just be good

the burden of living is different for each of us, but the unburdening is the same: love. if we could all be convinced of this, i'm sure the world would explode in beauty and literally save itself from extinction. but until that day we must meet hate and violence with love and compassion. i believe it's the most efficient way of creating a better world.

the word 'love' can be a catch-all for the solution to any problem. but it is through love that truth, beauty, honesty, loyalty, liberty, punctuality, or even violence and strength are achieved. to love is to care. to care is to do your best. to love is to do your best.

when asked whether they want to die or not, most people still say no. we are all rightfully scared of what might await us at the end. the only thing we can be certain of are the memories we have of the dead. some we cherish, some we cringe at. which makes it vitally important to take pride in oneself and respect others. to leave nothing but a legacy of good after we are gone. this requires vigilance and energy, but remember; this is all we can truly know about life after death. without any irony, it's your funeral.

i find a relief in knowing that i can end my own life if i choose to, like a safety hatch i can open if i need to escape my own head once and for all. but, again, if i turn the focus outward and try and really be there for whomever is with me, at any given moment in my life, i can hopefully help whomever is there, and in turn help myself.

there is still so much work to be done to be a better person, better musician, better everything, and there's not much time left, which is fine. i don't want for anything anymore except to just keep trying to make great records with hard working folks who are easy to be around and take care of my family. it's hard being good, but in this pursuit to be happy, there is no alternative. perhaps it is the same with friendships and with saving the world. just be good and the world will revive itself through you and your own good life.

rush nerd

i got the rush doc as a christmas gift this year and was oddly excited. i don't get too up about things, so this was quite an occurance.

i finally had a chance to watch it one sunday afternoon and i was immediately captivated all the way through.

a lot of people who know me as a musician only go a few years back, to either the swindles, buttercup, lara & reyes or mike morales.

but if you went a little further back. you would have heard some serious 70's metal guitar.

the beatles were too tough as a kid for me. there was something there i didn't have yet. a voice. and i didn't really sing. and the songs pitched around in keys all over the place, not mention tuning issues from song to song. i liked singing along. but playing guitar along with those records was too hard.

but loud electric guitar is easy to define. it's usually the loudest thing in the track. and if you have a quick ear, you can begin to see the patterns emerging on the fretboard of the guitar.

and as i grew old enough to drive, i started getting more music tips from my friends. san antonio had a radio station that championed these obscure metal bands, long before anyone besides their friends and local fans had ever heard of them.

and so along with what was actually popular, the cheap tricks and kiss and aerosmiths of the world, there were judas priest, ufo, triumph, april wine, moxy, legs diamond and on and on they came.

there were tons of guitar parts there to learn, right off the radio.

but rush songs were another story.

i hadn't yet heard any jazz-fusion or flamenco or classical music yet. the band Yes was maybe the most technically complex music i'd heard in a rock context.

and then i got 'all the world's a stage'. which is pretty much the live versions of the best parts of their first four records. it's still so much fun to listen to. and the guitar parts were amazing.

i still really enjoy making that much sound. as a three piece band, rush could fill up so much. alex lifeson used open strings combined with barre chords in a way i'd never thought of. they really cared about arrangements and technically flawless recordings.

and that's where i went for twenty years. studying guitar feverishly, and playing in metal, then fusion, then nylon-string, guitar-based bands.

but none of it would have been possible without 'a farewell to kings' or 'hemispheres'.

i remember playing 'la villa strangiato' with just the drummer of the band i played with in high school. somehow we made it to the end.

i also remember playing the recording of 'the trees' in my middle school english class to complete some kind of assignment. a true rush nerd move. i had complete freakouts over other bands as well (judas priest was definitely my guide to any twin-guitar playing that would happen later), but rush compelled me, for some reason. i think i really felt they were making art, not just music.

and in a way, my whole career can be traced right back to this band from canada that everyone thought sucked so badly back then. it was truly a dividing topic amongst teenagers in the late 70's. and their music was true girl poison. no one wants to make out to 'by-tor and the snowdog'.

but i was not dissuaded. i guess i'm still not.

it's only after watching this film, that i realized just how much they mean to me as a band. it was a very nice gift. something to help me rekindle this love i've always had for music. it's easy to lose confidence in yourself, but knowing you can do just one thing really well. that's maybe the lynchpin that holds a life together in those dark, lonely moments.

acting through music

i love what actors and filmmakers and directors and writers can do. separately or together. it's such an efficient way to convey a real emotion to an audience.

i am not an actor and have no insight into the techniques involved.

but this evening something struck me:

in order to be a great actor, do you have to stop 'acting' in our everyday lives.

i feel like each of us puts on a costume and goes out to face the day armed with only the knowledge you have of your 'character'.

so, if this is possible, to strip away the layers of identity that we all have collected that we use in different social settings, and lay bare any real emotion or feeling you could muster so that it could come out so strongly and purely that it could transcend the medium of film or the stage, is this not what the great actors do?

that would be an incredibly humbling journey.

to lay bare or have laid bare any insecurity, any veil you held over a secret passion or fear pulled away to reveal the crushingly emotional center in all of us.

i think all artist must take this journey, the ego tamed and humbled, strengthened and sharpened by the sighting of something that had been just out of view and has now awakened one's consciousness.

if so, then my hat is off to all of you. any of you who would attempt this.

it's so incredibly risky. but perhaps that is part of the allure.

i've never had to be anyone else when i performed or recorded and now that i'm 47 there's no need to pretend to be anyone else. no one would believe it.

when i was younger it was fun to don makeup and put on shiny clothing to pretend to be something or somebody else. i loved KISS. the fantasy behind the music was key to its enjoyment as an adolescent .

now there's less theatrics, still plenty of shenanigans, but you just listen to each other and play and the music becomes the main focus. it's the thing that moves everyone in the room along. lights and fog might help, but the groove has to be there.

so, i guess i will wait for our good friend dylan kussman to somehow read this and expound on my thesis in his own blog, which i believe is called 'i got punched in the face a lot in the movies'.

that's not the name.

acting looks tough. how do you do it, dylan?

love,

joe

17 albums

there was a huge influx of new recordings for me in the early nineties that i'm not really quite sure how i ended up with. but i listened to them a lot.

people have been posting lists of 15 songs lately on social network sites, but i am far too shy to do anything like that. so here, in the confines of my own minuscule blogarium, is yet one more, except i totally added two songs at the end. and they're not songs, they're albums.

the verve - urban hymns. i still dig that record for some reason. lots of wah-wah.

aimee mann - whatever. classic jon brion-produced mann. jim keltner is killing it. jon's no slouch on 'i should have known'

starflyer 59 - leave here at stranger. a later record for me, but such good songs. great voice. in mono. jason martin makes great records.

catherine wheel - chrome. cranked, this thing still sounds amazing. and now gil norton produces dave grohl. weird.

xtc - skylarking. i got this in 89 or so. changed my life. a friend in college thought i should hear it.

michael penn - resigned. this record sounds huge. brendon o'brien is the man. lots of great ideas, hooks, playing, etc.

cocteau twins - four-calendar cafe. i was really into programming drums at this point. and i still love chorus pedals.

the grays - ro sham bo. another shade of jon brion and jason faulkner from further below. but the jb tunes are still my favorites.

elliott smith - either-or. i remember thinking, this sounds like my recordings. but these songs are amazing.

the finn brothers. their best collaborative effort hands down. tchad blake makes it all sound so good.

crowded house - woodface. another fine finn brother collaborative. 'four seasons in one day" is beautiful.

xtc - nonsuch. they're in top form here. 'that wave' - that guitar solo is incredible. dave gregory. genius.

the blue nile - hats. the voice to end all voices: paul buchanan. 'walk across the rooftops' is also amazingly sad.

jellyfish - spilt milk. the first real attempt i hear at a vintage sounding recording. jack joseph puig. my hat is off, sir.

teenage fanclub - a catholic education. 'every picture i paint' is stunning.

red kross - phaseshifter. they are bashing it out. loud and melodic. just great. chris smart gave me a copy of this. thanks chris!

curve - cuckoo. another wall of guitar type thing that i really enjoy. and girl singers. like the english band texas. great stuff.

the sundays - blind. her voice is so lovely. i saw them with 100 other people at the majestic. it was magical.

there are a few missing, but this made up a bulk of my listening at the time. and once i got an ADAT to record with at home around 95, i was in business. the business of trying to make records that sounded like these, but with little success at first. something had to change inside me for it to work. or it just got better over time. either way, i'm happier with how things are sounding now, but it's still…meh. it's still not rubber soul….

bye aunt bea

it seems somehow disingenuous to not mention any real deaths i might encounter in my life. death is a theme throughout most of what i write, in both song and blog form. when it really does come and visit me, i feel strangely guilty about not mentioning it to you, the reader of these rather sad, odd musings.

so below is a short account of my aunt's life. it's still all sinking in so i'm keeping it on the short side - which for me is still somewhere on the long side.

my mother's oldest sister died on tuesday, september 7, 2010 a little after 6 pm.

her name was beatrice fernandez.

i knew her when she lived in el paso. she was a schoolteacher most of her life, who never married and at one point, became a deaconess in the methodist church . she was born in hillsboro, texas in 1926. she retired to austin several years ago to be closer to their youngest sister, olga.

i was able to visit occasionally. but i just assumed she would be there for as long as i liked.

she developed stomach cancer two years ago and despite her skeptic doctors, it went into remission at some point.

but last week the cancer returned.

she was the most giving person i'd ever met. she could be strict, but she really loved people in this way that i've rarely witnessed; without judgement or prejudice, with true humility.

out last time together was sunday. she was awake, but groggy. she smiled when she saw her family around her.

i played her a few songs. 'living again' and 'alfie'.

she seemed completely at peace and happy to hear us in the room with her.

my brother said he had never heard me sing before. maybe he meant really up close like that.

i hadn't thought about it until he mentioned it.

each visit, i would pull up a chair to her bed and play a few songs and chat and thank her for everything that she'd done for me and my family.

but she could only muster a few words that day. they were mostly to thank someone in the room.

love seems to warp the way we experience things.

i only feel love coming from her still, just as when she was alive. and i will feel her love until i too am dead.

so in this way, we can live on; through the legacy of good or evil retained in the repercussions of our actions that can linger long after we are dead.

this seems like the most reasonable association i could make with a concept like heaven or hell.

and so, by associating these two things, i conclude my aunt is in heaven.

and death, as weighty and final as it is, cannot defeat love.

and i learned this from her.

thank you, aunt bea.

love,

joe

the preacher

mitch said it was, 'another one of joe's sermons' as he and dave wasson and i chatted outside the old jersey lilly at the now suddenly hip pearl brewery, waiting to play the last set of a very laid back, easy going, high paying swindles gig. there was a a nice little breeze blowing across the parking lots.

he did add that he enjoyed them, which i thought was nice.

but as the word 'sermon' floated through the air, through my ears, to my brain, i pictured me in a room with my mom, listening to her and her friends from church, as she declared that i was definitely going to be a priest or a minister. i was destined, according to her. i had this gift.

i'm pretty sure at that time in my life, my sole purpose was to listen to all the beatles' albums as much as i could and try and jump my bike off of homemade ramps in the downtime between listens.

but i now notice that i constantly talk about music and it's healing powers and the mystery behind it's creation. much like someone who loves a certain savior.

so now, at 4 am in the morning, i think my mom may have been right. i talk about music to everyone i know, all the time, in very much the same way some people speak of a god. we heard and saw a lot of talk about god in our home growing up. but it never interested me in the same way that music did. at the time, we all just thought our mother was being a bit overzealous about her religious beliefs. now i realize that i'm just as obsessed about music as she was about god. she didn't live to see where music would take me, but i think she'd be pleased to know that it took me to what i think is a great place.

but most of us, if we continue to search, will find something in this world we connect with deeply that is not a person. it could be a place. but it's most likely a thing.

and with the deep love of this thing fully shaping us, we navigate the world while we're here. we find solace and gratitude and humility through this thing and with a true devotion to this thing, we can be lead towards a better, fuller life.

maybe i have the same desire as that of a person of faith: this need to proselytize, to utter forth with great will and conviction the attributes that this thing possesses -- "it will change your life." our mother was deeply religious, but now i feel that she saw how it could take someone's focus away from themselves and aim it towards others. which, yeah, i think is what music or science or art can do too and which i firmly believe can make a person's life better.

i know it would make my mom happy to see that i am indeed a preacher; one that tells everyone he knows that there's something special and beautiful and necessary in this world and it's called music. so thanks, mitch. i'm glad to be playing music with you. so is my mom.

the beatles

it's sad, really, this obsession.

of listening to them and knowing.

no way. how? and then hours spent telling yourself, "well, write better songs, learn to play them well and record them well and do all of this a lot at a high level of proficiency for several years."

and despite trying your best to be yourself, you still secretly want everything you record to sound like 'rubber soul'. there is no escape.

but with every listen, they unlock a little bit more of the universe for me and lots of other people everyday.

four guys playing instruments and singing together. it's baffling.

it's because of this sound they got.

this artful sound that you can create if you really, really try.

so we all really try.

why are you so quiet?

i remember family members (usually aunts or stepmothers) always asking me "why are you so quiet?" when we gathered for holidays or other occassions. at the time (and perhaps even now) i didn't have an answer for them. i couldn't tell them "um, i don't feel like being here right now" or "my thoughts are consumed with leaving this world." - that would be rude. but i find it interesting that my more extroverted, demonstrative relatives were never asked "why are you so loud and boisterous?"

depending on your circumstance or mood, the world seems to be many things. but for the depressed, the world simply seems daunting. panic attacks, anxiety, self-doubt all contribute to this feeling that there's no need to get out of bed.

as diseases go, it doesn't seem as life-threatening as cancer or heart disease, but depression wreaks havoc on the body in the form of stress, poor diet, lack of exercise and inattentiveness to any oncoming illness.

i don't remember the first time the word 'depression' was mentioned, but i do remember the first time i felt completley alone and frightened. i was maybe 8 years old and i was certain that my parents weren't ever coming back for my brother and i. they were gone for probably 20 minutes. abandonment issues aside, i was constantly worried about things no child should have be concerned with; things like not having enough food or running out of money.
they seemed like reasonable concerns to me, but after having spoken with other friends about this, it seems i was a bit overwrought throughout my childhood.

being sensitive to other people's suffering was a constant source of worry as well. but this sensitivity proved helpful when it came to playing music. intuition became married to forethought, which carried through to ability and caring about each musical situation. this made deciphering what a song or performance needed easier, but also came with its own price tag in the form of a debilitating sense of self-conciousness.

still, there seems to be hope for depression sufferers through therapy and drugs. the acknowledgement and accceptance of a disease is usually the first step towards recovery for any type of illness but unfortunately, depression seems to trigger no warning bells; it's an insidious type of destructiveness that worms it's way inside out. passive aggression, inconsideration and frustration with petty issues lead to self-abuse of a different nature and alcohol and drugs simply obfuscate the truth of the matter, which is that chemically, the depressed person's brain needs help.

it's a long road to becoming a healthier, happier person. but to stay along the same worn path that depression takes is even longer. i hope that if you're reading this and any of this seems familiar that you try to seek out some help. but for the autodidact, it is quite unraveling to realize that for once, you're going to need some assistance.

another day, another chance

"the secret to happiness does not lie in doing what one likes, but learning to like what one has to do."

i saw this quote this weekend while not sleeping and reading a book by mick brown called 'the spiritual tourist'.

i feel quite lucky to have been chosen by music at what seemed like my birth. music was something that came easily to me as a child, and quickly gave me a sense of self-worth that was badly needed as an adolescent and as a young adult. but i made many life choices that would facilitate a life devoted to music (a low overhead being the biggest choice) and i had to learn how to navigate the many other skills needed to play music professionally.

there are still some parts of this job that i don't care for: accounting and promotion for example. but i've learned to enjoy certain aspects of this kind of work: it's a challenge to keep track of all my income and expenses (and of course a huge surprise to see i made any money at all). and it's always a nice treat when you have a good turnout at a performance because you actually let people know about it.

but music, just like other creative endeavors, gives one a glimpse of something that is much larger than ourselves. and much like those whose beliefs are based on faith and religion, the world of art reminds us of the enormity of the universe and how small and inconsequential our work can seem. but i believe this to be another important aspect of creating a happy life - that from this humbling discovery we can find and build upon our uniqueness, if we're up for the challenge.

and despite such daunting odds, there is still hope in creating something beautiful to share with the world by simply being our (humbled) selves. there are many more days left to this year, to this life, but i know for certain each day will show me something i've never seen before and from that tiny bit of information i'll try and cull something else out of the guitar and my voice and some words and hopefully it will result in something lasting and inspiring.

and if not, well, tomorrow is another day, another chance to try again. happiness, for me, seems to lie in this quest. i was just lucky music and i found each other.

winter 2009

i was literally buried alive one summer under a half ton of topsoil that my dad, who had a hauling business as a hobby, was dumping in our backyard for the betterment of our lawn. i was playing behind the truck, thinking i would be buried up to my neck in dirt as the bed tilted ever higher. it seemed like an impressive image in my mind.

instead, the entire load shifted in one swoop knocking me off my feet and covering me. i remember screaming to no avail and was told that a neighbor saw what had happened and hopped our fence and pulled me out by the one ankle that was sticking out of the mound of dirt. my dad's first reaction was to wonder just what his son was thinking. and then that reaction gave way to relief that i was rescued in time. it was dark and suffocating and it felt like that might have been it for me. all at the age of seven.

at age thirteen, our mother died suddenly of a heart attack a week before christmas. it was also my parent's twenty-fifth anniversary. that also felt like that might have been it for me. the subsequent years were blurry and marred by frequent drug and alcohol use and a struggle to understand why the world was as it was. music was the only place where life made sense. where love and beauty seemed timeless and safe.

when you learn at such a young age the meaning of the word "finite", it becomes impossible at times to make sense of this life. but the world that each of us knows, the one that pours through our senses and into our brains is unique to each of us - our own private universe. our default setting is to think of ourselves as the center of this existence, which hardly seems unfair, but it's a myopic view at the very least, and perhaps why the tenet of most major religious beliefs is to curb that view.

death seems like a beautiful release from the burden of living. i've had several relatives remark that they're surprised that 'god hasn't called for me yet'. i never suggest that they could book their own ticket, but for me, that purchase button is never too far away and i always view it with a mixture of relief and cowardice. and still, late at night i lie awake and wonder just how quiet and peaceful it will be.

our friends and family seem to be the one thing that might give this life a sense of purpose and meaning, although to someone who's seen a loved one die, that sense can get lost quite easily. so i try and remember what my dad told me during one of those long, sad winters. he said the one dream our mom had was for us to have a happy, meaningful life. and so i keep trying.

for her.