop and look up (and probably take a picture). It reminds me of how unreal it is to be living here. I'm grateful. And, I am hopeful. And, from time to time squashed between a giant and a Chinaman waiting to get off and catch the 7 train. 

Music, Music... I hear music....

If you don't have the privilege of playing music, especially music you create or help create, I am not sure I can put into words the feeling I had this past weekend. If you do play music, I don't think I need to have the words. 

                                                                 king's x "over my head"

It started Thursday afternoon. I met Dave Tanner and Troy Van Horn at Penn Station in New York. They had gotten up at a time that can only be described as unfair to get to New York to have a rehearsal before three shows three days in a row in Boston, Manhattan and Brooklyn. And when I say "a" rehearsal, that is exactly what I mean... one. Singular. Keep in mind, we hadn't even seen each other in about five months, so none of us knew whether we could even still play the songs. There was also the fact that we didn't have a familiar person to play drums with us. Now, we have had several drummers. All very good, and all very accomplished. This time, none of them were available. All three of us knew how ugly it could get, and how quickly it could get there. We decided on a local New York drummer Rob Mitzner who had played on the same bill as us about a year earlier. We had met and made acquaintance then, so I hit him up on Facebook, and after a few calendar checks he said he was available. The only think left was to see how we all played together, and how quickly we could get used to each other.

                                                           all hail the navigator monkey

Rob was generous enough to allow us to come to his rehearsal space in Brooklyn. So, Dave, Troy and I hopped on the F train and headed to Gowanus, Brooklyn. We set up, and plugged in. None of us knew what to expect, I think we were all a little worried about it feeling right. Sometimes it takes some time to feel each other out. But, almost instantly, we were in that good place. It certainly didn't seem like there had been 5 months space. And in no way did it seem like the first time we were playing the songs with Rob. He had them down. Of course he did. At one point, I think Troy even said, "Can we play the show...NOW!"

                                                                   giant bear deer

Music is just one of those things in which chemistry is important. It just feels better or "more right" with certain people. At least that is my experience. 

At this point, I could probably delve into every little detail of each show, but the truth is that is really secondary to what the weekend meant to me. Boston for the most part was good. Arlene's had transcendent moments, and could have very well been our best show as a band, my scratchy sickly voice not withstanding. Really. Sunday was just about three guys playing music. 

But the best part... the best part was hanging out with Dave. What a great guy he is. Diplomatic and patient. He is a lot of things I am not. Maybe that's why things work well. He is just one of the best people I know. He deserves more than he gets, and if there is a way to get him those things, I am going to find it. I have played music with Troy for about 3 years now. In that time, we really hadn't gotten to spend a lot of time together. But, after a few days and a few changed flights back home. I am honored to count him as a friend. He is one of the smartest people I have the pleasure to know. And his musical knowledge is off the charts. I can learn a lot from him, and I plan to. I had only met Rob in passing a few times. But, after seeing him jump in with our friends with both feet, no stand offishness that you could expect, I look forward to getting to know him better and hope he joins us for future shows or outings. 

I love music. I love singing and playing guitar. I love writing songs and melodies. I love saying just what I want to say in side that musical wrapper. But, honestly, the best part of this past weekend were the human beings standing next to me while I did all those things. I hope we do it again. And I hope it's really soon. 

                                                              me, Dave, Troy and Rob

It's only the beginning... and there are no wrong answers... music is life. 

Albert 

Hello, my friends, hello...

I know it's been awhile, I apologize. In case you didn't know, I have had a big change in my life. I moved to the big city, Gotham, the Big Apple... New York City.

I can't say it was a dream of mine for my entire life. In fact, though I loved to watch movies made in New York, I never really thought of moving there... until I visited. After a few days into that visit, I knew I had to be in New York City. I loved the pace. I love the "energy". I felt focused and at home. A year and a half later, I was here. It's only been a few months, but I still love it.

It can be a hard place to live. It's unforgiving and if you aren't careful, it will beat you down. No mercy. But, if you fight back, it rewards you. Kind of like life in general, just intensified. I love it.

I love the subways. The diversity of people. They way the endless ear buds connected to endless ears make their owners move in such different ways. Without shame. Some dance. Some lip sync with abandon. All individuals.

I have never seen so many boots worn by all different types of women. And, it's amazing how a winter coat can become a status symbol.

Anything can happen, which is a big reason why I moved here in the first place.

Yes, there are assholes, just like anywhere else. But, surprisingly, people are nice. Store clerks remember you after a few visits, and actually in some ways became a new sort of friend that you miss if you don't see for awhile.

I just now feel as if my feet are starting to get under me. That I can actually make it. Time will tell.

I feel better than I have in years. I move more. I've already worn out my shoes that I bought 4 months ago.

Anyway, the moral here, if there is one, is go for it.

Whatever it is you want to do, do it. Experience it. Jump right in. Be open for life to tell you to make a change, and listen when it does.

There are no mistakes. You are better off taking the chance then staying safe... always.

Be yourself with no reservation. Take the steps as they come and keep your eyes on what you want.

You'll get there.

I feel like I am. Finally.

Music is Life,

Albert

www.thedepthandthewhisper.com
www.facebook.com/thedepthandthewhisper.com
thedepthandthewhisper.bandcamp.com

The Truth About Being True

This may be hard to believe, but when I was very young, I was a handful. Whenever my family would go over to my grandparents house and it was time to leave, I would take off running around their property. I would make everyone chase me. My mother says she always had to have something to keep me occupied (as opposed to my brother... she just sat him in front of the television and he would stay there) because if she didn't, I would get into anything I could. To her, I am sure, it was a tad frustrating. To me, I was just very very curious.

When I was about 3 years old, my mother went back to school, since my parents were already divorced, she had to do something to help pay the bills. She started making cakes. Wedding cakes. Birthday cakes. Cakes that looked like boobs (covered of course). Cakes that looked like a loaf of wonder bread. Cakes, cakes, cakes. She still has, and uses, her KitchenMaid mixer that was given to her by her co-workers about 40 years ago.

As you can imagine, because of my "curiosity", my mother had to have me occupied while she made her confections. So, she sat me down at the kitchen table with a pencil and paper. She told me she needed me to draw different things so that she could use them on cakes. I was so young, and so eager to be part of things that I didn't realize that she was just keeping me busy. She never used any of my drawings on her cakes... at first. She baked so much, I ended up drawing a lot. In fact, so much, that I got very good at it. And, she did in fact use some of the drawings in her work. She would trace the drawing with wax paper and cut it out, then trace it again on the icing top. Then fill in the details. This became common place in our house. But, I started drawing on my own, unconnected to her cake making.

A few years later in first grade, one of our daily assignments was to draw Winnie the Poo. Our teacher, places a page of him from a coloring book on the chalk board and told everyone to draw it. So, I proceeded to draw the image. With my "experience" in drawing, I used proportion and spacing. And, lo and behold, what I drew looked just like the image the teacher had placed on the board.

I handed it in. She got to mine and just praised and praised me. So much so, she brought me to the front of the class and held it up and said, "Class, this is what your drawing should look like!" I was six. I should have had a big grin on my face. Soaking in the attention from the teacher. Feeling good about my accomplishment. But I didn't. Instead, a feeling of dread came over me. How could she do this? I have been drawing for a long time. They probably hadn't. I thought, "maybe some of them aren't good at drawing, how does it make them feel?" I felt it was unfair for my teacher to have the class compare their drawing to mine. Not everyone could do what I can do. Just as I can't do what someone else may be able to do.

This feeling stayed with me for a very long time. All through school and well into adulthood (if you can call me an adult). My goal was to make other people feel special. To lift them up for the things they could do well. All the while, I was kind of hiding or down playing anything I might do to outshine others.

It became extremely important to help others dreams come true, even at the expense of my own. My loyalty to my friends supplanted loyalty to myself. I believe this was carried into many aspects of my life. I stopped drawing. I played music in high school, but stopped until my mid-twenties. And even when I started, I didn't let anyone hear anything I did for years.

I carried it into my marriage. I did everything I could to try to make my spouse happy. But, wound up miserable and a failure. You see, I forgot myself and what I wanted/needed at every turn. It got so bad, that I think "I" actually disappeared for awhile. Just stopped. I was so broken, that I just... stopped.

Stopped trying. Stopped moving. Stopped... LIVING. 

Now, some may say that living for others is the best thing you can do. That it's being selfless and only good can come of it. I used to think that. Now I don't. It is good to be kind. It is good to be compassionate. It is good to be loyal. It is good to be true, to others.

But, you CANNOT do that at the expense of who you are and what you want out of life. If you do, you burn out. You lock up. You stop. And, that, well, that isn't good for ANYONE.

To be kind, compassionate, loyal and true in any regard, you must be those things to yourself as well. You don't necessarily need to be those things FIRST. You just have to be those things to live. It doesn't mean you are selfish, it doesn't mean you are cruel.

But ask yourself, how can you really be kind, be compassionate, be loyal, and be true, if you don't show yourself what that means. How can you really encourage others to DREAM BIG, and follow their hearts, if you don't do those things for yourself?

If you are going to BE IT, LIVE IT. And don't forget to GIVE IT to yourself as well as others.

I fail.. a lot. I make mistakes... a lot. And, I have wasted and enormous of amount of time learning this. A lot of time I could of spent chasing my dreams and living my life. And though I will continue to fail and make mistakes. I can now look at myself and know that I am giving it my best shot with the talent I have and the time I have left.

Being loyal and true is a wonderful thing. But, if you forget or deny the things YOU want out of life, it really doesn't mean much. Be good enough to yourself to be loyal. Be good enough to yourself to be kind. Be good enough to yourself to go after and build the life you want. It's only yours to live, and there is no time for regret.

Thanks for reading.

Music is Life,

Albert

The Art of Trust?

I may jump from topic to topic... Larry King style.

When I was younger, you know in my growing years, the time we all start learning how the world works, my mom had a montra (she would cringe if she knew I called it that)... "Sometimes you have to do what you don't want to do." Man, I hated hearing that. I can't tell you how many times I have heard it. Each time worse than the last. But, dammit, she was right.

Think about it, as free as we seem to be, we sure do a lot of things that we don't want to do. They are necessary to helping our lives run as smoothly as possible. Now, granted, I try to do as little of these things as possible. Sometimes it leads to trouble. Sometimes it leads to life long memories. Either way, these things, whatever they are for you, will always be there.

I don't really like crowd funding campaigns. I hate seeing stars trot out their ideas and hope you will pay for them to do be funded, meanwhile making millions per film. I use my own money to do what I want, and I don't have any. Why do I need to give a millionaire money to make his pet project.

Then, I watched this video...

Now, I don't agree with everything she says. And I think at some point you need to carry your own water (besides the fact that her husband is very successful author Neil Gaiman). And it's easy when you raised over 1 million dollars. But the part that got me was her idea of letting people pay for music instead of making them.

It's a fine line, but the crux of it is trust. One thing I do know is a lot people want to help, they just need to be asked. And asking is hard. As she points out, it make you feel like you are somehow deficient, ashamed. So, somewhere in there must be some middle ground.

Yesterday, the band that I am in launched a fund raiser. And, to be honest, right up until I pushed the button to make it live I had a pit in my stomach, thinking maybe we shouldn't do it. And in some ways I still feel that way. We set out to make a raise a small amount of money to just make it a little easier to do what we were already going to do. We set a soft goal of $500. We want to raise more, but we also wanted people to feel apart of it. Learning to trust.

It's been going for a day, and we have raised $250. And, with one exception, I didn't expect the people that gave to give. It's not that I didn't think they would, it's that when thinking who would, they didn't enter my mind. And, that makes me smile. And, it makes me a little ashamed. Who am I to even try to figure out who someone is or predict and outcome. No one, that's who.

So, now I will just step back, let people know, and trust. I bet I will be surprised what happens.

Here is a pic and below that the link for our crowd funding thing.

Kelsey Cook, Me and Dave Tanner - The Depth and the Whisper

More Music. More Miles. More Memories

For those of you reading, I will let you know how it all turns out. 

Music is Life, 

Albert 

You'd Rather Complain When Your Job is to INSPIRE.

As an artist (and I use that term loosely) of the music type, I don't really think anyone owes me anything. People don't have to like our music. Local radio stations don't have to play our songs. Local clubs don't have to book our shows. I don't expect anyone to do anything for me or the band I am in.

Let's make a few things clear... do I want people to like our music? Yes. Do I want local radio stations to play our music? It would be nice. Do I want local clubs to book the band? Of course. But, none of those things MUST exist for me to do what I do. None of those things must exist to validate the music we write. The dirty truth is once the song is written and out into the world, out of my soul, or out of my heart or mind it's job is done. The rest... the rest is for show. It's all "pomp and circumstance". A rare "pomp and circumstance" that I happen to like.

So this happened today (take a listen):

http://media.965thebuzz.com/a/75770929/local-bands.htm?q=alice+sweet+alice

My response? WHO CARES. Lazlo is doing a job. He's expressing an opinion. But the local music scene takes offense to it. They should laugh it off and keep working. You want the station to like your music and play your songs? That's misguided.

Here's a story that may, at first, seem unrelated. I have a friend that works in a local record store. This store is VERY friendly to local musicians. They stock their records and sell them and basically keep nothing when they sell them. They also play a lot of local music over the store stereo system. On a regular basis, people would come up to the counter and ask who the band was that was playing because they liked it. My friend would be respond, "Oh, that's a local aritst called__________." In his own words, about 90% of the people who asked about the band became disinterested when they found out it was local. Why? because the fact that it was from around here, was a turn off for whatever reason. Instead of exciting someone that they could actually get to know and interact with an artist they like enough to inquire about because they heard the music, they turned away.

This is not Lazlo or 96.5 the Buzz's fault. People just aren't interested. I don't know why, because maybe Kansas City in general just isn't exciting enough for them. Playing songs on a radio station just isn't going to change that. Because it didn't change it at a record store. Local = boring, Yeah, I know, it's not fair. It just is.

Work harder to find your niche. My band The Depth and the Whisper have noticed that the farther away we play from our home in KC, the better the fan reaction. We've some pretty decent success and for the most part are treated better and more fairly thus far in New York than we do here. I don't know why. We play the same music. We are the same people. Just a different environment.

a little ditty not about Jack and Diane

I never wanted to be in a local band. That label seemed limiting to me. I am very happy, and very lucky to play with the people I do. We get to go and meet people. See sights. Make music. Make moments. Make memories. And really, that's what it's all about. Living. Being bold. And loving every minute of it. 

I applaud Lazlo for being honest and saying what he really thinks. It's his job. It let's you know what you are up against. No single radio station can really help you. And truthfully, if the person in charge of the local music on that station doesn't like it, she won't play it. And she shouldn't. She's allowed to like her job, isn't she? She isn't there for you or me or anyone else. Let her take the bands she likes under her wing and get them nowhere. It's up to you to go somewhere. It's up to you to do the work. Not them. 

Work harder. Write better songs. Get out of town and make your own luck. If you roll in the mud, you're just another pig. 

Be better. Be higher. Be bolder. Move on.

Music is life, 

Albert 

A Quiet Man, and a Love of the Game...

My grandfather was an interesting man. He passed when I was 18, so I really never got to relate to him on a "man to man" level. As a child, I spent many a night at my grandparents house. He would sit in his chair, watch the news and smoke his pipe. Rarely did he speak inside the house.

They lived on a few acres of land close to the intersection of I-70 and I-435 by Royals Stadium (Kauffman). He kept horses in a make shift barn. If I was lucky I would get to ride them. If I was unlucky, they bit me. They had a wood burning stove. So, every once in awhile I would have to help chop wood. I hated it. I still hate it. I would rather buy it from 7-11 then chop it myself.

One of these times, while chopping wood, I missed hitting the piece of wood with the ax head. I hit the handle on the wood just below the head. I was terrified that I would get in trouble. Not that he ever yelled at me. I was just used to getting in trouble for things like that with my step-father, and my perception was that my grandfather and step-father were close, and I would receive a similar outcome from him (later I realized my perception was wrong. They were nothing alike). So, I called for my grandfather, preparing for doom. He strolled over to me in his dark blue down filled coat and his work hat, pipe hanging from his mouth and asked me what was the matter. I told him I had broke the ax. I cringed a little waiting for his response. He looked at me. He looked at the ax. He looked back at me, this time right square in the eye, tiny little smile in his eyes and said, "You show me someone that never broke nothin' in his life, I'll show you someone who never worked in his life. There's another ax in the shed. Go get it." He turned around and walked off. I stood there stunned. Then I went and got the ax.

The best memories I have of Buford Parsons were the ones that happened at night in the summer time. My grandparents had separate bedrooms. And, I swear in my heart, my grandfather was grateful for it. But, in the summer, in the evening was Royals baseball on the radio. He had two twin beds in his room. One he slept in and another. Every evening in the summer I stayed there, after all the chores were done, and dinner was done, we would go into his room and turn on the radio. I laid in one bed, he in the other. The radio sat in the open window. The cool summer nights breeze would come through swirled with the sounds of Fred White (RIP) and Denny Mathews describing the baseball antics of George Brett, Amos Otis and Frank White. We would just listen. And if the Royals were home, and something great happened, you could faintly hear the crowd in the distance.

When I was young I loved baseball. I lived and breathed it. I knew the all the Royals stats to the day. I read baseball history books like I was eating cake. And, you know what, until this very moment, I don't think I realized why this love appeared in my heart. It was because of my grandfather. He didn't talk much.

But, I sure learned a lot.

Thanks grampa.

Music is life,

Albert