Just entered a contest to play at Eric Clapton’s Crossroads 2010 and I need your help! Go here: http://www.playcrossroads.com/frederickrm and vote. It does require you to create a FREE account but that’s not a hassle.
This is an absolute dream of mine and one which I will probably not be able to do much longer so I would really appreciate your support!
This is an AWESOME event and I would love to be there in the crowd watching all the incredible talent but being on stage and getting to meet them would be even BETTER!
Blues Jam [4:50m]: This started out as an open track with nothing but drums and bass. It was a great groove so I jammed some guitar over it. Its yet another jam but I like the feel it had. I intend to make something more of it in the future, maybe adding vocals to it.
On The Recording Project forums a gentleman named Moon posted a track in which he wanted several guitarists to post their take on jamming over it. His intention was to take them and mix them into a full song. I was lucky enough to get 2 of my takes chosen for this and I think its a fun song. I did the acoustic guitar track (on a really badly setup guitar that buzzed a lot) and the solo electric guitar which follows it and appears again at the end. I need to fix some of the notes one of these days but for a one-take-fun-jam its all good. The track ended up being titled FALLING.
Well not not quite a star really, but I did get a BIG surprise today. One of my songs from the Trilennium CD is in the top 50 on American Idol Underground. Currently at #28 (even BETTER than the Top 50) it shot up out of nowhere. Not unusual I’m sure but considering the difference in my style compared to those others it was a bit of a surprise that it had gotten that popular.
Check out HERE and VOTE for it yourself. You don’t need an account to do so. Of course you should give it 5 STARS 
I don’t drink coffee, so sorry to get anyone anxious about that. However I was involved in a very fun collaboration over on CollaborationCentral.com with some folks.
It’s Called TOO MUCH COFFEE and written by a member there know as Venatical. One of the great things about doing this sort of collaboration is the lack of boundaries on location. Venatical lives in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, myself in Denver, Colorado, Walter on Bass in California, John on Drums in Kansas and Paul on backing vocals in Florida. We’re spread all over the North American continent and yet we were able to produce this song in a matter of days. Yes it’s a simple one but it’s very fun, the lyrics very clever and it’s destined to be a classic!
And of course I am on the funny sounding guitars and synth bass.
I have a long time friend. We’ve known each other since High School (back in the early 70′s!) and we played in our first road band together. When that band broke up we were all still under 21 but we kept in contact and while we never played in another band together, we did hire each other, off and on, to run live sound for whatever band we happened to be in at the time.
Recently Alan and I started working on one of his original songs. He has several and has tried to record them in the past with others but never managed to get a solid recording of anything. We’ve been working on this one for months now, slowly tweaking and recording new tracks, trying to get together every couple of weeks or so. I really like the song and I am anxious to see it completed. We don’t have that far to go but there are some critical areas we want to improve on yet.
So just for your enjoyment I am presenting the most recent mix. Hopefully in a couple of weeks we’ll have a new mix or a completed mix!
We had announced a new CD in the works hten it stalled. MY fault but now it’s actually going for sure. We have several new people on board for this one:
David Kempers – an EXCELLENT violinist is going to add his talents. He and I have been collaborating online in hte past few months so this was a natural progression.
Dawn Landers – Vocalist. She has many years of experience in choirs, opera and general musical situations so her beautifully voice will be most welcome.
Also new is our daughter Stephanie! Well she isn’t new but her additions will be. She will be adding her voice and possibly some keyboards (piano, church organ, etc.). She has worked with me on a few projects in the past but this will be her largest contribution to any recording.
The current working title for this CD is ANACHRONISM. If you know anything about the background of Bedlam Abbey the meaning behind the title will be fairly obvious.
I’ve had the studio up and running for a bit now and back to working on projects. I’ve also been collaborating with folks online again too. It’s been fun doing that again and I’ve met some great talents and gotten to do some cool songs with them. I am going to set up a special page with final mixes of some of them. I will getting permission first though. More on this later.
While this isn’t the first song written for this project but it will likely be the first one completed. It’s so close now it’s scary but it needs a better bass part. I may retrack the vocals and the guitar as well. This started out being a track for my SCI-FI BLUES project when I decided to make a more traditional sounding version to post on Garageband.com. I felt that the blues community there would not deal well with the synthesized version of this. Now it has come full circle and all synthesis except for drums replaced by real players. Keyboards were done by a man on TheRecordingProject site known as DafDuc (a.k.a. Jay Ricketts). Very nice stuff!
So I hope to finish this soon and get started on the next tune.