My 2017 Musical Resolutions

Happy New Year!  I love celebrating and thinking about the upcoming year during January--then I promptly break all my resolutions between February through December.  Here are my musical resolutions for this year.  Will you help me keep them? What are your resolutions for 2017--musical or otherwise?

1. Go see more live, LOCAL shows - There are so many amazing things happening with music in San Antonio that it gives me a renewed sense of urgency to find allies and inspiration in this beautiful town.  When I was in Lubbock, I had a history with the city--I'm attempting to build these things here in San Antonio and part of that is engaging and supporting the artistic community that is already here working.

2. Play more live shows - As I've gotten older I find myself going inward, headphones on doing recording and playing mostly at the house and with close friends.  This needs to stop.  As much as I'd like to invite everyone to take the magical journey with me through my recorded songs, people want to hear live music and they want to be amazed.

3. Make better music - I want to try to actually improve and learn more this year on my instruments, vocals, guitar, trombone, and recording.  I want to expand my range and technical ability in these areas. 

4. Take care of my most important instrument - I've always said the most important instrument a musician has is his ears, but I'm expanding to include the entire body for this post.  As musicians, many of us forget that there is a physicality (or should be) to the art of creating music.  We have to make physical exertions and movements to sing, play guitar, and especially for horn and woodwind instruments.  I look forward to really do the things (and not do the other things) this year to take care of my health and make these musical "exertions" sound better.

5. Release "Rescue" - This recording I'm sitting on has been like a musical unicorn for me, and not in a magical, colorful fantasy-horse way either.  It's officially been almost six years since I started writing these songs.  They are almost done but little nagging things keep me from just doing it.  There is the desire to release on vinyl, which increases cost.  There is the want for the songs to have it mixed professionally--to have a guiding hand mix the tunes in the most appetizing way for someone to listen..  there is also the dream of having the perfect album graphics to package up this group of songs like a beautiful Christmas present waiting to be opened.  These are just a couple of the things that represent a lot of time and money that should be spent on this project--this beautiful, aged project desperate to be released on the world.

Below is a little video of Auld Lang Syne I recorded a few years ago.

To buy my music and merchandise click here.