JUST WHAT HAS OCCURRED
1.7.22
Happy New Year! A mere week into January and a new single drops, “Deception.” I wrote it a year ago to prep for the ill-fated (so far) reality TV series, “Music Masters,” where musical artists are given a random word and compete to write the best song in 1 day. To practice, I opened the dictionary at random, and one of the words was “deception.” The resulting song came out so well, I put it on the lineup for the new album, and to be released as a single. It’s been a year now and no word if the episodes we shot will ever see the light of day, but at least I got some good songs from the effort. Two more practice songs also found their way to be recorded. Stay tuned.
As I mentioned before, I have two seasons as an artist: Recording and Rehearsing. First of the year, I finished the new album—14 songs!—and now…I have to learn to play and sing them perfectly. I’m setting aside January for that; maybe February if I need it. Then I’ll get back on the open mike circuit again (assuming it’s still going on by then) and see where that takes me. I’m really excited again to play out, because my new arrangement, using the modified Gold Tone resonator, which is more rhythmic and even more evocative of a three-piece band. To me, the ultimate kick in performing is when you get on the stage and surprise the audience with the sound you make. I’ve done a better job than most on that score—let’s face it, it’s a drearily derivative era—but this new sound will really bowl people over, I think. They will drop their phones.
Also of note: I’ll be listing these occurrences chronologically from now on, so scroll down to the bottom to see the very latest. It was rather vexing to do it the other way, with the latest events on the top of the stack. Since I’ve no evidence that anyone has ever even been to this site, much less read these notices, I might as well give myself a break.
2.7.22
Did everybody catch the release of "Operation Lonestar Bait," the latest video from last Summer's hit album, Guest? I believe you all did, as the numbers are well into the roaring 20's. I meant to release that video mid month, but in early January, I caught a nasty cold. Rona? Don't know. Didn't ram their Ethylene Oxide sticks up my nostrils through my blood/brain barrier to find out. But it had me poorly for a good two weeks and slowly for another whole week. I've had worse, many times, but me, I listen when my body says, "rest." If it was Rona, hooray! I've got natural immunity now, and never a jab to mess with my immune system.
The release of monthly singles lately, and their accompanying videos, is keeping me hopping busy as I also feel bound to keep releasing videos from Guest. It's all for the best, though, which is the continuous building of my back catalog of content. The Question Beggar material alone is quite expansive, with six official albums plus the bonus releases on Bandcamp.com. Add to all that the Claxton Kent and vonHummer material and Rock-eologists have already got more than enough to write their doctoral theses on.
Which reminds me that today's event is the release of a new single, "God's Cat Now," available everywhere online while supplies last, etc, etc. THere's a backstory to the song. Surely no one—no one in Texas, anyhow—will forget the subzero freeze of February 2021. There was a respectable amount of snow, for Fort Worth, and I went out into the night to take a picture of the house and yard all decked in white. Coming back in, I noticed the form of a black cat with a white muzzle and socks huddled behind the front bushes, against the brick. The cat was out of the wind and snow, but the temperatures were heading below zero. If I tried to approach, off it ran, coming back later. Figuring that some kind of insulation would help I brought an old pillow out a bowl of some kind of food. Off it ran. As the weather got worse, I checked back, but the cat never returned. I went on Facebook to the local group and posted a picture, hoping to find an owner, but no one knew the cat. "That's God's cat now..." I said to myself, then did a Dewey Cox, and went to write it down, and here it is a song.
Don't fret for the cat. Turns out it belongs to the neighbor across the way. Not usually a wanderer, I didn't recognize it. Whatever the reason for it being out and about in that kind of weather, I'll never know. I did see the cat recently, though, so all is well.
I was a bit worried as to how I would make an accompanying video. Where would I find an old movie or tv show with a black cat? Luckily, there was an old Warner Bros. cartoon in the public domain, not just cat-centric, but a cat in winter, with very similar black and white markings to the very cat I wrote "God's Cat Now" for. Hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed sticking it together.
The song is a part of the new album, Need a Momenent, which is due for release everywhere sometime in June. But, as a special bonus for you who read this, I should tell you the entire album is available now on Bandcamp. If you've never checked out the Question Beggar collection on Bandcamp.com, there's a lot more there than is commonly available. Every album and song has liner notes and lyrics, and there are bonus releases, like the first EP, the single, "Aint No Rona," and the instrumental soundtracks for "Last Exit to Texas" "Cap Smith Park." Having said that, the new album has no liner notes yet, as my decision to post it was rather sudden. I will get around to writing it all up soon, I swear.
Meanwhile, I am finally making the crossover to DAW recording on my laptop, after 19 years of recording solely on my Zoom 17-track digital deck. There's gonna be a learning curve, I assure you, so I may not turn out a new album, after June's impending release, til late this year or next year. I will endeavor to keep my sound real and not all quantized, as best I can. I may make the move to playing to a click track, though I'm loathe to do so. I don't like nobody rushing me or slowing me down. Not even a metronome.
3.7.22
And the March of the Singles marches on. In March. Today is the release date for "Gentlemen's Club." It's a song of considerable whimsy, and, dare I say it, tongue-in-cheekiness. Possibly needlessly so. What's so risqué now about a strip club? There are shorts on TikTok and YouTube that rival the ribaldry of burlesque shows, commonly viewed on every phone.
Also, post-Covid, I have no idea how the strip club biz is even getting along these days, to say nothing of post-#MeToo and post soy-boy culture. Are strip clubs filled with a bunch of old boomer such as I? Why not? The open mikes all are.
I was rather coy with the video for "Gentlemen's Club," positioning myself as a fig leaf over the scantily clad dancers from a trailer for a blue movie called "Teaserama," from the 50s. Part of it was discretion, but, mostly, I found their risqué images rather sad. The chicks—excepting Betty Page—look sad and tired and not terribly healthy. Plus, as I say, what's thrilling about nakedness anymore? It's dime-a-dozen.
Meanwhile, unannounced, Question Beggar has moved into a new era this year, in which I'll be recording my audio works on a laptop, and not the trusty ZOOM 17-track digital deck that I've used since (!) 2006. Yes, I'll join the modern age of a clearer, bolder, but hopefully still human sounding audio quality. What could go wrong?
On the 4th of April, I'll kick off my live playing with a short set at the Arlington Nights Chat & Do, at the Black Box Studio in Arlington, Texas. Three brand new songs will be played live, plus "Everybody Needs Love" from 2020. Following that performance I'll supposedly step back into doing weekly open mikes in the DFW area. I say "supposedly" because who knows what I'll actually feel like doing.
I've found that playing regular open mikes to be a stepping stone to playing whole sets and more. Historically, that "more" for me has been burnout. What can I tell you? I'm a studio bird. I like flapping around a stage just fine, but I'd rather roost where the air is stuffy and still and the only one on their phone is me.
4-7-2022
These updates have tended to be monthly—due to the release of singles—but I really should have posted a couple more over the last month. Firstly, I should have posted about the music video for "Take a Naked Walk" that dropped a couple weeks back. My intention is to make a music video for every song on that album, one per month, which I feel every album is due. (Purists will note that there are about 4 songs on Record of the Year 2020, however, that never got their day in the YouTube sun. To them, I say, "Hey, those were bonus tracks." But who knows? I may yet get around to them.) Still, after an album has been released, like Guest was last August, and especially after singles from a new album have dropped, the making and posting of those last-album videos always feel to me like a non-event.
The dropping of "Take a Naked Walk" was quite an event, it turns out. I half expected it to not get past the censors of YouTube, at first, due to the high content of nudity. Just T&A, no naughty bits. I took the footage from a 1961 film in the public domain called "Diary of a Nudist." Supposedly quite controversial back in the day, but how exceedingly tame it looks now. The video did get an "AGE RESTRICTION," but, rather than restricting the views, it frickin' fertilized them! "Take a Naked Walk" rocketed to 23, 480 views in its first two weeks. This is a record, not just for Question Beggar, but for the hey day of my vonHummer videos. And all this with zero marketing. I didn't place any ads. Nothing. What was I to make of this sudden success? Was it all the nudity? Was it the song? Some combination of the two?
Alas, the analytics tell the tale. "Take a Naked Walk" was found and devoured by folk searching for "naked," "nudist" and "naked exercise." They watched for an average of 1:03 and fucked off. On the upside, though, subscribers ratcheted up from a mere 47 to 206. The linked video at the end, "Gentlemen's Club," also saw an uptick from 28 views to 565. Other videos increased as well. All in all, I found it encouraging.
Also encouraging was my performance at the Arlington Nights' Chat and Do on the 3rd of April. It's a kind of mixer where musicians from the area gather to hear a couple of showcased artists and a speaker and generally just build a community. For those not in the area, Arlington, Texas is a fascinating city. It's pretty much halfway between Dallas and Fort Worth. It's loaded with mega attractions—Cowboy Stadium, Rangers Stadium, a huge convention center and Six Flags over Texas. The University of Texas Arlington also has a huge presence there. Lots of bars and events and things to do.
Everybody knows I'm a bit of a hermit, socially, preferring working on my art to hang time, but I see great value in supporting and growing the Arlington music scene. With the way this state is booming—taking in Californians like crazy—Arlington could be the next big Burbank. Austin is just about the next Hollywood. Fort Worth and Dallas are traditionally oil and water, but if they could meet in the artistic middle in Arlington, everybody would be well served. It's a huge area.
So, at the start of this year, the head honcho of ArlingtoN NightS asked me to play a set of 4 songs at the April Chat & Do. At first I thought it a great opportunity to perform the new singles from my upcoming album, Need a Momenent, but then I discovered the magic of importing drum phrase samples into my foot stomping—resulting in a more Graceland-like sound—and I committed instead to debut the new songs and sound. The reaction was good. This new style seems to move and impress an audience more than ever before, so it's full speed ahead.
I led with "Rollin' 94," a straight blues 1-4-5 structure done to a raga beat. Then went to a very shagadellic, groovy sixties reworking of 2020's "Everybody Needs Love." After that, "New York City" with its Peter Gabriel starkness, and finished up with the offbeat rhythm of "Window Walkin'." The mix onstage wasn't optimal or inspiring to me, but it sounded quite good in the audience and my vocals were lovely and clear. The mistakes I made were mostly mine alone to know. My overall feeling based on crowd reaction was that I've arrived. I can take this setup and run with it.
Now onto the current single and video that drops today: "Me and Mrs. Kuntz." By way of backstory, I'm fascinated with oddball surnames. I was born with one (and it wasn't "Kent") and grew up with all the travails an odd last name bestows. From time to time, I've encountered people with the last name "Kuntz." They invariably pronounce it "koontz" but that fixes nothing. The mispronunciations continue, willfully, I suspect. Always, I wonder, "Why don't they just change the name?" Only a Cosmo Kramer would ask them directly, so we'll never know. I must have heard either Amy Winehouse's "Me and Mr. Jones" or Billy Paul's "Me and Mrs. Jones" whereupon my mind switched out "Jones" for "Kuntz," and the idea for this song was born.
"Me and Mrs. Kuntz," as it wrote itself, turned into a kind of testimonial as to what they go through with that name, but are resolved never to change it. They don't say why. The reason seems to be pure individualistic grit. By the end of the song, I've come around to their side. Why should they change their name, just because people poke fun at it, associating it with an obscenity? Perhaps Mr. and Mrs. Kuntz even draw strength from the adversity of having that name? And then, why did I change my difficult last name? To bend to others' stupidity? For better marketability? Are those worthwhile reasons? Did I forsake strength through adversity to better fit in? It's a special song because I initially wrote it to mock the Kuntzes, but instead it turned out to be a fairly touching account. Although it is a crackup to realize that Ronald MacDonald and Ola MacDonald are the ones to convince them to bear the name with pride.
The music video for "Me and Mrs..." was also a surprise for me. I found an old TV pilot for a show that never aired from 1961: "The Nut House." Looks like it was a primitive attempt at "Laugh-In." The silly song and dance schtick pairs nicely with the bittersweet story of the song, again unexpectedly. I'll be interested to see if the subscriber boost from "Take a Naked Walk" will boost the views for this one. It should. If not, well, I'm flummoxed.
As a final note, I'll declare that it's Open Mike Season again, which should see me playing a different Open Mike every week to spread my influence and song all around North Texas. Beyond, if feasible. With my unique sound more striking than ever, I'll be intrigued to see what results.
5-17-2022
Let this be a lesson. DO NOT PUT OFF—Nay, not even a day—WRITING AN OCCURRENCE POST. I did so on the 6th of May and here am I only now announcing the drop of a new single, “Copperhead.” I’m being formalistic, I suppose, in my self-dismay. Is anyone ever reading any of these? For the last five years, I have no evidence of such. This must be an online diary of some kind, then. Do let me know if you or anyone has been avidly reading these. One never knows, after all, how wide the world is.
It’s actually a quaint notion, blogging this way as a form of press release. So 1999. Back then, I used to frequent J-Tull.com to find out what the band Jethro Tull was up to. Were they touring? Was an album in the works? I considered it obliging of their organization to let the fans know what was coming up and going on. How would I know otherwise?
Popping by J-Tull.com (long since JethroTull.com), out of curiosity, I see they’re still at it. Blogs as news events and news events as blogs. Some videos posted. A notice that, due the plandemic, there will be no more selfies, hugs or autographs. Nor will any written letters be answered or returned. Fair enough. Ian’s band is still my favorite.
So, back to “Copperhead.” It’s yet another monthly single from the collection of recordings that make up the impending album Need a Momenent. A song that’s been kicking around since 2016 at least, and that’s one more classic added to the woodpile that is my back catalog. Someday, conflagration will take it, and all will marvel at the depth and breadth of my work. Or not. I’m still having a blast doing all this for nothing, so no rush. I’m truly an artist of leisure, completely free to pursue whatever catches my fancy and critics be damned. It couldn’t be more glorious if I had a jillion followers, and, indeed, they might make my pursuits far less enjoyable. We’ll see, we’ll see.
And today, another video of a song from the Guest album drops on YouTube. “No Crazy Woman No.” I especially have a blast making these videos, because I do so with very little planning or forethought and yet I get the most synchronicitous results. In this vid, I marry up clips from an old Bonanza episode in the public domain called “The Spitfire.” I’ve had that episode hanging around for a couple of years and just couldn’t match it to the right song until now. Being a story kind of song, “No Crazy Woman No” provides an extra challenge in finding an appropriate source for the video. It’s almost impossible to find a representative source movie or show that would tell the story, scene for scene. That leaves vague symbolic representation—like the previous story song video for “Copperhead”—or a source that parallels the events of the song. “No Crazy Woman No” qualifies as the latter, much to my delight. It also delights me how often the lip synch video footage I tape (my head in the TV set) will synch up to the action: looking at characters or watching in a meaningful way. While I tape those—with my iPhone!—I just randomly look around at times while I sing. Nothing planned. I can’t tell you what I kick I get from being surprised by my own art and how it turns out. Not that I’m horribly critical at all, on that count.
Meanwhile, my weekly outings testing new material at local, and not-so-local, open mikes is going well. Response to my new, extra-percussive sound has been very gratifying. A lot of folk saying they’ve never heard anything like it. Well, no, they never. It’s Heavy Skiffle. Or Red Dirt Raga. Or Tex-Afrique. I’m still road-testing names for this new variation of the QB Sound™. The open mikes are continuing to be a quest for failing faster as I discover all kinds of things about my instrument and rigs and songs and performance. The enormity of these learnings almost has me chucking completely playing live. Like war, what is it good for? Alas, I’ve doomed myself to the live stage by the very nature of how I make music: a one-man-band. There is no value in the studio to a one-man-band. Who could tell—or care—that I’ve made all the QB albums (excepting 07Q and Whole Other Day) with no instrumental overdubs? One Man Band is a magic that lives and thrills entirely in person. More so, the farther one gets from pre-recorded tracks and tricks. I’m skirting that with the small loops I trigger, but I continue to believe my triggering adds an imperfections that equates to live drumming, and thus, humanity, as opposed to computer perfection.
Golly, so much current news to get to! ITEM! A long-held dream of mine is working it’s way to fruition. Slowly. I’ve long wanted to put together a showcase of similar one-man-band artists like myself, in the hope of creating the appearance of a THING. These showcases could be big draws at venues, perhaps. The challenge? There are no artists doing what I do. Or, at least, I’ve done a poor job scouting them. Late last month, however, at Six Springs in Richardson, Texas, I was on a bill with a fellow named Andy Cea. He plays a killer guitar and sings killer songs with a killer voice along to a digital deck of techno music. Playing along to pre-recorded stuff typically triggers my “KARAOKE” alert, but the promoter that night was convinced we’d make a good showcase together. Andy agreed initially, and I had him all but signed up to move forward with a live videotaped event but he cooled on the deal. Too busy, he said. Which is cool. I’ll never forget the sage words of producer Pat Kearns: “Only fifty percent of any musical opportunity ever comes through.” I do still have the agreement of the loop-pioneering singer songwriter, Sushia, and Marcus Seaton who also loops stuff, so we’re just about there. I may yet adjust the concept away from one-man-band to visionary artists, and then filling the remaining spot will be no problem. I already know so many visionary Fort Worth artists.
One last ITEM. Looks like I’m in for another custom 3-string bass, this time crafted by Snyder Guitars, here in my hometown. Joshua Snyder is the guy I depend on to fix and craft my instruments. He took Jerry Guest’s bungled product and made the Grumbleduke a success. Actually, he’s still fixing and redoing bugs in that beautiful bass as they develop over time. Now, he’s taking in my old orange 1967 Eko electric guitar and mutating it into my classic 4-output 3-string bass. If all goes well, this could be tremendously cool. And this will be the first week I play the new, improved Gold Tone Resonator 3-string bass at an open mike. Joshua also retconned it into a fine, fighting trim, so we’ll see how that goes. No idea how long it will take him.
6-10-2022
Happy Flag Day! Not only is this the day we honor symbolic cloth, but it’s the day that my new album, Need a Momenent, drops. Or should have. Due to an ongoing dispute with CDBaby’s slowpoke customer service, my new album is nowhere on the services. Luckily, I already dropped the whole album on Bandcamp back in January or something. It’s okay. Nobody noticed. It’s very strange, this new world of music promotion and production. An album I finished recording in December of last year, with “singles” from it being released steadily ever since, now drops as a new album? Not complaining, but it just feels weird. I’m used to the fan side of things, where new is really new to me. It’s a delight. It’s a reunion with old sonic friends. I hope somebody out three feels like that with this latest work. But I gotta face it: the world is awash in music. A world that’s indifferent to music, mostly.
But maybe that’s a good thing? It must mean lots and lots of people are making music. So much music that nobody is starving for music now. If music were food, what a much happier, healthier world it would be. Maybe it’s the relationship to music that I lament, currently? Today’s music listeners are promiscuous. A bunch of one-play stands. But what about falling in love? Giving your heart and soul to sounds and songs that really shake you to the core? That almost never happens these days. Maybe it only happens to pre-teens through to college? I’ve refused to grow up, then, I suppose.
My hope, with my music and songs, is to be a way shower. My approach is different. Not better, just different. Maybe, merely by being what it is, my body of work will display an unusual ethic and approach to popular music that will inspire listeners unexpectedly? Maybe they’ll ask, “Why DO I play the same six strings tuned to the same notes? Why not five, or seven? Why should music be perfect instead of human?” These are questions for my fellow artists, really. As more time goes by, it becomes clearer that I’m an artist for artists, and not so much for non-artists.
There’s a whole story to the latest album, but I can’t bear to write it out again, so do pop over to the Question Beggar site on Bandcamp.com and read the liner notes for the album and for each song. I could cut and paste it here, but these “occurrences” posts are long enough as is, considering I still have no evidence anyone has read even one. It’s very boomer of me to even have a website, they say.
Along with the new album is a new video for “Flag Day.” I worried, needlessly, about finding some worthwhile footage, but with a quick search of Archive.org, I found several clips of Flag Day parades, ceremonies, and, disturbingly, burning. There’s a shot in the video of the American flag burning as part of the 2020 Antifa protests in Portland. I hated including it, but it goes with the lyrics, “…may you never find the flame/ or the underside of a boot…” The song darkens a bit there and I felt the video should as well. It’s especially ugly to see that some of the happiest faces in all that celebratory flag footage belong to the Antifa thugs lighting Old Glory like a candle ceremony.
Meanwhile, my live endeavors fared poorly in the last half of May—vile Mercury in retrograde!—with visitors, family deaths, sudden road trips and a nasty cold sidelining me completely. Now that the little bastard is moving the right direction again, I find myself back on the open mike circuit in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Lucrative it is not, but it’s fine practice and I find myself and my sound becoming more and more well known. Since open mikes are primarily attended by musicians, this lines up nicely with inspiring other artists. Who knows? One of them might inspire me someday. Plenty of them fill me with envy at their playing and/or singing, at least.
My personal project of finding other one-man-band artists and doing a video showcase of us all also hit the skids in May. One dropped out. One lost his phone and went incommunicado. It’s got me rethinking the timing and scope of the deal. Maybe I open it up to just artists I find compelling, even if not one-man-banders? And maybe I wait until I’ve got my new set of new sound songs down colder? I may even wait until after I’ve recorded the new album of new material, which, unbelievably, I find myself considering using a producer for. As you recall, I ruled out further use of producers after 2015’s Western Man from Back East album didn’t show much of a difference in quality from its twin, Whole Other Day, the album I recorded at the same time as a scientific control. The reason why, I concluded, was that, sonically, my sound doesn’t hold a full enough spectrum of sound to warrant a producer and lovely studio. At a fateful open mike, recently, however, I met a producer who felt that—having heard my set— that might not necessarily be so. He said it was up to the producer to find and refine the sounds. Huh. Maybe. I’d be hard pressed to think of a producer more apt to that than 2015’s Pat Kearns. It could be my intimidation of learning DAW recording has me running for shelter to professionals.
8-24-2022
Apologies to whoever reads this regularly, for this, my total abdication of news reporting on myself. It's been a strange and very hot summer. Although, I kept up the open miking through June, July and most of August, I was distracted greatly planning the next album. As mentioned before, I did get into an agreement with the producer I met to record my next project. We would have started recording it this week, but I deferred. I just wasn't ready. I had a bunch of good songs, but no clear direction or inspiration. Plus, simultaneously...
A FULL SHOW coming up September 9th, at Pearl's Cherokee Lounge, where I've been playing the open mikes regularly. It's great old bar, a Texas classic. Looks like a biker bar outside. Inside, too. But it's full of a regular cadre of boomers mostly who love drinkin' and hearin' live music. This is the modern size of "being discovered," I think: you play and play and open mike and one day the owner says, "Kid, I'm gonna make you play a Friday night..."
Yeah, so, three big 45-minute sets coming up. Luckily, I've had plenty of time to prepare, with 29 songs to play, about a third are covers, done in my mutated way. Please come if you can't attend and wear your best clothes if you haven't any. Thanks!
9-29-2022
Did you ever feel like you've been on a business trip out of town for a couple of months, but you haven't gone anywhere? It's been like that for me. I've felt totally occupied and away from my local duties, and yet I haven't been so at all. Or maybe I have. I'd been preparing all summer, training for the impending show at Pearl's in September. I went to wedding in Florida in August. I also attended the CD Baby DIY Conference in Austin at the end of August. There were open mikes sprinkled generously throughout all that stuff. I have been busy, I just haven't placed a new music video in two months. Huh. Shows me what I value, eh?
Well all that ended a couple days back when I posted the vid for "Still Dig It." It's doing quite well somehow. Due to crack 300 views already, and that's a success in my book. I've got about 300 subscribers, so I shouldn't be surprised. They just haven't recently been viewing the previous releases. No idea why. And I'm not that interested in why. I do what I do. I'm an artist. Audience feedback is meaningless. Look at this website, as proof of that. It's an open diary, sorta.
And. then, a week after I play the Pearl's gig, a band cancels and Pearl's asks me to play another show with only a few days to prepare. To my amazement, I agreed. Why not? I was still in shape, and the money's always good at Pearl's. I never did say how that first show went. Really well. The three hours of play wasn't tiring to me and the audience stuck around, regulars and some friends. The usual glitches with my rig appeared—announcing the death on stage of one of my beloved Roland Cubes—but I skated around them, no biggie.
The next show at Pearl's wasn't as much of a joyride, but I survived. More technical problems dogged me and the audience was indifferent, and I was lackluster as a result. Having been there just the week before, I wasn't feeling super trouper enough to take them higher with me, somehow.
I should also announce that I have fallen in love, again, with my oldest guitar, the 1965 Eko of Italy. Fans of "The vonHummer Hour" will recognize its orange finish and violin body and headstock. I picked it up off the wall one day in the studio and played and played it. It was light. It was fresh. It was exotic. Despite being somewhat in disrepair, I took it to Pearl's open mike and it sounded awesome. So awesome, I played it for a whole set at the last gig...where it failed me a bit. One of the pickups went out somehow. I still have high hopes, however, and Snyder Guitars is bringing up to par with the basses in my arsenal. More on this later, dear diary...
11-7-22
So many items to go over. I'll be direct and diverting about it all...
ITEM! From a clear, blue sky, a new single drops, "Here." It's a mellow paean to the fear-killing practice of being present in the moment. HR ladies—and they're all ladies, even the HR men—call this "mindfulness," although they likely mean it to be practiced absent-mindedly.
Thanks to the teachings of Krishnamurti, Vernon Howard, Eckhart Tolle, Mooji, and Gangaji, I've developed my abilities of being present to at least the level where I remember to do it any time my anxieties reach a certain size. It's terribly esoteric, but by remembering my true Self, I shrink and completely dissolve those anxieties, and get a better grasp on what reality is, here and now.
I fight hard, usually, against being didactic in writing my songs, and "Here" is treading close to that George Harrison line, but so be it. My cause is just. I wrote "Here" several weeks ago to deal with the emotions I felt, in finding out that a Facebook friend of mine from high school was battling Stage IV cancer. As I do in response to just about any increase of feelings, my circuit breaker flipped and I wrote a song. Having never had a song written for her, my friend was stoked to hear it, so I gave it the full press, recording it, releasing it, and making a music video.
The music video, one of the few in which I don't appear, is a fascinating pastiche of the haunting short films of Georges Méliès from the turn of the century. You may recall Georges' film of Jules Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon," with the creepy shot of the Moon as a face, getting a space-capsule shell shot in his eye? It's in literally every documentary made about the cinematic history of science fiction. I believe these public domain shorts that I edited together pre-date that film, but, together with the song, "Here," make a cool little vid.
You can read a fuller account of "Here," here. Just know, the song is available now, wherever music is purchased or downloaded, while supplies last. In the single's artwork, it's a Photoshopped treatment of a photo of myself and my friend, Pam, from 1981, sitting against a wall of the school at lunchtime.
ITEM! To misquote Bob Seger's "Against the Wind," it seems like long ago, but it was yesterday that I participated in the pilot for a reality series, "Music Masters." Dig into the occurrences from February of 2021 and you can read all about it. Basically, the show was a songwriting contest, where myself and 2 or more others each had to write the best song based upon a randomly-chosen word. Production wrapped in the month of January, 2021, was edited together, and the producers went forth to sell it to the networks.
Almost two years later, High Flying Productions has decided to finally release "Music Masters" themselves and finally, me and the world can watch the wacky fun begin. I don't have a release date yet, but producer Scott Kimes posted on Facebook that it's impending. I'll keep you informed on this as it develops. It was a great experience and nobody is more curious than me to see the edited tale it finally tells.
ITEM! Demos have been made for the next Question Beggar album, due to drop early next year, if all goes well. So far, every QB album has been performed and produced by me, myself and I (Excepting 2017's "Western Man from Back East," which was produced by Pat Kearns.) This time, however, I've connected with a flute player and a drummer with the intention of making a Jethro Tullish set of songs. To further change things up, the lyrics will be poems from Rudyard Kipling's back catalog, set to music. I can write a Tull song facsimile well enough—they're my favorite band in the world—but for the sake of safety and separation, Kipling's style fits very well in the Tull/Anderson tradition. Rehearsals are coming up, if all stays on course, and if they go well, we might be in the studio by January or February. Stay tuned.
And that's about it for occurrences. Usually when an album is in the works, I cut back on the live performances, but this time I'll endeavor to at least keep the open mikes regular. Cheers!
12-13-22
With laptop in hand, I write what will surely be my last occurrence of the year 2022. So much has gone by and so fast. I cannot recall a year that’s only taken what seems like a few months to go by. I’ll get reflective about it shortly, but for now there’s news:
ITEM! In a Question Beggar first, I’ve released a new single that’s a Christmas song: “Anything for Christmas.” There’s a giant essay on the song that I’ve posted on Bandcamp.com, the only place it’s currently downloadable. (Give it a week or so and “Anything for Christmas” will surely appear on Spotify and iTunes and all the others, though. While supplies last.) But I’ll tell you this one blew up rather suddenly when Top Talent asked me if I had a Christmas song to plug on their upcoming (December 18th) seasonal podcast. I said, sure, I’ll make one, cos I love an instant distraction/challenge. I wrote it up and worked it and worked it and reworked it, right up to last Saturday when I recorded the vocals and mixed it. Then Sunday I taped the lip synch video and started editing the music video, using some truly magical and ancient Andy Williams Christmas Special footage.
The song is horribly catchy and upbeat, and it seems to be a song about forgiving people who don’t like Christmastime. A bit targeted for a yuletide tune, but it works. This is also a first recording of the newly refurbished Eko hybrid bass on a Question Beggar release. The jangly, hearty sound will be instantly recognizable to vonHummer fans, on whose records I played it extensively, but not since. So check out the new single, and, if you like that, check out my vonHummer Christmas album, Open Fire on a Roasting Chestnut, available on Bandcamp, too.
ITEM! Although, this Fall, music video production was atypically sparse, December has shown me to be no slouch, since only the week or so before “Anything for Christmas,” the penultimate music video from last year’s album, Guest, dropped. “Thought I Could Care” is a thrilling song-and-dance vid that will leave you wanting more, more, MORE. So reply it a couple times. My views have been low lately.
ITEM! The end of November saw me partake in another Top Talent podcast, this time garnering a discussion on last month’s single, “Here.” You can watch the “Here” discussion here. (Wow, that is STILL funny!) I’m really enjoying the Top Talent family of artist, so varied and talented. We’re sharing a drink we call “Loneliness,” / but it’s better than drinking alone, to quote Billy Joel.
ITEM! Not really. Just couldn’t think up a transition. So, here I am, looking at the end of a year where I’ve played more full shows and open mikes than I may have ever played before. In Texas, anyhow. I trotted out, tested and refined my new rig, astonishing many audiences with the sound of it. I released 8 singles and one album. I’ll have done 3 international podcasts. I went to an industry trade show. I started learning DAW recording. I’ve made lots of new acquaintances and haven’t lost any friends. I can’t say it’s been a bad year at all. Despite everything feeling futile and frozen, I’ve kept moving. That’s worth something, I think.
I face next year with two full albums of mostly recorded material in hand and 14 new songs for live play in the bush. I’ll be finally facing down my age old rivalry of playing live vs. recording/videos. I’m resolving to learn these 14 amazing new songs by heart, so that I can play them at a moment’s notice with very little prep or practice needed, so that I can keep up a brisk open mike participation, but still have time to write, record, produce, release and promote the digital stuff. I’ve tried this before, but this time, I mean it. I’ve designed the new songs with the rig in mind to make them extra WOW when played live. I seem to feed off that.
And so I sign off, and say farewell to 2023. I want to thank anybody this year who actually read these posts. I’m still fairly sure that mine are the only peepers to peruse these words of wit. Write me at questionbeggar@gmail.com if I’m wrong about that. I would find it inspiring. Til then, cheers! QB.
