Blog

   So, Theatre of Life breaks up in 1978 or so as we are inches away from signing with a record label. Punk is coming like a tsunami and progressive rock is drowning, hell even Genesis had a top 10 pop song with Follow You, Follow Me. Oy Vey!
Looked like it was over so I sold the Roland Synth, the Farfisa, the Honner piano, the Leslie, and yes even the accordion;( damn, not the accordion!) Took the money and went back to school. I kept the Ovation and the Fender amp and played solo at pubs, cafes, taverns but it wasn't the same. I missed the keys, the 20 minute instrumentals And I just didn't like playing everyone else's top 40 songs. (Supers Ready just didn't work on an acoustic.)

   Well I graduated with an undergrad, then a masters, then a juris doctor, married (3 times), raised a family and worked my ass off. Once in a while I would pull the Ovation from the closet, string it and then OOUCH! (damn…no more calluses) back in the case it went. Life happened, fell off my garage roof while re-shingling it (yea I was a lawyer, but a damn cheap one. DIY Baby!) and broke my left hand and severed a tendon in my right hand ring finger. Well there goes ever playing keyboards again. So music seemed like a distant memory after that, and a painful regret. Why did I Stop? What if?
   Some 30 years later, after an entire lifetime of work, my failed practice everything came tumbling down. Lost my wife in a car crash during the time, then got sick. I couldn't practice law anymore, I couldn't do anything but lie in bed for over a year. Thanks to my new love of my life Lisa, I survived. But the whole time thinking about the days with Theatre of Life. The tours, the songwriting, the music.Oh the regrets. Why did I throw it all away? But in time I came to realize you don't throw it away, it morphs into something else. I was always known as a creative problem solver. Was that creativity the music in a business suit? Perhaps.

    Once back on my feet and nearly 60 (puck off you gorgeous 20 year olds, that's still young!)I didn't know what I was going to do. I got a job as an adjunct professor in a local community college teaching business law and found myself waking up daily with melodies in my head. The radio in my head that was always there during Theatre of Life, that was shut down for some 40 years was turned back on. I was dreaming music again! I pulled the Ovation back out, restrung it and began playing again. It took a while, I had to train my hands again especially the left hand that I broke, but it slowly came back. Yea, there's no way I can play a Steve Howe riff anymore, or a Tony Banks solo, but I could play again, and more importantly I was writing again. In the first 8 months songs have come pouring out.

    Now back in the 70's, you had to be discovered by a record label to have any opportunity of recording your music or having it heard. But over the past 40 years something wonderful has happened: home computing and the Internet! So on to ebay, buy a Behringer mixer, condenser mics, midi keys, glue foam panels everywhere in the spare bedroom (thanks for moving out son!) and record, damn I was recording! In May 2016 I completed my return EP of 7 songs and then 2 more singles shortly after. Yes the production value is wanting, I get it, but I'm doing it, nearly 40 years later I'm doing it.

   Unfortunately life has hit me fucking hard again recently and I have hardly been able to play or record for over 8 months now...ITS DAMN UNFAIR!!!!! But I'm not giving up, I know I'll be back ...I have to...I believe.....