roots

This post will be updated weekly through the entirety of the Self Quarantine Stream Episodes.

The reason I manage my own website, media, writing, videos, and the copy is to provide a transparent view into a D.I.Y artist. While achieving professional looking production quality is indeed my end goal, it’s just as important to show the evolution of a project and the learning process involved.

In the first 4 episodes, I learned real-time how to stream. This first one was a bit of a technical disaster, but it’s important to show true documentation of the creative process with the goal of continuous improvement. This means posting everything, warts and all, to communicate what went wrong and how the problems that arose were addressed. This way everyone else can learn from my mistakes. Even with the signal cutting out and pixellated video it never gets as bad as Bill O’Reilly’s “We’ll Do It Live” meltdown, so I’m going to chalk it up as a learning experience.

By the fourth episode, I was comfortable using a mix of live and prerecorded content. Which is an important aside, all sorts of things can go wrong, be prepared with a prerecorded backup plan for live content.  For all episodes, I am using restream.io to push to multiple platforms simultaneously. I’m still figuring out how to add Instagram using restream.io and will write a full-featured article on the tools (software & hardware) used.

What I like most about the fourth episode is how naturally I become once I see that I’m playing to my friends who were also on lockdown. Once I see my family and friends are watching, the performance clearly shows. I started to relax a bit, knew my audience, and two hours went by like nothing.

Nothing special about the third episode, it’s a good representation of how I practice in the evenings if the band members are unavailable. I go through my material off the top of my head. Work on clean precise rhythm hem, and use a looper to do a few solo exercises. I’ve used plenty of loopers in the past, but nothing beats the Boomerang 3 Phrase Sampler. It’s easy to use.  Loopers can be trick and although I usually miss a beat, as a piece of hardware it never does.

The electric I play is a Reverend Jetstream 390, I love everything they stand for. A real a-class group of individuals. The reason I like that particular guitar is I am a huge fan of Tony Joe White, solo he played a Strat through a Tweed Deluxe. My God what a tone Tony had. RIP brother.

After the catastrophic crashes, disconnections, and failure of my first attempt at streaming, I overcompensated and pre-recorded the entire show. I put everything together in Final cut and streamed using OBS into restream.io. My brother’s footage was just on an iPhone, my footage was through a goPro Hero 7 with the audio adapter plugged into a Bose S1 battery powered PA.

If you want to BUSK and get great footage with great audio this is a killer option. I will write up a full article on the Bose S1 and goPro, for now this playlist uses it, sounds good to me.

While I’m getting the hang of the cut screens and working in OBS, I am unaware till its too late how pixellated the output is.

the part that sucks, is I turn off the audio, and never put it back up halfway through. You live and learn.

Oh my god, the system crashed 2 times and apparently, the webcam on the laptop is not high enough resolution. Audio sounds good though.

Help out our local musicians.  Tune in, or better yet, go live yourself.

One of the byproducts of being stuck at home during lockdown is coming face to face with my own restlessness. I always have to keep myself busy.  We’re not taking about anxiousness and it’s certainly not A.D.D., so there is no need to go there.  A mere observation, not a complaint.  My mental wanderlust is a good thing that I depend on every day as i get up to so my work.  Restlessness begets motion, motion turns the wheels and starts the synapses.  Movement is alert experience of the senses, it my mind working at its best, firing on all cylinders.

I’ve Noticed a Few Things…

Books that have been collecting dust for years have now become daily reference materials. I’m writing as fast as my fingers can type or as fast as the graphite lasts in my mechanical pencils.  Different sounding guitars are in a constant cycle, strings are wearing out, not accumulating dust and rust due to inactivity. Music & jazz theory are both part of my daily regimen. Painting, design, art, are all in strong rotation.

It’s somehow like I am hungry again.  Once again starved for knowledge, which I must admit is both inspiring and terrifying at once. Have I been dead or checked out for a decade?  What’s the cause of this new urgency?  In admitting I dont know shit, lies the greatest challenge & advantage.

Just because I’m over a half-century old, it doesn’t mean I can’t continually improve myself.  Familiarizing myself with the new productivity tools available is extremely important in this day and age, remaining in the dark, is not, and should not be an option in life. I need to learn more than I ever have in my life, from contemporary tech, from the classics, from history, from literature, and from art.  One look with open eyes will see that creatives are living in a Renaissance right now.  There is also a dark underbelly.  Disinformation is real and the con is on in the age of information.  On every corner virtual petty thieves invade our privacy and king makers push their ideologies down our throats, and honestly as for the latter, I want none of it. 

It’s nothing short of inspiring.  As for the part that sounds difficult and dangerous, it doesn’t need to be as long as we actively educate ourselves.  Given the tools we have at our disposal, today, there is no compelling reason to sit back as a quiet observer.  Making art and music not only means mastering the instrumentation and the craft of songwriting, it means understanding how to build a brand, a business, a marketing and distribution machine.  If one does take on the Do It Yourself (D.I.Y.) mentality, essentially you are entrusting others to do the work for you.  That will never work.

I’m Going to Lean Live Streaming, Learn a New DAW, & Release a Solo Album

Enter live streaming, within a few days it can me demystified with the right tools.  It’s not rocket science.  I, by no means at all, have any business being in front of or behind the camera.  I probably should not have ever picked up a guitar now that I mention it.  Thats the first thought of anyone in the learning process, and it is the very reason that makes it important to continue in their pursuits. If I don’t, or you don’t, then who will?  I think it’s safe to say that at first, everyone feels like a putz when hearing their voice in a recording or seeing themselves in film and photographs. I don’t like having my imperfections right there for view under a microscope. Nobody does. Understanding this is a great equalizer. Anyone can do this. Anyone can write a badass novel (read Keith Richard’s Life immediately), anyone can perform a song that will touch another heart. You just have to work your ass off and refuse to let any obstacle get in your way.  I’ve always been a live and let live person. I’ve always respected those who dare to shut up and lead by example. One’s actions speak volumes. One small action can help others immeasurably.

My old man used to tell me, “Skip a few beers, and get that thing down. Nail it down. Then you can go back to business as normal.” He was all about mathematics, calculation, an engineer, a workaholic. God, I miss that sonofabitch and his brother. My heroes, even to this day. When I failed, bloody knees and all, they picked me up. They believed I could do anything. They are the first thing that comes to my mind when facing any challenge.

Getting webcams to work, coding for browsers, and understanding audio and video recording is not rocket science. Realize that to learn, you need to start with a small project, complete it. Learn and repeat until you get it right. That’s it. Start with a smartphone, a single streaming platform, and next thing you know you will be broadcasting like the networks of old. The technology literally is right in front of you.

Looking back at 2019, last spring I shot my first music video.

Yes, it’s bad, but I challenge you now to go back and look at some of the videos from the 80s on MTV.  We loved it and it was campy AF.  The Keep Warm video was not so bad that I need to burry it. More importantly, it’s me, it’s a real unfiltered snapshot into my life. It tells my story.  The beard and bandanna is a look I’ll probably never return to, but you never know with this quarantine.  There was a version that I buried, but that is another story.

Forward to the last music video from the album “To Love a Wild Fire”, I think its badass.

My point is that by the end of the year, with a bit of persistence, 7 of the 10 songs from my album had music videos. Each video was completely D.I.Y. and quality and progress can be seen across the collective timeline.  Make a commitment, and follow through with it.  Streaming is no different. Crashing computers is part of the fun. Having a feed so pixelated that it looks like Super Mario is singing is a hard-earned badge. If the audio is good I am good.

Here is the “Support Local Music & Art” project I kicked off this week to help promote locals in North County San Diego. 

Here is my latest “Quarantine Stream Episode”, three weeks in I finally got a handle on the system crashes.

Now let me first say, this is certainly not the best situation humanity has found itself in. Being forced indoors, live music ban, surfing ban (punishable by $1K fines), watching spandex-clad dorks on road bikes able to exercise without police harassment. Jeez. But I digress, this is not about the age-old feud between people with common sense and road bikers (I’m serious guys, unitards will never be cool). This is about a massive shift in our behavioral habits.

A recent concert stream that made an impact on me was the Love Rocks NYC concert. There was a public health announcement that restricted the audience to only performers & family, making it stream only viewing. In an instant, there was a new norm for all future public performances until further notice. I was working at my desk and enjoyed being able to see the performances at night, in the comfort of my own home. Luck had it that in a couple of days I was supposed to have an album release party in Oceanside, followed by a live recording session at the home studio featuring some of my favorite local musicians. Postponed until further notice.

The following week, The Luck Reunion had a stream that grabbed my attention on social media. It aired in the evening hosted by Ray Benson from Asleep at the Wheel. It floored me. They had some of my favorite artists performing in their homes, nothing was over-produced, and there was a cool hat-making workshop to boot. Streaming live felt way more engaging that night than passively watching a performance. The audience is interacting in real-time, the performer is put at ease in the comfort of their own homes. Because of this, the viewer is automatically placed in the front row with backstage passes the second you join a live stream.

Performing live in this setting can be just as rewarding. Streaming provides a way to perform directly to your closest family and friends. Those of whom may not necessarily have the luxury to go out. It also allows the performers to work within a format that better provides an experience catered uniquely to each fan. When an artist performs to those closest to them, magic happens.  

If it’s the only option, entertaining ourselves has never been better.

I come from a big family, one of five kids with cousins as far as the eye could see. Going out was a rare option, so all entertainment was in-house.  To this day, some of the best meals I’ve eaten were out of the family kitchen. My best audience will always involve friends and family by a warm fire. 

I love that streaming is home to some of the best live music and life lessons on the planet. Every day a new song or insight from some of my heroes.

Ryan Bingham – Instagram pictured above

https://www.instagram.com/ryanbingham_official/

Lukas Nelson

https://www.instagram.com/lukasnelsonofficial/

Tom Curren

https://www.instagram.com/curfuffle/

Tom Carroll

https://www.instagram.com/thomasvictorcarroll/

Jeremy Jones

https://www.instagram.com/jeremyjones/

Brandi Carlile

https://www.instagram.com/brandicarlile/

When else in our history have we been invited into the living rooms of some of our musical and cultural heroes to take part in such intimate performances and dialogs?

There’s nothing new about streaming, its old hat. What is interesting is how we’re using it as a human tool to connect emotionally. Critics say tech makes us unconnected, this is proving the opposite. Tech and Science by their very nature explore who we are as human beings, how we work, and what makes us tick. The needs that ushered in streaming are way beyond the storage woes of maintaining a music or video library and constant hard drive failures. Those issues became a thing of the past as storage moved to the cloud, phone cameras improved along with networks, making the face to face experience seamless.

Now we’re using the tools we have at our disposal to be there for the ones we love. There’s no phoning in for crucial life events. We need to be there in person. Though only a partial substitute for physically being there in person, streaming and videoconferencing can often act as the next best thing.

Help out our local musicians. Tune in, or better yet, go live yourself.