image by neva

Over a year ago I wrote about my friend Neva:

I wasn’t living in Long Beach when Melissa Etheridge made her breakthrough playing locally at a club called Que Sera on 7th Street (funny that her wikipedia article doesn’t mention Que Sera), but every time I come out and watch Neva I think I’m seeing the beginning of the same thing. – neva rocks taco beach! *video* – May 4, 2008

I don’t remember how long I’d been going to my favorite watering hole, Taco Beach, when I happened to be there on a night when Neva was performing. Nothing formal or flashy, just an acoustic guitar and amazing voice playing over the bar PA, taking the passing attention of the audience between their conversations and drinking. Doing a solo acoustic set in that setting was not for the faint of heart. The audience wasn’t overly obnoxious or disruptive, but I’ve seen pretty talented musicians stare down at the floor, reduced to mumbling through their songs because they couldn’t break through the conversational sound-barrier. Sometimes it seemed to take a whole band to grab the audience’s attention, or at least something electric and loud. Neva had a backing-band a couple of times, but most of the time it was just her and her guitar and she was able to get the whole place rockin’ in her direction.

Wanting to be a supportive fan I checked out her MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/nevamusic and was met by the typical unappealing sprawl of a page where she’d post a poster for an upcoming gig that broke the pages frame and left one scrolling in all directions because one couldn’t see the whole poster at once (NOTE: I’ve shrunk the example page so that the viewer can see the whole poster at once. Notice that the list of gig dates along the right column are entirely illegible and the multi-spacing added to the confusion). Of course almost all MySpace pages are noted for their amateur quality. Regardless of the visual quality of her MySpace, between her MySpace and Facebook accounts she’s been able to muster up an online following of more than 800 folks. It’s difficult to figure out how many fans she has who are not online, but I’d guess that the online number is only a third of the folks who come out to see her shows (this guess is entirely based on the wide variety of folks who attend the shows I’ve seen, from college kids to retirees). Anyway, over the years I started taking pictures of her gigs and posted the results on my Flickr account. Then I started to shoot some video. I’ve only managed to edit and post one “performance” video and one “slide show” video (the latter video being mostly about my moving away from So Cal, Taco Beach & neva concerts). We talked on occasion about her website, but nothing came of it. Then she moved from Southern California to Lake Tahoe and I moved to Florida.

Just before I left So Cal I heard that she was working on a studio recording and eagerly bought the six-song set when it came out last February.We talked a couple times and she was doing pretty good with the CD but wanted to sell a lot more and joked that she’d sold a copy to all of her friends and family and still had a lot to sell before she would get to the point of having paid for the studio time and CD manufacturing. One of my first thoughts was that she’s not exactly living in a music mecca, living near Lake Tahoe. But then over the past few years I’d been following the careers of a few successful independent artists and part of the key to their successes was generating Internet buzz and gathering a much bigger following than they ever could with just public performances.

Lessons Learned From Those Who Went Before

The first on the list is a former software writer who decided to celebrate the birth of his first child by quitting his job and going fulltime with his music career. Jonathan Coulton built a strong following with the technorati in part because he spoke their language and found a way to be quirky, funny and touching usually all at the same time. Coulton produced and released two CDs, Where Tradition Meets Tomorrow and Smoking Monkey by 2004. Podcasting was just then taking off and Coulton offered to help his friends who were experimenting with the medium. But what really seemed to help Coulton was that he offered every song from the two CDs as a free download on his website. He understood that the free music would help generate a lot of interest and buzz and that at the same time those who became real fans would willingly buy his CDs (which were just one click away on the CD Baby website). The combination of speaking fluent geek and free-to-buy worked perfectly. But that alone does not a successful career make. Coulton kept interest up by deciding that the following year he would record and release one song a week for the whole year, and following the success of the last releases, he offered the recordings on his website for free, with the understanding that there would be CD collections made following the end of the year. Thus, the incredibly successful “Thing a Week” project was born, which resulted in a four-part Thing-a-Week CD collection. This past month Coulton released a follow-up CD/DVD project, BEST. CONCERT. EVER., recorded from concerts performed over the previous year, which includes fan-video, internet personalities and various interviews.

Looking at Coulton’s website one would not assume that this is the work of a genius, or wunderkind self-promoter. It’s basically an old-school unglitzy blog, low on graphics, big on text, with a tiny header and row of tiny buttons/links along the right column. It’s definitely the kind of thing that a former software writer turned successful musician might produce. But if one digs a bit below the text, one will discover that Coulton does two things right. One: everything a fan might want to know about him and his music, including the lyric, guitar song-sheets and the download-able songs are all just a click away. Two: he welcomes fan music videos, fan concert videos and fan involvement with his wiki and forums. And maybe this is the biggest key to his success, he came from and is still part of the community that now supports him. There’s no cult of personality or detached stardom. There a genuineness that bands and artists from major labels can’t hope to pull off. There’s no promotion machine trying to convince us that we want to listen to him. Just the craziness of his songs and simplicity of his performances are enough to general real interest and fun.

The next role model, Geoff Smith, is a Nashville musician who splits his time performing in a piano bar that partly owns, running a successful musical ringtone business (using a free/plus-premium model), writing jingles and doing live-video-streaming concerts with and for his friends, most notibly Cali Lewis from Geek Brief TV. The first time I saw Smith was one night during the holiday season a couple years ago. He’d turned on his web-cam and was streaming live-video from his living room, sitting at the piano taking requests from the chatroom that was attached to the live stream. He spent the whole evening playing Christmas songs mixed in with a little Beatles and other pop-tunes, bouncing between his piano to acoustic guitar. His talent was obvious and his enthusiasm and playfulness made for a very fun night watching this stranger from across the country while I worked on whatever project I was working on at the time. Not too surprisingly, Smith’s website conveys a lot more personality right away, but it’s also very user-friendly and transparent for the fans. In an email correspondence I asked Smith a bit about the blogging platform he was using, because I recognized the WordPress theme as being related to the one that I’ve been using for the past few years (Revolution, which became StudioPress by Brian Gardener). Smith confessed that he didn’t know too much about the inner workings of the blog because he has a friend doing that part of the business.

Like Coulton before him, Smith connected himself to many of the A-List podcasters, offering his services as a jingle writer and performer. He also offered his fans something a little different from Coulton’s free-to-buy method. Smith recorded a CD, Ones and 0s, and if you bought it directly from his website you’d get a bonus track subscription which entitles you to download new songs/videos that he updates on an ongoing basis. He recently released the 21st upgrade track from the CD. Buzz, community, relationship and using online/new technology to connect with the community/fans.

neva-music.com version one

neva-music.com version 1 by joe bustillos

The website is important, but as we learned from the two examples cited above, it’s completely meaningless without the willingness of the artist to be available to the community and fans in a way that was never realized (or really possible) in the pre-Internet world. MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Ustream, Stickam, these are all tools to connect artist with community/audience. Getting past the fad-ish attention these technologies are getting from the general media, these tools can revolutionize relationships for those willing to let them into their lives. Transparency, genuineness, vulnerability, real-ness.

A couple things were paramount in my mind as I was putting the website together: 1) promote the brand, 2) make the  CD easy to get, 3) make the calendar/gig schedule easy to find, 4) make the website very visual. As I noted above, Neva’s MySpace and Facebook pages were none of these things. The best part of the MySpace page was that her music started to play as soon as you landed on the site, there was usually a giant poster about her next gig or schedule of gigs for the month dominating the page and way below everything else fans could make comments. But visually it was chaotic and her name didn’t stand out all that much. It looked like everyone else’s page.

1. So I put her name and image way up front (more in #4).
2. More could be done to promote the CD and make purchasing it more obvious. I found a “discography” widget that was made to list the CD and  the singles with links built in to sell the CD and singles. She just has the link to sell the whole CD, It’s a work in progress. I love how Geoff Smith has icons on the footer of his page connected to all of his products/projects, and these icons are persistent across all of the pages of his blog.
3. I wanted to put some kind of calendar on the front page that was click-able to info about where and when she’d be doing her next gig. I found a widget that did the gig thing in a list form. It’s a lot more clear than the MySpace version, with click-able links to venue information and maps. But having a calendar would have been visually more involving. I created a calendar using Google Calendar that I could embed in her website, but didn’t get it working the way I wanted.
4. Besides being a talented writer and performer Neva is very easy on the eyes and WordPress template(s) I’ve been using have become more and more visual. Color, image, feeling, I prefer this version of a promotional website to what she previously had on MySpace and Facebook.

So, this is still version one. Supporting community/fan communication is essential and this model only allows for comments to individual posts. The other thing is that i don’t know how much or if Neva is going to want to do individual update (e.g., blog entries). Additionally, I’m considering an experiment using the SquareSpace online publishing/blogging platform because it takes the layout/visual webpage/website design up a whole level. It has the design sense of iWeb without the irritating template limitations.

Big Picture: Facilitating Community

As the technology/Internet coach, I see my part of this as the one to find a way for Neva to comfortably interact with her community using the these tools. She knows her audience. She knows the people she wants to work with, on the music end of things. My part is to help her get started using these tools to communicate her beautiful voice to an Internet audience. jbb

Sources:

Image: Neva in an Alley, http://www.myspace.com/nevamusic

Image: screen-grab by Joe Bustillos, Neva’s MySpace, retrieved on 7/27/2009

Image: screen-grab by Joe Bustillos, JonathanCoulton.com, retrieved on 7/27/2009

YouTube Video: When You Go by Jonathan Coulton, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPBsSlYYezc&feature=player_embedded, retrieved on 7/27/2009

Image: screen-grab by Joe Bustillos, theGeoffSmith.com, retrieved on 7/27/2009

YouTube: I’m a Twit by Geoff Smith, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3biEam1_GgY&feature=player_embedded, retrieved on 7/27/2009

Image: screen-grab by Joe Bustillos, neva-music.com, retrieved on 7/28/2009

Image/slideshow: nevamusic @ Taco Beach by Joe Bustillos, http://www.flickr.com/photos/joebustillos/sets/72157603250930056/, retrieved on 7/28/2009

jj jurado & i jam circa 1980 - love the perm!

Like most things, I started writing songs because I didn’t know any better. Teenage angst is like that. Fortunately for me it was a hell of a lot less destructive than all the other things that I could have been doing with my frustrations and energy. I also started writing because that’s what my best-friend, Jimmy, was doing. He wrote the happy tunes and I wrote the not-so-happy stuff. Anyway, being self-taught meant that pretty much all the things I wrote came from stumbling upon things that sounded good to me. But I felt like I was working from a pretty limited pallet and eventually what I wanted to write about just wouldn’t fit into a three minute three chord song. So I stopped writing songs. Lately I’ve been carefully listening to artists like Neva and Peter Himmelman and it dawned me that I might have made a mistake stopping. I thought everyone else was better than I’d ever become. I never realized the power of playing within ones strengths, to play within oneself.

peter himmelman

What I mean is that I felt I’d gotten as far as I could with my limited skills. In the years since I’ve thought about the little tricks (like a band?) I could have used to make up for what I thought I lacked. It goes without saying that most folks can do things with a band that are hard to pull off with just a guitar, a mic and blind faith. But then I listen to folks like my buddy Neva who have that right combination of soul wanting to get out in their music and the talent to pull it off with a couple of wooden spoons and a fry pan. I know that no amount of tricks can make up for the lack of talent, if it’s missing. See, you won’t find a bigger group of folks completely insecure about their talents than musicians (well, except for supermodels, which is part of the reason they hilariously end up together). It was so easy to fall into the trap, as a guitarist, to feel like I was shit because I couldn’t play like Jimmy Page, Jimmie Hendrix, or for my group, Phil Keaggy.Because I could never imagine getting my fingers to fly across the fretboard fast enough I failed to recognize the miracle that I could get some good tunes out of said fingers in the first place. I’d forgotten that I started playing and writing in the first place not because I wanted to be a rockstar or play the fastest leads. The simple truth was that I started because I couldn’t find any music that expressed what I was feeling or experiencing so, not knowing any better, my buddy and I started writing about it.

Fortunately, most of the 60 plus songs I penned when I was a kid have been completely lost over the past 30 years. But they served their purpose at the time. Like I said, my friend Jimmie wrote the happy tunes and I wrote the other tunes. But more than just a difference in disposition, my friend tended toward the simple chords while I experimented with different kinds of tuning and the like. I spent countless afternoons and evenings with my buddy really just learning how to play. And when I started playing for others, I was still spending a lot of time learning from those who were better than I was. Getting together all the time really spurned the creativity, I could hardly wait to share my new stuff with my jam buddies. It makes sense that all of this would change after college when I had far less disposable time to work with. I guess I never realized how wonderful it was to have such great jamming partners when I was in high school and then in college. That was such a long time ago, a lifetime ago, it seems.

Vineyard Long Beach Worship Team (guitar band) circa 2006

And all of this might have completely passed away into rarely remembered memories had I not found myself re-examining everything in my life and again looking for the voice inside of me wanting to communicate what I was going through. This most recent time around I found a whole host of artists expressing what I was exploring in my life so I didn’t even bother taking up the writing and spent countless hours learning all of the music I’d missed over the intervening 15-years I’d been “away.” Alas, the power in my life that compelled me to take up my guitar again was also more than a little contradictory as far as playing music at church, so I made myself available to help out with the proviso that there was a giant hole in my “personal life.” I was pretty straight forward in the four different worship groups I worked with and to their credit they accepted me in my fully-flawed state. Funniest thing was that the most challenging element in all of this that I had to deal with was that the second worship band I worked withdemanded that I play electric lead guitar and NOT sing. I learned a lot during my brief tenure at that post. But then that worship leader stepped down and I didn’t quite work out with the new guy who was piano-centric and had no time to mentor a not-quite-ready-for-primetime lead-guitarist. One thing I did learn playing electric and lead was that less-is-more and that it was never about seeing how fast one can play, but just having something to play during those breaks. I never quite got there, but it was a good lesson learned.

So now I’m in a very different place from my high school/college days, or the last five years of dragging my guitar around. It feels a bit weird listening to my own music from over the years. Back when I was writing music so much of it was full of that adolescent preachy-ness that can be pretty embarrassing given how things have turned out so far. I guess what I want to remember is the passion. It’s still a part of me, but it doesn’t seem to fit in all of the little categories that I preached as a budding musician. And this last time around it was very much about the passion and giving voice to the longing i felt in my heart. But that didn’t quite turn out either. Listening to Peter Himmelman play on Leo Laporte’s podcast reminded me that I’m not done yet. His playing reminded me of where I left off back when I was writing. It reminded me that I started this thing because there was something in my soul that needed to get out in my music. So, should it be so surprising that I still find myself, in my middle years, pulling out my guitar, playing some of the old stuff and still frustrated that I’m still not finding the tunes that tell my story? Damn.

Because of my religious upbringing I translated my experience of the Holy in Christian terms and that drove me in the direction of digging much deeper into the traditions and texts, to the point of crossing over from my Catholic background to Fundamentalist Christianity and earning a BA in Biblical Studies from Biola University. But I never quite fit in the confines of Fundamentalist Christianity. I was too intellectual for my Calvary brethren and too “Holy Ghost” for the traditional Biola crowd. While never questioning the reality of my experiences with such things as “speaking in tongues,” I clearly saw the psychological aspects to the practice. For me the psychology of non-verbal utterances didn’t invalidate the spirituality. Yeah, the Christians I knew didn’t want to hear about the psychology and the Intellectuals thought it was all mumbo-jumbo. Then after Biola I went to Fuller and absolutely loved the academic/intellectual study but faced a growing irrelevancy because neither my wife or my church cared one wit about what I found fascinating. When the marriage dissolved, I couldn’t make a working whole of all of these parts of myself and decided to walk away from my religious heritage. Having crossed the religious divide several times along the way, I found no need to declare the previous system a Lie or go on at great length about it being “all wrong.” I just pretended that it didn’t exist and would only revisit it when I was feeling nostalgic and then I’d put on a Mark Heard or Sam Phillips CD. Why does my story always return to this part of my history? My guess is that one thing I should learn from those 15-years “away” is that I cannot simply just ignore this part of myself. Thus, the continuing interest in Das Heilige.

My counselor during my separation and divorce, a Christian counselor, Dr. Carpenter, warned that he thought that I had the kind of personality that I could convince myself of nearly anything moral or immoral. My thought about that was I never attempted to bend the Bible to my own preferences as I’d seen many a wayward Christian do. Thus, while I felt connected to it and felt like it was part of my moral compass, I also recognized that I didn’t agree with the Apostle Paul’s condemnation of homosexuals as a whole, for example. I recognize the destructive nature that unbridled illicit sexuality, hetero- or homosexuality, can have for communities, but in drawing the line in the sand as he has, the tendency has been to condemn the whole group and the warning of illicit behavior gets lost. And while we’re on the subject, I’m not so found of this, largely classical Greek notion, that I am a tripartite being (body, soul and spirit), I am more draw to believe that I am one whole entity, that my mind and soul are materially biological, that they came into being and developed after I was born and will cease when I biologically cease. Note that I most definitely believe that something deeper is going on here beyond mere chemical reactions (which in itself are pretty miraculous). But I cannot play this game about what effects me biologically doesn’t effect me mentally or spiritually (gnosticism), or that I’m somehow not connected to what goes on around me in the physical world. I thought that it was a central teaching of the Master that when the King returns if he sees that we’ve neglected or abused the world that he entrusted to us, that there would be no reward afterwards. And how did that teaching become stripped of it’s stewardship of our relationships to all living things and become just about making converts?

I have to add that I am concerned that my friends from my previous community, City Lights Church, or my lifelong friends going all the way back to the Jesus-People days, would be disheartened at my opening disagreeing with the Bible. One dear friend said, as a joke, that she felt that I’d been led astray 20-years ago when I exposed myself to all that liberal stuff when I was a theology student at Fuller Seminary. It concerns me that my meandering heart can cause discomfort for those whom I’ve been close to, those I’ve prayed with, served the community with and revealed my personal struggles with. But this is who I am. I wish sometimes that I could be like one of my best-friends from high school who has kept to the self same faith that we professed as 16-year-olds, 34-years ago. I’m not that child any longer, but I’m still the curious one who can easily get lost in the beat and repetition of a good song but also has fond memories of reading Kierkegaard and putting my own spin on the Book of Daniel while in seminary. So, right now I have my doubts that I will ever find a “fellowship” with whom I could really be myself while at the same time feeling like I need to apologize to those whom I’ve worked with over the past five-years. I know this is not what they expected or would want from me. One good part is that the story isn’t over. Who knows what might happen next. Damn, is this what my counselor warned about, as far as my personality being too… liquid? Fuck it, if that’s who I am, I’ll own up to it. Next stop, Buddhism… Just kidding (I hope!). JBB

Music: “Take Time” by Lenny Kravitz from his “5“ CD

Neva Solo Acoustic

Music: The Things I’ll Never Be from the album “Neva” by Neva

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Thanks for your good thoughts, prayers and continued support. jbb

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Music: When You Go from the album “Thing a Week Three” by Jonathan Coulton

Technorati Tags: california, community, family, florida, friends, jonathancoulton, longbeach, love, lust, media, musicvideo, tacobeach, travel, youtube

Music/Podcasts: Buzz Out Loud 744: A date with Firefox from the album “Buzz Out Loud from CNET” by CNET.com

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Music: Buffalo Soldier from the album “Legend” by Bob Marley & The Wailers

Technorati Tags: friends, kids, longbeach, teaching, work

Music: Jet Airliner from the album “Greatest Hits 1974-1978″ by Steve Miller Band

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Music: Fly Like An Eagle from the album “Greatest Hits 1974-1978″ by Steve Miller Band

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* “Welcome to the Real World” performed & written
by jane child, off the 1989 “Jane Child” CD available at Amazon and

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Music: Our World Our Times from the album “Rockinghorse” by Alannah Myles

Technorati Tags: california, friends, longbeach, love, lust, media, music, musicvideo, neva, tacobeach, video

And then yesterday evening, after a very long day with my students, followed by lots of book packing, I walked up to my car and discovered that someone had torn the rear windshield wiper off of my car, leaving only the bolt and empty space where the wiper had previously been. I was too tired to get mad but it really soured my mood. Previously when my car(s) have been vandalized I usually have to remind myself that whoever did this has no idea who I am and just does it on a dare or moment of stupidity. But finding it like that in my school parking lot where I’m pretty well known, I can’t imagine that this was completely random. Little amoral f*ckers, just another reason why I’m glad to be leaving. Sad that someone had to sour my attitude when for the most part all I have are great memories of my students. Damn. I guess it’d be much worse if I felt trapped and didn’t feel like there was nothing that I could do to change things and make my situation better. Only two-and-a-half weeks to go. I need to get out of here before something else decides to break. JBB

Music: The Royal Scam from the album “Citizen Steely Dan: 1972-1980 (Disc 3) [Box Set]” by Steely Dan

Technorati Tags: california, florida, kids, longbeach, teaching, travel, work

I’m not really sure where to begin this particular status report, as I sit in my local In-n-Out Burger watching the rain come down outside. First, I want to apologize to those whom I haven’t been able to send a more personal communication with, and that you’re getting this info in another “joe status” email. Sorry about that. There are 13-school days left in the school year and the weekend following the last school day I will be driving with my brother Matt as co-pilot to my new apartment in Orlando, Florida. I’m thinking that I’m going to have to get used to watching the rain fall, at least a bit more than I have before. And I’m really going to miss In-n-Out.

For those whom I might have not shared the reason for the move…. last Fall one of my Pepperdine co-conspirators, Holly, took a job as program director at a private university called Full Sail in Orlando, Florida, and she kept telling me that I would love it there. Around the holidays I began to consider the possibilities and asked Holly for more details. Full Sail University is a media-centric school and Holly was tasked to create a team for their M.A. degree program in Education and Media. The phrase “Match made in Heaven,” came to mind when we talked further about the position. I was also beginning to catch hints that there were probably going to be negative program changes at my school due to budgeting problems and that maybe this would be a good time to jump to the next level. On the personal side, Juls and I had settled into a good friendship but it looked unlikely that things would go beyond that for the foreseeable future and in fact when I told Juls what I was thinking of doing she was incredibly supportive and positive with my plans. So in February I went out to Florida to check the school out and made the decision to accept the job offer before I flew back. Thus, for the past three months my job has been to keep things normal and working with my students while planning a cross-country move that requires I “close shop” the day after my students leave. It’s been quite the adventure.

Technorati Tags: blogs, california, family, fastfood, florida, FullSail, in-n-out_burger, longbeach, teaching, travel, work, writing

When I went out to visit Full Sail I also got to spend time with my other Pepperdine co-conspirator, Greg, who used to live in Orlando and was most helpful as I attempted to scope out apartments from across the continent. Talking with the folks and siblings I was most anxious about finding a place, mostly sight unseen. I mean, we talked quite a bit about “how” I was going to move, but until I found a place to move “to,” I found it difficult to really get things going. Thankfully, Greg had researched things and Holly was familiar with the area so the decision on which place itself wasn’t that hard. Now, how to do the move.

The folks and brother Matt had recommended storing most of my stuff, getting a furnished place and then trekking across country to really check things out before making the big plunge. And while I do have the benefit of having a guaranteed job with Long Beach Unified School District should I decide that I can’t hang with Florida or Full Sail, I know that the best way for me to make the best commitment to making a real life for myself in this new place is to go there with everything that I am and give it everything that I have. All of which means moving all of my junk. Also, I was thinking that after making the cross-country drive this first time I really wasn’t going to want to make the drive again, just to move my junk. So we were going to U-Haul it with my little Scion in tow. But then I found this container-company that gave me a bid to move my stuff at about the same price as U-Haul plus the expense of fuel. That was a no brainer. Hardest part is going to be that we’ll have to load the containers in less than three-days… er, well, because I’ll still be working that really translates to two evenings and a day.

So, the details… containers arrive on Thursday, June 12th. Load ‘em up and find time to celebrate June/July birthdays and me going away, Saturday evening, June 14th. Go back with brother Matt to his place in Mission Viejo for the night and then head out after breakfast, Sunday June 15th with a first stop in Prescott Valley, AZ. I have one last tweak job to do on Mom’s computer and Matt has some stereo work to do. The next day we hit the 10 heading East. So far we plan on stopping in New Orleans, but no real details. I want to get to Orlando by Thursday, June 19th. Matt will be flying back to the OC on Sunday, June 22nd. I start work at Full Sail the following day on Monday, June 23rd. Basically my job will be to create the course from the 23rd until I begin teaching in September, so it’s not like I’ll be doing the typical one-day prep before teaching job.

I’ll be keeping the same email address(es) and mobile phone number and will be posting on my blog at http://joebustillos.com under the “modern life” section, and will post pictures on my flickr account at http://www.flickr.com/photos/joebustillos/

So, that’s the status… so far,
Much love and thankfulness,
jbb

Music: Lifetimes from the album “Wildflower” by Sheryl Crow

Music: Love and Leave from the album “Love and Leave” by MiNG

Technorati Tags: florida, FullSail, kids, teaching, travel, work

So this past weekend I had the pleasure of spending an evening indulging in our passion for P.F. Chang’s and good beer with my best friend and former love, Juls. It had been quite a while since we last shared a meal and drink, but that is one of the defining qualities of good friendship: the ability to bridge the gap and enjoy one another’s company like we’d just seen each other the day before. She looked good and despite ongoing battles with an ex-husband who responds to her cancer treatment by continued court hassles and despite the battle with cancer itself she was in good spirits. She asked about Florida and the job and talked about her boys and her small victories. Her sense of humor was certainly intact. For example…

Technorati Tags: california, family, florida, friends, longbeach, love, travel, writing

A neighborhood mom going through a difficult divorce saw Juls dropping off one of the boys and said to her, “Some time you will have to tell me who your work-out trainer is.” Juls politely smiled and said to herself, with an irreverent grin, “Cancer.” That’s my friend Juls, fiercely protective of her boys, passionate, in love with the lifestyle and community she grew up with but battling the limitations those traditions sometime set for her. She’s just trying to be the best person she can be… and have a little fun along the way.

She’s never really been one to put her thoughts down on paper, or email. So I don’t imagine that once I move to Florida I’ll get much in the way of the long, deep conversations we used to have. And I will miss that. But I am hopeful that the dust will settle for her and she will find the companionship and fun that she was made to have and to give. Hopefully she will find someone who will respect her desire for privacy much more than I have done, and will not go on and on as I have in a public forum about their deepest difficulties and desires. I have learned a lot over the course of our friendship and relationship and pray that the fruits of our time will bring happy memories in quiet moments and fuel to continue to become better people when life challenges us.

I also love that the bartender at PF Chang’s stuck his thumb in our picture. That was so perfect. jbb

Music: It’s So Easy from the album “C’mon C’mon” by Sheryl Crow

Music/podcast: popSiren – MakerFaire, DIY antenna and Beekeeping from the album “popSiren (Large Quicktime)” by Revision3

Technorati Tags: california, iPhone, longbeach

I wasn’t living in Long Beach when Melissa Etheridge made her breakthrough playing locally at a club called Que Sera on 7th Street (funny that her wikipedia article doesn’t mention Que Sera), but every time I come out and watch Neva I think I’m seeing the beginning of the same thing. I’ve been posting pictures from previous Neva shows for some time, but obviously that doesn’t begin to share the experience. So when she came to Taco Beach this past Friday I decided to shoot more video than stills. Now this is obviously not studio quality video and the audio is pretty damn funny with all of the noisy Taco Beach revelers shouting and singing and playing along on silly plastic maracas provided by Dos Equis (thanks Dos Equis). Some might think that the audience is being rude. I’ve seen audiences in the OC sit on their hands like a bunch of dead mannequins during a Fabulous Thunderbirds show. Obviously folks at Taco Beach are all about the participation. The thing that kills me is that neva doesn’t resort to tricks, just an acoustic guitar and tremendous voice. This girl can rock! Go to her website. She should have a CD out soon. ‘love the girl. jbb

music: Lose Yourself from the album “8 Mile” by Eminem

Technorati Tags: friends, longbeach, music, musicvideo, neva, tacobeach, video

Should I be concerned that my fortune cookie fortune tore when I tried to get it at the teachers’ luncheon on Friday? Some might see the Hand of Fate trying to get my attention. I see a dude impatient to read his fortune and tearing it in the process. Hmmm, I could also say that this is just par for the course. Either way, I clearly need to handle “Fortune” with more patience and care in the future. jbb

Music/Podcast: My Brother, the Doctor from the album “WGBH Morning Stories Podcast” by Jim Kahn

Technorati Tags: comedy, longbeach, love, lust