What month is it?

May already?

A few weeks ago my buddy Hunter called me and asked if I was up for a couple weeks worth of stagehand work. He wasn’t sure of the nature of the work but it would have to do with a live music venue. I said sure. I could use some cash. On Sunday April 19 I was at Amos’ here in Charlotte at 9:30 a.m. I was a stagehand for the Black Label Society show that day. BLS is the sideband of Ozzy Osbourne’s longtime guitar player Zakk Wylde.

I got into them for their first few albums ten years ago and then everything started to sound the same. The exact same. Still it was really cool to work this show. Zakk is one of the few true guitar heroes left alive today and as a guitar player I loved being able to watch him play from five feet away crouched at the corner of downstage left. He’s a monster, obviously. Why else would he be hired to play for Ozzy at 19 years old after only playing for a few years?

Check that shot out. Pardon the phone camera quality.

Another reason it was so cool to work this show was because I could go into the green room (which we cleared two couches and a table out of to accommodate guitars) and sniff around the forest of guitars that he had in there. As a Gibson man and an owner of two Les Pauls I must say I got a bit light headed walking in there.

We worked that show from 9:30 am to 2:40 am. Yes I don’t even know how many hours that is. Best part was that I had to be up at 6 the next day to meet up with the guys from the two week-long gig by 8:15 at the Verizon Ampitheater.

I showed up the next day and signed my life away with tax forms and blah blah blah to work for Live Nation, the company overseeing the construction of the new Fillmore location here in Charlotte.

More on that later. It’s time to go to the gym. Just wanted to let everyone know I’m alive despite having worked two full weeks of a real job. Thanks for the cards and fruit baskets.

Nearly 20 years ago I found a cheap Yamaha nylon string acoustic guitar in the living room closet of the first house my family lived in when we moved to North Carolina. Not sure if some of you know this, but I’ve played guitar longer than I’ve been painting with oils. I uh… just can’t make any dough with the guitar for whatever reason.

It’s almost two years to the day since I quit the band I was in for most of my 20’s. Since that last show in Boston I’ve played on stage once with my friend’s band. I jumped up for a couple cover songs the homecoming show of their June ‘08 tour that I was on. Other than that I haven’t been active in music. Definitely not live music. Charlotte’s just not the same as Boston when it comes to finding people to play with.

I’m glad to say that I do still bang around on the guitar though. Around this time last year I recorded a song just to make myself laugh when I was obsessed with Robert Tepper’s “No Easy Way Out” from the Rocky IV soundtrack. It was called “Fight To the Streets” and I recorded it very primitively on the Garageband program that came with my PowerBook. Months and months went by and then December ‘08 came and I was broke as a joke. I decided to sit at home and write more songs. Bits and pieces of things that cracked me up. Songlets. After a while I started to get more meticulous with the songlets and I started making album artwork. Started spending 8 hours hunched in front of my amp using the built in mic to pick up the sound without even knowing how long I’d been there.

I started really laughing at the stuff and any musician will tell you that laughing after completing something means that it’s stuff that came from the heart. My heart just happens to be stuck in 1985 and is from Germany/Japan/Los Angeles.

I’ve been recording more crap up until this very afternoon and I’d like to finally put the link up here for everyone to check out that had no idea I played.

Yes it’s me singing and playing bass and guitar and everything except the programmed drums. Yes I know I don’t have an awesome voice. Yes I will play bar mitzvahs for gas money and a kosher meal. ’tis what it is.

THUNDER COBRA

Soon I’m going to do a real deal Frank Frazetta-style album cover for my imaginary band’s imaginary debut album. My friend Adriane was awesome enough to come over this week and pose as my barbarian queen in my uh… photo studio (yet another corner of the garage right next to my “artist studio”). Check out a few of the shots…

GO LISTEN! THUNDER COBRA!

I’m back in a “not going to a gym because I’m cheap but still wanting to work out” phase. So, I do body weight exercises in the back yard and, as of yesterday, some in the front of the house as well.

These days I’m living in suburbia. A cookie cutter one-story home on a cul de sac at the bottom of a hill. I did hill sprints from the front of my neighbor’s driveway to about 30 yards up the hill using another neighbor’s mailbox as a finish line. A full steam uphill sprint with 10 pushups in my driveway after every sprint, five times in a row.

By set number three I realized how funny I must look to anyone who might have glanced out their window during my “workout”. For one, I’m tall and thin. Me sprinting is just funny period. Uphill even funnier. Uphill wearing nothing but running shoes and mid-thigh black shorts, funnier still. Uphill with that skimpy getup over and over followed by rapid fire nose-to-ground pushups in antifreeze stains? I must have looked like Prefontaine’s autistic brother.

“Time to start house hunting in another section of town, Honey. The half naked guy is incorporating hill sprints into his regimen.”

Here’s the 80’s painting progress.

Here’s a video by Uphill Battle.

Here’s to sprints.

Nearly two years ago I started a few paintings that were supposed to be part of a series of some sort. They were all dark backgrounds with bright neon elements and had wacky collage-like compositions. Not having any clear direction with them, any education as far as color theory or composition goes and not having the slightest bit of talent with graphic design, the series kind of fizzled out and I ended up with a handful of really busy paintings that sat and collected dust half-finished in my studio.

One was sold to my friend Christine last year in my “brokest I’ve ever been” period. One is still sitting on a wall in the Green Rice gallery, and one is currently the only painting of mine that I’ve enjoyed working on in a long time. I’m going to wrap it up soon, but it’s nice not having a set plan for it. I just draw different things on it with a white pencil and if they don’t work, I wipe it away. If they do work, I paint them on. The theme, of course, is the 1980’s.

These were a few of my favorite things.