Random Thoughts

Mixing went very well at Glenn Sound. Watching Glenn and Jon produce a recording is like watching Tom Delay create a lie. They truly are master's, no pun intended. It is humbling for a singer to hear his vocal isolated, with no reverb, no guitar to back him, just a lonely, weak sounding voice, unsupported, faint, ok, you get the picture... I had to leave the room. I'm pretty secure, but I also admit that my vocal intonation is not perfect. When I wrap up the EMP class, I am going to hook up with David Kyle and see if he can do for me what he did for Chris Cornel, Nancy Wilson, etc. He lives and works right down the road from me on Beach Drive. Anyway, we decided to leave the lead vocal fairly dry and reverb-out Jon's backing vocal. I think it turned out fairly "dope." Glenn worked his mojo on a guitar buzz he didn't like cause by improperly place microphones (the recording class is learning too) and then he ran one errant note of mine through a machine that corrects the pitch. After I took a razzing for doing a "Rob Thomas" on it, we moved on. It's just one word "that." See if you can hear it when you listen to the song.
I'm basically as happy as a guy can possibly be who still works for a living. Tom-out.

Fun Stuff

I just returned from Glenn Sound studio, where I recorded a song with the students from UW's sound recording program. Jon Auer was there to add his layed back production skills to the process. I don't know if I've ever met a more gracious man. Through the magic of pro tools, we used half of one take and half of another to come up with a good rendition of "Dream-line Alligator." I used Steven's Larrivee guitar, because I really liked the tone it had with new strings on it. Since we only had two hours, we used the last half hour for Jon to lay down some SWEET harmonies. Since others in the class have been slow to respond to calls for recording session sign-ups, we may be mixing as early as this Thursday. Once again, I want to say how appreciative I am of EMP and the UW Extension college for offering this kick ass class. I'm having a ball.

Road Trip

Nancy and I had a nice time on the coast. We stayed at a place called the Lake Quinalt Resort. The cabins are quaint, with lots of privacy and awesome views of the lake. We spent the weekend hiking through the rainforest, seeing trees that were 400 to 900 YEARS OLD! W and the rest of the "conservatives" that continue to wage war on our old growth forests should watch the Tolkein trilogy. I had the sense while walking among the giants in the Olympic rain forest that Carl Rove and Dick Cheney would be squashed like bugs if they ever wandered in there, or maybe that is just my fantasy. When we weren't hiking we were playing cards, watching movies, reading and playing with the cats and dogs that live at the resort. My favorite was Alexandra (of course), a kitten who had been crowned "queen of the north shore" by the resort owner.
Saturday night, we went to the Internet Cafe in Amanda Park. Word had spread that we were in town and that I was a song-writer, so we were treated like royalty when we got there. I sat in with a very fun blue-grass band, then played a short, three song set. I opened with "It's On," followed by "Dreamline Alligator." Finally, in tribute to Neil Young, who recently had a brain anurism, I played "Needle and the Damage Done." The crowd was very receptive. In fact, you could hear a pin drop by the time I began the second song. I'm pleased that Dreamline has come together so well (thanks to Nancy Lou and Jon Auer) as I have the opportunity to record it at Glenn Sound Studios on Tuesday. I'm stoked.

Late night thoughts

I need to sleep, but I thought I'd post a quick note, as I will be on the road for a few days. Nancy and I are going to the coast, and I am pretty excited. I've been keeping my cat Foli inside, because she keeps eating something outside that makes her throw up her food. I have a feeling tonight is going to be a test of wills, because she has been inside for two days solid. I just heard a song on the new Kathleen Edwards album called "Old Time Sake." I feel sad everytime I hear it. It's amazing how certain songs can capture moments or feelings like hardly anything else can.
I had a private session with Jon Auer tonight, in which he gave me feedback on the song I will record next Tuesday at Glenn Sound. I'm very excited to be getting production notes from someone I respect as much as Jon. God bless him, Carrie and Sean for donating their time to this EMP/UW Song-writers forum. They are payed very little for the time they have given. Jon is even going to be at the recording session next Tuesday, and he volunteered to sing harmony on my song, which is titled "Dreamline Alligator Revisited." I said, "wait, let me think about that one, do I want the guy who wrote my favorite pop song of all time "I Can Dream All Day," to sing with me on my recording, YEAH!" The song is a tribute to Michael Clark, and I am pretty happy with it. Maybe KTHX in Reno will air it for any of the Boston Wrangler/Good Sam & the RV/Viron fans that might still be there.
Republicans killed Patty Murray's amendment to the defense appropriations bill that would have given returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan benefits like mental health counseling for PTSD. The bloodsuckers voted against it, because it doesn't line their filthy pockets any. If there is a hell, Tom Delay and the rest of that brood will surely burn in eternity for what they are doing to this country.

Is this what it felt like to live in Nazi Germany?

I don't know if listening to "Air America" radio is good for me. If you live in Seattle, you can find it at AM 1090. If you live anywhere else, you might have a station in your city that carries it or you can stream it on-line. I'll have a link to the station at my website, www.tom-tunes.com soon. Anyway, I was listening to the confirmation hearings for John Negroponte today, and they made my stomach turn. Negroponte has been linked closely to death squads in Honduras during the 1980's. He most certainly knew about the torture and abuse that was happening in Iraq to prisoners in U.S. custody. This guy has more blood on his hands than Jeffrey Dahmer, yet noone in the so-called liberal Democratic party (with the exception of Barbara Boxer) had the guts to stand up and call him what he is, an accessory to murder, kidnapping, torture and abuse.
I spent last week in a meeting with 50 or so dedicated employees of the Job Corps program. I've been involved in the Job Corps program for 15 years, and I have watched it change young people's lives. The program, which has been around for over 40 years, helps 50,000 young adults transition from unskilled welfare recipients to skilled, confident tax-paying workers, and it costs only a billion dollars a year to run. Mathematica, an independent auditing firm hired to study the program, concluded in it's longitudinal study that for every dollar spent on the Job Corps Program, $2.02 was returned to the economy. In other words, the program not only pays for itself, it brings in revenues equivilent to twice the original cost of the program. This is a conservative statistic, which does not even take into account the savings to society of helping thousands of young people stay out of jail, where the average inmate costs each taxpayer somewhere in the vicinity of $40,000 per year. Meanwhile, the estimated cost of this war is ONE BILLION DOLLARS PER MONTH! We're spending one billion smackers per month on a war that WASN'T EVEN NECESSARY. Every report released since the war started shows that the country had no weapons of mass destruction, meaning the rhetoric leading up to the war was a PACK OF LIES! Sometimes I don't know how much of this I can take.
The prisons in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and Afghanistan are CONCENTRATION CAMPS! When are people going to be outraged? When is this torture, abuse, neglect and humiliation, being done with our tax dollars, going to be brought to an end? If you aren't getting mad by now, don't worry about it, you are completely fucking unconcious.

Drive By Truckers

I saw the DBT's at the Filmore on Saturday night. They are a band that sounds better live than on their records, and they came out smoking. I guess they had hired a management company from the Bay area three years ago and set as one of their goals a gig at the Filmore. Saturday night was a celebration of their achievment, and the band christened the event by swilling Jack Daniels out of a bottle. I'm not sure if this is typical of any DBT show, but all three guitar players turned up their marshall and fender amps until the fuzz was so thick you could cut it with a trenching tool. The entire Pacific Heights neighborhood experienced a brown out, as the band sucked up two thirds of all available power from the grid. It was messy, but noone dared to complain. Trapped between an increasingly beligerant band and large, inebriated swaying goliaths in the crowd, those of us who were reasonably sober backed toward the door like George Clooney in "From Dusk til Dawn." The blood suckers remained to feast on one another's flesh and pass out in their own excrement.

As I was passing through the shake down that accompanies air travel these days, I was horrified to see three wheelchair-bound elderly women being manhandled in public by drooling male goons from the Transportation Safety Administration. Since wheelchairs are made of metal, they push old people through the sensors, then subject them to the most humiliating invasion of privacy I have witnessed since an ex let herself into my house and screened my answering machine messages. Risking arrest and being labled a terrorist, I yelled "that's enough for Christsake, she's 80 years old," as a TSA employee with a striking resemblence to a young hispanic Willem Dafoe ran his hands up and down one of the horrified ladies support-hosed thighs looking for a thermonuclear device. I know we all have to make sacrafices in this age of increased global tension, but let's put our heads together and figure out a way to get people in wheelchairs through the security screen short of a fricking strip-search. That is all.

I miss the Pope too

I'm a recovering Catholic. I don't go to church anymore, and I don't plan to start anytime soon. I have a deep and very personal relationship with my higher power, and I don't feel a need to be a part of a huge machine, run by old men who make up rules about how people live their lives. I will say that, although I didn't always agree with this pope, I admired the little man from Poland. He stayed true to his convictions. I heard Mike Malloy on "Air America" (am 1090 if you are in Seattle) say that this pope had more to do with the end of the cold war than that simple, senile old fascist Ronnie Rayguns. Pope John Paul weighed in consistently on the right side of a majority of human rights issues, including strong opposition to this fucked up war we are in now. He summoned U.S. Cardinals to Rome in April 2002, telling them that "there is no place in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young." (USA Today, April 5, 2005). Like others, I wish he had gone further. I wish he had launched a full-scale investigation into who in the Catholic hierarchy knew about these predator priests and did nothing to stop them from abusing again. Anyone who was complicit should have been sacked immediately. I believe that strong action to scour the church of scum who would knowingly transfer a priest convicted of abusing would have won back some of the church's lost credibility. That being said, I acknowledge that life does not always go the way I want it to and that I, like everyone else including the Pope, lack perfect knowledge. He was, after all, in the end, merely a man.

I had dinner tonight with Ronda, an ex-girlfriend. We talked about who we were dating, laughed about politics and family stuff. It was nice. It is not always possible to make the transition from lover to friend, but we have been able to do it. It feels grown up. What a concept.

San Francisco

I'm staying at the Marriot, attending my last conference for Job Corps. I have mixed feelings, mostly relief at being able to stay in Seattle and finding meaningful interesting work. I'm also relieved to get out of the system before things start to deteriorate. I fear for what the future brings with so many experienced people leaving the Job Corps system. The reorganization of ETA has been a disaster, and I am glad I don't have to stick around to see the damage it will cause for the program over the long term.

Nancy James, my new sweetie, is caring for Foli while I am gone. Nancy and I met through our mutual love for music, and I am very happy we did. She is very attractive, smart as a whip, hard working, kind, and screamingly funny. God was smiling on me the day we met. We are going to the Olympic penisula next week for a little R&R before I start my new job.

That's all for now.

Coming Clean

If you've visited this blog before, you might notice that some of the posts are missing. An old friend from College "googled" me and found my website. He read the blog, then contacted my brother and told him he agreed with me on the issue of Terry Schiavo. My brother read the blog, and he was understandably hurt by the words I had written. I sent my brother an apology in email form, then removed the posts that had been judgemental and cruel toward him. I didn't do it because I agree any more now than before with him on the right people have to meddle in other's affairs. I deleted them because I had asked him to keep our debate between ourselves, then I proceeded to publish it to the world. That wasn't right.

I wish I had stopped at the email. I called and left a message with my niece, and Stephan called me back tonight. Instead of just sticking to my ammends, I attacked him for his religious beliefs. I realized tonight that I need to do quite a bit of work to clean up my side of the street. I have divorced myself from the Catholic church, and I have found a spiritual path that works for me, but that doesn't give me the right to judge someone else because he or she believes in that church and is zealous about their faith. I need to find a way to forgive the Catholic Church. I need to do the same thing for the Bush
Administration. I'm not talking about agreeing with everything they represent. I'm talking about turning that anger into compassion and spending my time envisioning the best possible life and spiritual path for every elder in the Catholic church and for W himself. I was pretty sick when I got off the phone with my brother, but I think this had to happen to kickstart my process of reconciliation with my family and with some big institutions.

I'm on my way to San Francisco for my last trip as a Job Corps Project Manager. I am going out to Santa Cruz on Friday to visit with Chris Samuels and his lovely family. I've yet to meet the new baby, and I am excited about that. I have tickets for the "Drive by Truckers" on Saturday night at the Filmore. I also plan to visit my old yoga instructor Amber at the "Funky Door" in Berkely. It should be a fun week. Hopefully I can keep my mouth shut next time I have a strong opinion about someone's religious beliefs. It is none of my business!

I'm grateful that I get to get up tomorrow and try my best again. Life is an amazing gift!